European Riots Could Spark Radical Change on Immigration

I've been following the rioting around Paris slightly, but haven't blogged about it because I hadn't fully formulated an impression of the scope of these events. It seems pretty clear at this point that the riots--"angry Muslim youth" rioting against government forces because of disenfranchisement, social isolation, economic exclusion, and so forth--will mark a watershed moment in Europe's evolving approach to immigration from the developing world.

Viking Observer notes that Denmark is also experiencing unrest.

Here's the deal: European nations have policies that prevent immigrants from becoming citizens. In some cases, the grandchildren of immigrants are the first generation that are considered citizens. Europe's religiously tolerant policies have also opened up government funding of private Muslim academies, further isolating immigrant communities and discouraging things like adoption of the host nation's language.

At the same time, Islam is experiencing the same kind of revival period that Christianity is in America, so radicals declaiming homosexuals, women, and the general decadence of the host nations are common.

Europeans, of course, feel strongly about tolerance towards homosexuals, social and economic equality for women, and the level of freedom that would lead some to view them as "decadent".

These riots will bring changes that will be difficult for the immigrant communities to bear, but will hopefully be helpful in the long term. The world needs a moderate branch of Islam to counterbalance the Saudi Wahabism and other jihadi ideologies. Europe is the most fertile ground for those roots to set. Let's hope that France can get control of itself quickly, and that policy reforms will be wise and sweeping, nurturing a European Islam that can drag large swaths of the rest of the Islamic world toward it, and not the other way around.