Pride of Lions, Part 8

In Part 7 we looked at the radicalization of the mosques in the United Kingdom to get an idea how ethnic groups get turned into jihadis. We now continue from Part 6 looking at the situation in France, reviewing France's Ramadan Uprising - a Ticking Bomb for Europe from November 7, 2005:

The violent riots spreading across France took several worrying directions Sunday night, Nov. 6, and Monday. The mostly Muslim gangs of youths began surging out of the immigrant suburbs to invade town centers; they fired their first gunshots at policemen; the number of torched cars peaked to 1,400; and disturbing new slogans were hurled, depicting Paris as "Baghdad-on-the Seine" and their campaign as the start of Europe's Ramadan Intifada.

A single slogan made a mockery of president Jacques Chirac's efforts of the last three years to distance France from President George W. Bush's Iraq war. Furthermore, the French government's helplessness in quelling the trouble is encouraging other European communities to follow suit - in Denmark, Belgium, Spain and Sweden, for starters.

The Israelis have been dealing with "intifadas" long enough to understand that the jihadists respect strength and consider cultural sensitivity to be bywords for weakness and indecisiveness, which they take as an invitation to press ahead with their violence.

Chirac, after lying low for 10 days, finally called an emergency security meeting in Paris Sunday, Nov. 6. He then promised arrests, trials and punishment for those who "sow violence or terror" across France. But politics as usual held him back from instituting tough measures or naming those responsible for the violence, let alone deploying the necessary forces. French police are still under orders not to open fire unless fired on first. No names have been released of ringleaders despite several hundred arrests.

Saturday, Nov. 5, as the disorders went into their second week, the French prosecutor-general Yves Bot said he had detected an organized hand and a strategy behind the riots. Witnesses reported vehicles without number-plates distributing petrol bombs. A fuel bomb factory was in fact discovered Sunday in Paris with 150 bottles and gallons of gasoline ready to distribute to the bands of arsonists. Also found there were masks to hide rioters’ faces. In Clichy-sour-Bois, where the accidental electrocution of two teenagers in flight from the police ignited the first protests, residents said: This is just the beginning.

There are plenty of indications that the riots are not simply spontaneous outbursts of frustration by disadvantaged youths of North and black African descent, but centrally organized mayhem, an "intifada" activated by Muslim networking.

It is one thing to have many of these thugs merely playing off the same sheet of music that they all keep hearing preached in their mosques, along the lines of what we touched on regarding the UK in Part 7. But, one wonders how much time these thugs spend in their local mosques. Well, here we are seeing that organizers of the intifada will bring Acme Instant Jihad kits, complete with Molotov cocktails, to the appropriate neighborhoods - all you need to supply for your intifada is the thugs!

The Chirac-de Villepan government, trying to live down interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy's provocative pledge to deal with what he called "scum," is not acknowledging this. Because they refuse to recognize the rampage for what it is, they are withholding the forces required to restore order and so letting the danger get out of hand. Police, firemen and paramedics are no match for a fast developing civil war. The army will have to be brought in at some point, preferably sooner rather than later. For a start, marksmen need to be posted to pinpoint the ringleaders and the bottle-bomb wielders targeting cars, schools, shops, warehouses and public buildings.

France's leaders, like the British and Dutch, are clinging to the hope that sympathetic dialogue with moderate Muslims will calm the street, despite all the evidence that radical, activist Muslims do not heed established Islamic authorities. On Nov. 6, the Union of Islamic Organizations in France, UOIF, issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims to seek "divine grace" by blindly attacking private and public property and urging meditation and calm.

First of all, perhaps the jihadists are heeding "established Islamic authorities" - just not the same ones the government recognizes.

But, there is another aspect to this, a more important point.

The following night, bands of marauding Muslim youths extended their areas of attack from outlying city districts to urban centers and started shooting at police officers.

The controlling hand, far from being legitimate Muslim authority, is beginning to emerge as the very organization that has for several years been recruiting young fighters in French Muslim ghettos fight al Qaeda’s wars against the West in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and other sectors.

