From Telegraph. Hat tip Jihadwatch.

Muslims are waging civil war against us, claims police union
By David Rennie, Europe Correspondent
(Filed: 05/10/2006)

Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada" against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day.

Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy was warned of an 'intifada'

As the interior ministry said that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were "in a state of civil war" with Muslims in the most depressed "banlieue" estates which are heavily populated by unemployed youths of north African origin.

It said the situation was so grave that it had asked the government to provide police with armoured cars to protect officers in the estates, which are becoming no-go zones.


And later in the article, after refering to politicians and others advocating economic and criminal enterprise explanations

However, not all officers on the ground accept that essentially secular interpretation. Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the hardline Action Police trade union, has written to Mr Sarkozy warning of an "intifada" on the estates and demanding that officers be given armoured cars in the most dangerous areas.

He said yesterday: "We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists. This is not a question of urban violence any more, it is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails. You no longer see two or three youths confronting police, you see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their 'comrades' free when they are arrested."


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Of course, in understanding human behavior it often is wrong to choose one explanation to the exclusion of others. No doubt: gangs in these North African neighborhoods make money from drugs and stolen cars, etc., and want to continue doing so. No doubt: the French government policy of allowing large-scale immigration to provide a labor pool, and then not working toward assimilation of the immigrants, has contributed to the problem by creating large areas of people who view French society as something alien. No doubt: the French are and have been a racist society without admitting it (in the US the French gained a reputation for tolerance by granting small numbers of expatriate American blacks a place in their society; however, as black author James Baldwin discovered while living in France, the French embrace did not extend to their North African population).

And no doubt: the large group of unassimilated North African immigrants finds its own sense of self-identity and its world-view from Islam. And Islam that takes itself and its teachings seriously cannot abide to be governed by "infidels."