Islamization of the French Riots

Abstract

In October and November 2005, France witnessed a series of riots and violent clashes between youths and its police. Laurent Chambon, a French sociologist, born in one of the Paris banlieues and now living in the Netherlands, emerged, at that time, as an engaged social scientist worried by the islamization of the riots-discourse and by the way the French state handles the problems of the areas he knows so well from his childhood. Instead of riots of “youth gangs inspired by radical Muslims,” he argues in this interview that these riots should be seen as part of a movement against the “precariousness” of everyday life in the French banlieues.