On February 20, 2004, DEBKA-Net-Weekly and DEBKAfile were first to reveal the extent of al Qaeda's penetration of West Europe. They turned up French intelligence statistics which estimated that "al Qaeda had recruited in France between 35,000 and 45,000 fighters and was organizing them in military-style units. They meet regularly for training in the use of weapons and explosives, combat tactics and indoctrination and are controlled from local and district command centers under the organization's national French command."

"In Germany, Al Qaeda’s numbers are estimated at 25,000 to 30,000 men."

Today, French counter-terror sources are willing to admit, albeit on the quiet and not for attribution, that those clandestine terrorist cells may well be at the bottom of the current riots. They note the history of the Palestinian uprising, which kicked off in 1987 with stones and petrol bombs, only to evolve into a suicidal terrorist war by the late nineties. They fear this process may be beginning - not just in France but in the rest of Europe too, that the covert nucleus of trained and indoctrinated Islamic terrorists al Qaeda buried inside Europe is being turned against the continent, starting in France.

We now consider more background related to the jihad in France, as we examine GSPC Joins al-Qaeda and France Becomes Top Enemy by Kathryn Haahr, dated September 26, 2006:

Al-Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri's recent September 11 threat to France, coupled with al-Qaeda's official integration with the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), is significant for two principal reasons. First, from al-Qaeda's perspective, it is a formal alliance with an "out-of-area" Islamist group to specifically engage in jihad against Europe and elsewhere. Secondly, the GSPC's merger with al-Qaeda formalizes the GSPC's participation in al-Qaeda terrorist-related activities against Western targets. This development brings the GSPC to the counter-terrorism debate in a different way than before. The GSPC-al-Qaeda integration portends increased opportunities for al-Qaeda to recruit European jihadists for ongoing terrorist operations in the West and the Middle East and signifies the potential for an increased operational tempo by the two organizations against French and Western targets.

This intifada in France is not an aberration, nor is it an isolated incident. The more important point mentioned above is this: the Islamic extremist snake has bitten into the House of War, declaring jihad on infidel and takfir alike - especially, as we have seen and will see again, on women - and refuses (perhaps is unable?) to retract its fangs.

Al-Qaeda's threat to France raises the stakes for French counter-terrorism officials, especially given al-Zawahiri's September 11 designation of France as "prey" in the global jihad (Le Figaro, September 14). It is not surprising that France is the target for future terrorist attacks: France remains the GSPC's preference for terrorist operations due to the legacy of the 1990s and the GIA's violent struggle against the Algerian government as well as its targeting of France (the GSPC is a splinter group of the GIA). Moreover, various French foreign and domestic policies have caused France to lose its "neutrality" and make it a target for terrorism: participation in Desert Storm; participation in the international force in Lebanon, which Islamist groups view as a joint U.S.-Israeli operation to protect Israel's position in the Middle East; and laws to regulate Islamic religious symbols in schools, such as headscarves. Al-Zawahiri said that the "blessed union" of al-Qaeda and the GSPC should "be a source of chagrin, frustration and sadness for the apostates [of the regime in Algeria], the treacherous sons of [former colonial power] France," and urged the group to become "a bone in the throat of the American and French crusaders" (Le Monde, September 18; Libération, September 19).

Do you recall from Part 6 how we keyed in on the connection to Algeria amongst the jihadists of the French intifada?

According to the French minister of the interior, France is under a "vigilance absolute," and the threat level was raised and will remain so indefinitely (Le Monde, September 18). Moreover, it is not insignificant that there is an active and large Muslim community in France. In February 2005, for example, the French domestic intelligence agency, Renseignements Généraux, estimated that there are about 5,000 sympathizers and militants in France part of the Salafi-Jihad, grouped around 500 hard-core individuals (Radio France Internationale, September). The French Ministries of Defense and Interior said that France will enact specific counter-terrorism actions to deal with the threat, but will design the policies to not intentionally "provoke the Islamists" (http://www.algerie-dz.com, September 19). According to a September 2005 report produced by the French Antiterrorist Coordination Unit, France was considered a prime target for terrorist groups inspired by Islamism, most notably from combatants from Maghreb countries trained to undergo terrorist operations by the GSPC (Le Figaro, September 19; El Watan, September 20). In 2005, the GSPC singled out France as its "enemy number one," and in August of the same year appealed to Muslims living in France to attack those officials linked to the Algerian regime living in France (Radio France Internationale, September 14).

