The high point of Pope Leo’s four-day visit to France was the celebration of Mass, on Sept. 26, at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The crowd numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Some saw in this gathering a hopeful sign of a revival of interest in Christianity, particularly among young people.
At the same time, trouble was brewing. Over a week before, teachers at a secondary school in Paris went on strike over staffing shortages and building conditions. Students joined the teachers, setting up blockades with trash cans. Suburbs, including the majority-Muslim Saint-Denis neighborhood, joined in the blockades.
Turning violent
The protests turned violent on Sept. 23. Firework mortars were fired into the school, causing injuries and leading to arrests. Soon, protests spread to other cities throughout France. Rioters engaged in vandalism and arson, throwing paving stones, bottles and acid at police. The police responded with batons, tear gas and more arrests. By early October, officials reported that 24 schools were “burned or ransacked.”
Then, on October 17 — according to estimates from The French Interior Ministry — over half a million people participated in mass demonstrations across France. As the day wore on, those demonstrations also turned violent. Limoges city hall and the tourist office in Lyons were among the government buildings burned to the ground throughout the country. Police cars and private vehicles were torched, and there was widespread looting of supermarkets, electronic stores, luxury boutiques and private homes. Nearly 1,000 police and firemen were injured, some seriously, and there were also injuries and one death among the rioters.
Copycats
Copycat riots and looting broke out elsewhere in Europe, including in Milan, Bologna, Brussels and Liège, Belgium. American media outlets initially portrayed the protestors as students and union workers. After Oct. 17, the French government shifted the blame to “the ultra-Left.”
Conspicuously absent has been mention of immigrants or first- or second-generation French citizens from former French colonies, most of who are overwhelmingly Muslim. Videos show rioters waving Algerian and Palestinian flags, wearing keffiyehs and chanting pro-Palestinian slogans. Synagogues were attacked, and Jewish businesses have been targeted. A Muslim student was caught on video calling his fellow students to kill the police in the name of Allah. So, although the government has blamed the far Left, Islam is playing a central role in the rioting.
Of course, the far Left and Islam are connected in encouraging the protests and justifying the violence. Immigrants from Muslim countries skew heavily toward the growing La France Insoumise, the radical-Left party that initially condemned the rioting and non-political vandalism of Oct. 17 while blaming the violence on the government.
French conservative commentators and even some socialists refer to this as Islamo-gauchisme, or Islamic-leftism. The Left provides polemical language such as anti-racism, decolonization and social justice, while Islamists provide a disciplined constituency and street mobilization, unified around the Palestinian cause. This can be seen in varying degrees throughout Europe.
Impact of secularism
The alliance is similar to the one that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power in Iran in 1979, though immediately afterward, the Islamic regime arrested or executed their leftist supporters.
Of the many factors that have brought France to this terrible moment, one of the most important is the impact of secularism. When the role of religion in society is attacked, undermined, and replaced, people are left without a deeper purpose for life. Something that important can never be replaced with nothing.
France, Europe and all Western Civilization is at a crossroad. Unless there is a recovery of transcendent meaning, only two choices are on the table. The Pope’s visit offered an outward expression of Christianity, tradition and a reminder of the values that formed Europe in the first place. On the other hand, the alliance of radical leftism and Islamism will destroy a society even if for conflicting reasons.
As Os Guinness and others described in the documentary Truth Rising, civilizations detached from what animated them must be renewed. Otherwise, they are destined for collapse.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This article was written by John Stonestreet and Glenn Sunshine of the Colson Center.
