***"These events and these actions did not come out of mosques,"

***Apa yang terjadi di Poso dan Maluku, sama sekali bukan bentrokan agama. 
Absennya strong leadership di Indonesia, memberi kesempatan Laskar Jihad dan 
Laskar Kristus mencoba berkuasa. Kembalinya dwifungsi TNI = achirnya gonjang 
ganjing di Poso dan Ambon...

A revolt of youth without religious motivation

By Martin Arnold and Roula Khalaf
Published: November 9 2005 02:00 | Last updated: November 9 2005 02:00

Despite attempts by some French government officials to play up the Muslim 
background of many of the youth rioting during the past two weeks, community 
leaders and analysts say the troubles should not be confused with a crisis 
of religious identity.


"These events and these actions did not come out of mosques," says Lhaj 
Thami Breze, chairman of the Union of French Islamic Organisations, a group 
that has links with the Muslim Brotherhood, the international Islamist 
movement.

Even in the North African press the unrest is being treated as a purely 
French problem, the result of social and economic exclusion.

"This is an ethnic and social problem, not a religious one," says 
Abderrahmane Bouhout, director of the Clichy-sous-Bois mosque, which became 
a cause célèbre for the rioters after a police tear gas grenade exploded 
near its entrance during prayers.

Many of the worshippers at Mr Bouhout's mosque volunteered to act as 
mediators. Thanks to their efforts, the rioting that continues elsewhere in 
France, ended in Clichy-sous-Bois a week ago.

"The people who saw their mothers crying because of the tear gas and running 
home without their headscarves or shoes were the same ones who went out into 
the rioting to call for calm," says Mr Bouhout. "We must not confuse the 
riots with Islam."

For many immigrant community leaders, the rioting in France is an expression 
of Europe's failed promise for tens of thousands of immigrants and for those 
across the Mediterranean still looking to the continent for a better future.

That immigrant communities in France survive in conditions depressingly 
similar to those their parents left behind in Arab and African countries 
comes as a shock to many within the Fifth Republic and without. That they 
are effectively forced to integrate with France's strict secular society yet 
victimised by social and economic discrimination deepens the disenchantment.

Linking the unrest to a potentially intensifying terrorist threat, as some 
officials have sought to do in recent days, thus appears to be an 
exaggeration. Nicolas Sarkozy, interior minister, has said the vacuum of 
power created by the rioting in the poor suburbs could be exploited by 
radical Islamist groups.

Extremist networks in Europe do try to recruit in socially deprived 
immigrant communities, according to Oliver Roy, a French expert on Islamist 
groups. A radicalisation of the youth movement could eventually give it a 
more religious flavour.

"But this isn't the Palestinian intifada, there's no Middle Eastern 
connotation to the riots. The rioters aren't defining an identity, except 
that of their neighborhoods," he says. "It's a revolt of youth, of young 
men, an anti-police and anti-society movement, in a very French tradition of 
anarchism," argues Olivier Roy, French expert on Islamist groups. "It's an 
expression of a youth sub-culture, not tied to Islam. And not all the 
rioters are Muslims."

Still, with violence spreading and passions inflamed by Mr Sarkozy's 
denunciation of the rioters as "scum," Muslim leaders have emerged as a 
calming influence.

On Sunday, the UFIO issued a fatwa, or religious edict, forbidding "any 
Muslim seeking divine grace and satisfaction to participate in any action 
that blindly hits private or public property or could constitute an attack 
on someone's life."

According to Mr Breze, the UFIO chairman, the fatwa was a preventive 
measure, designed to warn people who have not yet taken part in the riots 
against joining in. The UFIO has been dispatching people at night to 
troubled areas.

"We're not able to reach those who are setting the fires but we're trying to 
prevent others from taking part," said Mr Breze.

But the UFIO's intervention has also provoked criticism for having 
introduced a religious element to the debate. Some Muslim representatives 
also have warned that the mobilisation launched by the UFIOcould have 
dangerous ramifications, expanding the appeal of a controversial religious 
organisation.

"Many Muslims are surprised and regret that ...some Muslim organisations 
such as the UFIO think they can invoke God's name in a call for calm," said 
Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris and head of the Muslim 
Council, which is close to the government.

Muslim leaders appear to have been caught up in the broader political feud 
between Dominique De Villepin, the prime minister, and Mr Sarkozy, amid a 
growing rivalry between the two men to replace Jacques Chirac as president 
in 2007.

"Boubakeur is not playing his role. He's siding with de Villepin against 
Sarkozy," said Mr Breze.

The UFIO, on the other hand, is more supportive of the interior minister, 
praising him for a supportive attitude towards Muslim communities, including 
backing for positive discrimination. Mr Breze even defends Mr Sarkozy's 
controversial description of the rioters, saying they can indeed be 
described as "scum".

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/fd1c696c-50c5-11da-bbd7-0000779e2340.html




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