There are many wonderful, decent people in the Islamic world. The problem is not Muslims; the problem is Islam, combined with the foreign support for extremism, which turns jihadists into proxies.

As you read Islamic texts and their calls for jihad, you begin to understand how the extremists have such an ample supply of ammunition in their ideological war to radicalize Islamic communities, and this, then, makes every Islamic community in the West a cause for concern - is it a place where extremist violence is propagated? - is it a ticking time bomb of violent intifada? "Moreover, it is not insignificant that there is an active and large Muslim community in France."

The key is the foreign support these communities receive - Saudi (and other) sponsorship of terrorism and militant extremism builds upon opportune passages in Islamic texts, and while some elements in the Middle East actively encourage the jihad, other elements in the Middle East - our "friends in the War on Terror" - wage a duplicitous proxy war for imperialistic conquest of infidel lands, while our own leaders are too foolish to see it, too corrupt to acknowledge it, or both (Obama, Bush, Cheney, McCain, Clinton - categorize them yourself).

Numerous terrorist operations in Europe planned by individuals identified as belonging to the GSPC indicate that the group has an agenda to expand its range of operations to new battlefronts where al-Qaeda has been active. In May, for example, it threatened to attack "American military bases in Mali and Niger," and planning for these operations was taking place "in Algeria and in Mauritania" (Terrorism Focus, May 17). The GSPC certainly calculated that a partnership with al-Qaeda would increase the GSPC's appeal to Algerians to continue fighting the Algerian government, which in turn would enhance the organization's continued existence. In addition, integrating with al-Qaeda elevates the GSPC into a new hierarchical international position, one that will increase its Salafi Islamist appeal to European Muslims. The GSPC has been an established actor in Europe's North African network of Salafi Islamists, which have supported jihadi activities in Algeria, Iraq and in Europe, and is active in recruiting from the North African and Muslim communities in European countries.

For al-Qaeda, partnering with an organization that has actively tried to overthrow an apostate government through terrorism lends a certain "state" legitimacy to al-Qaeda. The GSPC contributes to al-Qaeda's ongoing objective to significantly mobilize global Muslim support for its agenda, a development in which al-Qaeda has not completely succeeded. As al-Qaeda's operational capabilities around the world have diminished, a partnership with a Salafi Islamist group might provide al-Qaeda with more manpower and other resources, including access to possible targets in Europe and elsewhere. Due to the GSPC's network of recruitment cells throughout Europe—many of which have been disrupted and its members detained in recent years—al-Qaeda can conceivably draw upon new European Muslim recruits for jihad in Iraq, Europe and elsewhere.

Nice - a strategic partnership among terrorists. Osama bin Laden is certainly a businessman.

The integration of the two organizations was very calculated and should be taken seriously. The unique capabilities of each group—propaganda techniques, recruitment activities and technical means to conduct a variety of terrorist operations—are now doubled. Foremost, the GSPC specializes in attacks against military targets and its training of potential recruits for activity in Iraq would certainly be important in helping al-Qaeda find technically qualified commandos who understand the nature of attacking convoys, military quarters, etc. Moreover, the GSPC is known to train terrorist recruits from other countries in North Africa, notably Tunisians, Libyans, Moroccans and Mauritanians. A second consideration is assessing the impact of the merger: is al-Qaeda trying to strengthen itself by formalizing partnerships with selected Islamist groups, or is it an indication of a weakening organization that needs to rely on regional jihadi groups for personnel and materiel?

Consideration should be applied to what the merger means for al-Qaeda's evolving ideology, as well as its propaganda activities to continue to portray itself as the ideological leader of global Islamist movements. Similarly, command-and-control implications for al-Qaeda are important since the integration could give GSPC leadership figures the authority to plan and execute terrorist attacks in Europe as well as in other regions. A possible evolution of leadership authority could result in al-Qaeda remaining "in charge" of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries, whereas the GSPC could be the head of all Europe and Africa operations. An additional factor is the implications for al-Qaeda and GSPC fundraising activities as it could result in an integration of networks that are devoted to financing terrorism operations.

