Radical Islam was not involved in the riots in the French suburbs. Reuters’ Religious Affairs Editor, TOM HENEGHAN, argues that the real reasons lie elsewhere.

The headlines called it “France’s Intifada.” Televisions depicted flames from the “Muslim unrest”
dangerously close to the Eiffel Tower. Isolated cries of “Allahu Akbar” and scenes of imams trying to calm crowds were highlighted as worrying signs of the times in “Frankistan.” Politicians and the media hinted that Islamist militants were partly to blame for the rampaging youths and nightly fire bombings. News dispatches with datelines such as Clichy-sous-Bois sounded like they were actually describing a “Baghdad-on-the-Seine.”

A few weeks later, with calm restored, cooler heads prevailed. Police and intelligence agencies said they found no evidence of any Islamist role in the unrest. Some even praised local imams for helping to restore order in their neighborhoods. After some initial confusion, politicians began to admit that the French model of integration had fallen far short of its lofty goals. A few audacious ones even proposed a real response, such as affirmative action, to help youths climb out of the bleak suburbs where the French system has parked them.

The three weeks of rioting that rocked the country’s suburban slums in late October and early November were a rude wake-up call for France. The unrest was an outburst of frustration from an underclass that most French thought was safely hidden away in housing estates on the edges of the main cities. The youths are protesting against politics as usual in a country where large-scale unemployment—10% across the country, and between 20% and 40% in the tough suburbs—is seen as inevitable. They were telling a society in denial that it was marred by racism and  discrimination just like other countries. This was a frontal assault on France’s cherished self-image as a nation of liberty, equality and fraternity.

The unrest also casts a worrying spotlight on how France’s majority sees the country’s second-largest religion. There are an estimated 5 million Muslims in France, around 8% of the population, and many have been born and educated here. They have been told repeatedly that the strength of France’s model of integration is that it treats immigrants as individuals, not as members of ethnic or religious groups as is done in English-speaking countries. But as soon as the trouble flared