The GSPC's new political agenda of international terrorism and integration into the worldwide jihad is one which supports al-Qaeda's view of a worldwide conflict between "true" Muslims and the "Zionist-crusader alliance," exactly the characteristic that the GSPC now attributes to France. Most importantly, the formal alliance portends strengthening Europe as a battleground, and likely will engender more sympathy for Iraq and other causes, potentially attracting more European Muslims to the global Salafi-Jihad.

The question now remains: does this Islamic extremist snake have the ability to swallow its prey, or will it instead die trying?

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as Pride of Lions continues.

Pride of Lions, Part 6

Part 5 ended with this:

Keep in mind that when hostilities began in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the lawful authorities were compelled by the international community to not intervene.

The story was repeated in Kosovo.

The precedent has been set.

Now France, a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council... how far from civil war?

To consider this question, we now review excerpts from French trial opens into suspected recruiting ring for Iraqi insurgency from March 19, 2008, which was linked via a recent post at Islam in Europe, entitled Paris: al-Qaeda Iraq recruiting network trial:

PARIS: Seven men went on trial Wednesday in Paris for suspected involvement in an al-Qaida-linked network that recruited young French men on the streets of Paris and sent them to fight in Iraq's insurgency.

The men have been accused of "criminal conspiracy with a terrorist organization," a broad charge often used in terror-related cases in France, and they face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty. Three are still in custody; the other four were offered freedom while the probe continued.

The trial dealt with mostly procedural issues as it opened. It is scheduled to end March 28.

The network, one of several that recruited in France by targeting Muslim youths, was dismantled in 2005. Judicial officials believe this particular network sent about 10 people to Iraq, at least three of whom died there.

The case has added resonance because authorities fear extremists from Europe could return from Iraq with deadly skills that could be used to sow terror on the continent.

Part 5 addressed civil unrest in France from late last year. French police faced rioters who opened fire on them and attacked them, inflicting serious injuries on French police officers. One of them was quoted making the following statement:

"It felt like they were out to kill us," said one of the officers in Villiers-le-Bel last week. "We knew that there were weapons in the suburbs, but they have never been turned against us like that. The kids were shooting at us at close range, loading and reloading their weapons. I've never seen anything like it."

Perhaps we can now understand what may be happening in France; as we understand from the current article, it is possible at least some of the rioters had combat experience from Iraq. If so, then French police face not merely rioting immigrant youth, but an actual militarized terrorist threat - one with combat experience!

Skipping down two paragraphs in French trial opens into suspected recruiting ring for Iraqi insurgency, the article continues:

Authorities believe the group's ringleader was Farid Benyettou, a 26-year-old described by officials as a Salafist, holding to a strict interpretation of Islam, who preached extremist views to youths in his neighborhood in the 19th district of Paris.

Benyettou apparently gained credibility as a Muslim radical through his brother-in-law, Youcef Zemmouri, a convicted member of an Algerian insurgency movement who was arrested before the 1998 World Cup in France.

France has had extensive ties with former colony Algeria, which is just across the Mediterranean. Furthermore, unrest in Algeria with an Islamic extremist flavor has certainly been an issue, to say the least.

We now review other material to gain some historical perspective on the situation in France. We begin with Al Qaeda Builds a Euro Army February 25, 2004:

Warnings of al Qaeda's continuing threat came Tuesday, February 24, from Washington and London as well as one of its top leaders. Addressing the Senate intelligence committee, CIA director George Tenet spoke of the spread of al Qaeda's radical agenda to local groups who now threaten the United States and are capable of 9/11 scale attacks.

British interior secretary David Blunkett, announcing new stringent measures to combat terror, said a terrorist attack on Britain was "inevitable."

Pointing up these statements, Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri gave not one but two signs that his group was still after "Crusader" blood. Two recorded audiotapes reached the rival Arab TV stations, al Jazeera and al Arabiya. In one he threatened the United States with fresh attacks; the other condemned the French for banning the headscarf for Muslim schoolgirls. The Egyptian terrorist chief declared that the claim by US president George W. Bush that two-thirds of al Qaeda’s leadership has been crushed was untrue.

His assertion had been confirmed previously by the preliminary findings of a joint defense department-CIA inquiry ordered by the US President.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources in Washington, al Qaeda's backbone and that of its partner, al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad are intact and fully operational. The Egyptian half of al Qaeda in particular has led a charmed existence. Since America's 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, only two senior Jihad operatives have been killed and not a single active member captured. The team found this discovery alarming enough to rush to Bush and warn him: "We have a gap in our intelligence the size of a big black hole."

Of course, readers of my blog would immediately and correctly surmise that I suspect not incompetence or "a gap in intelligence" but deliberate treason in Washington; this, after all, is what the Sibel Edmonds case is about.

Even more disquietingly, al Qaeda is discovered to be recruiting manpower in Europe at a brisk pace in a push into the continent personally advocated by Osama bin Laden. The Saudi-born terrorist has thus gained the upper hand in a debate within his organization's top leadership over its next focal arena. Bin Laden urged fostering the war on the "far enemy" (Europe) as against concentrating the movement's fury on the "near enemy" (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, South Asia).

Might this by why so many Saudis support Al Qaeda? Perhaps they are paying protection money, hoping that in view of their generous donations to terrorists, they will be last on the list of takfir to be wiped out?

The European arena, often neglected by American counter-terrorism agencies, is showing a dangerous dynamism. Data assembled for a preliminary assessment show al Qaeda in the process of evolving from terrorist networks and cells into a professional fighting force with military features.

According to French counter-intelligence, al Qaeda has recruited in France alone between 35,000 and 45,000 men and is organizing them into military-style units. They meet regularly for training in the use of weapons and explosives, combat tactics and indoctrination and are controlled from local and district command centers under the organization’s national French command.

Maybe that French judge, Jean de Maillard, that we quoted in Part 5 was right when he warned that France should prepare for civil war.

Maybe it's not just France?

In Germany, Al Qaeda has recruited 25,000 to 30,000 men. The British domestic intelligence agency MI5 estimates 10,000 faithful have joined up in Britain, providing Blunkett with more than ample cause for concern.

Al Qaeda is a lot less active in Italy where counter-terrorist agencies hunt its cells to earth relentlessly. Moreover, al Qaeda does not need an important foothold in Italy because it already maintains a thriving presence next door in the Balkan countries of Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, from which weapons, money and false documents are easily secreted to its European bases.

It was our leader in the War on Terror, President George W. "Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists" Bush who gave the terrorists those bases in the Balkans - building on the work of the Clinton Administration, which was, according to ethnic Albanian sources previously quoted, the instigation of the then-First Lady.

And let's not forget the role of Senator John McCain - who was playing from the same sheet of music in this orchestra.

Why?

Rather than provide links, I will let you research Clinton's and McCain's role in the situation in the Balkans.

Concluding Al Qaeda Builds a Euro Army:

But unknown numbers are enlisting in Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden and Norway.

Recruitment across Europe continues apace and in greater secrecy than ever as a result of a switch to new recruiting techniques and appeal to fresh target-populations for building the Euro army. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources, the authors of the interim report found that al Qaeda, intent on beating surveillance and penetration by intelligence services, no longer selects combatants at its usual hunting grounds in mosques, Islamic culture centers and Muslim immigrant neighborhoods. Instead, native Europeans freshly converted to Islam are targeted.

The new campaign is styled "the white recruitment drive" or "coffee shop conscription". Operational cells and recruiting agents patronize ordinary cafes on the high streets of Europe's major cities where they blend into the crowds. The new conscripts defy identification by European intelligence services because their Islamic lives are lived completely underground. There is therefore no way of finding their addresses telephone numbers. Unit-level meetings or training sessions, attended by 30 or 40 men, may take place under cover of social activity such as a holiday camp in a remote part of Europe. Tracking them down is getting harder as bin Laden’s new Euro army expands at the rate of tens of thousands and when "white" recruits may already form some 25 percent of the total.

The use of "lily whites" - people that the authorities wouldn't think might be tied to Islamic terrorism until the terrorist attack actually occurs.

Sort of makes you wonder....

In the most recent of another as-yet unfinished series I am working on - in a post entitled Out of Context, Part 3 - we learn of Terry Nichols' links with Ramzi Yousef, Islamic terrorist bomb-maker-extraordinaire. It was shortly after returning from the Philippines - specifically from the same town that Ramzi Yousef was in - that Nichols, together with Timothy McVeigh, was able to make such a devastating (?) bomb:

There is no doubt, however, that Nichols and Yousef were both in Cebu City in December and January prior to the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

(Out of Context, Part 1, Out of Context, Part 2.)

In fact, the Oklahoma City attack resembled the World Trade Center attacks in a myriad of ways, but that's another story - or is it the same story?

And now Al Qaeda is raising armies in Europe, including young jihadis from ethnic groups, many of whom have combat experience in Iraq (and presumably in Afghanistan, too?), and including "lily whites".

Makes you wonder what might be up in France... Report: 'Lily Whites' Recruited to Carry Out OKC Bombing, or the French version thereof, n'est-ce pas?

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as Pride of Lions continues and Out of Context resumes.

Pride of Lions, Part 5

As we mentioned at the end of Part 4, France is a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Consequently, when, as we mentioned at the end of Part 4, France already has a list of "sensitive urban zones" (ATLAS DES ZONES URBAINES SENSIBLES), which are essentially no-go areas for the authorities, this is significant - more so than a similar situation in Kosovo.

A Judge Warns: France Should Prepare for Civil War is reproduced here in its entirety.

A quote from the French judge, Jean de Maillard (Vice-president of the Superior Court of Orléans, and a professor at the Institute of Political Science in Paris), 28 November 2007 [here is an English translation]

When two schools, a library, a police station, a garage and several other buildings on a list already forgotten are set on fire, not to mention dozens of vehicles each day, we are used to it. It has become almost a routine.

However, the second night of Villiers-le-Bel marks an escalation that the media and the government would probably prefer to hush up, but which may be the start of a new stage: the use of firearms. In truth, the surprise is not that the rioters began to use them, but first, that they hadn't done it sooner [...] and second, that they are still confining themselves to hunting rifles and lead shot. The suburbs however have been armed for a long time with caches of quality war weapons, lethal weapons, against which the bullet-proof vests will be useless.

In other words the situation is explosive in both meanings of the word. It seems that from one riot to the next the techniques harden, the methods become more professional and the police and gendarmes will soon have to confront, if they have not already, experts in urban guerilla warfare [...]

I am convinced that up until now we have been lucky that the thugs and future murderers in the suburbs have not yet dared to use their fire power. I hope that the public authorities will become aware of the imminence of calamity and especially that they will finally seek solutions. I would not like to be in their shoes, for the margin of maneuverability, if there is one, will be very narrow. Yes, the perpetrators must be mercilessly punished. But repression, in the long term, solves nothing.

And people must stop dreaming, those on the Left and the others: neighborhood police are not a panacea either. You cannot graft an ethnic police force ["police communautaire"] on a society that is this sick and torn apart, in which the members are in open rebellion against society. Police are a means, not a solution. Educators will not be useful either: you cannot cure cancer with a placebo. To shower the caids [a type of governorship, originally found in North Africa and Moorish Spain] with subsidies to buy armed peace will be the chosen way: it will provide only a short respite. Is there another solution? I don't know, and I am very happy not to be in government.

Incredible, you think? Think again.

From France stunned by rioters' savagery, Matthew Campbell, Villiers-le-Bel, December 2, 2007:

IN retrospect, it was not a good idea to have left his pistol at home. Called to the scene of a traffic accident in the Paris suburbs last Sunday, Jean-François Illy, a regional police chief, came face to face with a mob of immigrant youths armed with baseball bats, iron bars and shotguns.

What happened next has sickened the nation. As Illy tried to reassure the gang that there would be an investigation into the deaths of two teenagers whose motorbike had just collided with a police car, he heard a voice shouting: "Somebody must pay for this. Some pigs must die tonight!"

The 43-year-old commissaire realised it was time to leave, but that was not possible: they set his car ablaze. He stood as the mob closed in on him, parrying the first few baseball bat blows with his arms. An iron bar in the face knocked him down.

"I tried to roll myself into a ball on the ground," said Illy from his hospital bed. He was breathing with difficulty because several of his ribs had been broken and one had punctured his lung.

His bruised and bloodied face signalled a worrying new level of barbarity in the mainly Muslim banlieues, where organised gangs of rioters used guns against police in a two-day rampage of looting and burning last week.

Not far from where Illy was lying was a policeman who lost his right eye after being hit by pellets from a shotgun. Another policeman displayed a hole the size of a 10p coin in his shoulder where a bullet had passed through his body armour.

Altogether 130 policemen were injured, dozens by shotgun pellets and shells packed with nails that were fired from a homemade bazooka. It prompted talk of urban "guerrilla warfare" being waged on French streets against the forces of law and order.

This is an everyday occurrence for Israel - but, this is not Israel, this is France.

By the end of the week an extraordinarily heavy police presence in Villiers-le-Bel, where most of the rioting took place, appeared to have halted the violence: on top of public transport strikes and student protests against his reform plans, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, could not afford a repeat of 2005, when a similar incident involving the deaths of two youths provoked the worst French urban unrest in four decades.

Things were so tense in the suburbs, however, that the riots could easily erupt again with the prospect of deaths on either side setting off a much greater explosion and, conceivably, the deployment of the army to keep peace.

"Given the weapons being used, it was lucky that nobody was killed," said a policeman. Nearby were the charred remains of the local constabulary. The nursery school was burnt down. So was the library.

Rioting two years ago was widely regarded as a protest against poor housing, racial discrimination and unemployment of up to 40% in the grim housing estates surrounding most big French cities.

But "Sarko" dismissed suggestions that nothing had been done to improve the situation, referring to the "Marshall plan" for the banlieues being drawn up by Fadela Amara, his urban development minister.

If they're talking about housing, discrimination and unemployment, they're foolishly off the mark.

They need to be looking at cultural factors, including - but not limited to - religion.

At the same time he argued that, far from reflecting difficult living conditions, the violence was a result of the "thugocracy" of the suburbs, where drug-trafficking criminals held sway.

Drugs. The Islamic mafia's drug connections are well-documented at this blog.

Now, although Islamic texts excuse just about any conduct if it is deemed to be of benefit to Islam and to Muslims, I am nonetheless not saying that these criminals perpetrating all this are "good Muslims".

IF they are like young men anywhere in the US, many of them undoubtedly do not go into any religiously-affiliated building, and are not practicing Muslims.

However, we should consider the radicalization and violence that is taught in many Western mosques - by Saudi-trained "holy men" with Saudi-funded materials.

Of course, Wahhabism is not the only extreme version of Islam; but, considering the backing it gets from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it may very well be the best-funded.

"We shouldn't try to excuse the inexcusable,” said the president in a television address to an anxious nation on Thursday, ridiculing the left’s vision of rioters as “victims of social injustice”. He pledged that those who fired at police would be tracked down, one by one, and tried on charges of attempted murder.

There's a reason why Israel sends in military units to deal with unrest in Palestinian territory.

Lawlessness in the suburbs is an awkward issue for Sarkozy because he had promised to deal with it as interior minister, when he introduced "zero tolerance" policing, only to be accused of aggravating the problem by referring to trouble-makers as "thugs" and "scum". Despite some successes, many of the suburban ghettoes remain a law unto their own and, like parts of New York in the bad old days, policemen do not like to set foot there.

I hate to refer to fellow humans "as 'thugs' and 'scum'", too, but - hey, if the shoe fits....

"It felt like they were out to kill us," said one of the officers in Villiers-le-Bel last week. "We knew that there were weapons in the suburbs, but they have never been turned against us like that. The kids were shooting at us at close range, loading and reloading their weapons. I've never seen anything like it."

If it were the US, the gun control crowd would respond by disarming law-abiding citizens.

Appropriate gun-control in this situation is that the police should take aim when they return fire on these "'thugs' and 'scum'."

Sarkozy has ordered a full judicial inquiry into the teenagers' deaths, even though all the evidence seems to support the police version that the boys were thrown from their unlicensed motorcycle when it accidentally collided with a patrol car. Friends and relatives of the victims dismiss the official account of the incident as fantasy.

As for Illy, he says he is not feeling vengeful but has identified one of his attackers from police photographs. He is certain to be able to pinpoint the rest. "Fortunately," he said, "I've got a very good memory."

Keep in mind that when hostilities began in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the lawful authorities were compelled by the international community to not intervene.

The story was repeated in Kosovo.

The precedent has been set.

Now France, a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council... how far from civil war?

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as Pride of Lions continues.