Comment: More wives - more trouble
uploaded 20 Nov 2005
In 1992, French President Mitterrand, blamed the Los Angeles riots of the 1990s on the “conservative society” that Presidents Reagan and Bush had created and said France is different because it “is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world.” (Washington Post)
In the aftermath of the Brixton riots in south London in 1981 the British government commissioned a high court judge, Lord Scarman, to set up an enquiry into the root causes of the South London unrest. In California in 1992, riots followed the trial of police officers who were caught on camera beating a black man with batons. In the same area of the US, Watts South Central Los Angeles CA, there were violent disturbances in the 1965. California State surpasses France to rank as the World’s fifth largest economy. So the Rodney King and Watts riots highlighted issues of racial inequality within the State; also police brutality, the disparity between rich and poor as well as the appalling conditions in which some blacks lived in, within this privileged and prosperous part of the US.
Historians, politicians, analysts, economists and social scientists have made in-depth studies resulting in several suggestions as to the origins of this type of violence. They have also offered diverse solutions to the problems that underlie these troubled pockets within these rich nations. Issues such as racism, bad housing, low unemployment rates, poor policing, poverty, lack of education, and general deprivation have all been offered up as reasons for the riots. Although the causes of these disturbances are multifaceted and complex there are many manifest social problems that exist within parts South Central LA and parts of South East London. However assigning causal linkage between observations and acts of violence incidences is never straight forward. These are not the only incidences of unrest the US and UK have seen over that last half century. In deed these are not the only two countries, within the so called developed nations, that have been affected by troubles on the streets of their major cities. We should therefore understand that there exist volumes and tomes of learned texts written on why these flare ups occur. Debates and discussions; observations and solutions; have been documented for use by those charged with forging a cohesive society. Those politicians and planners involved in social engineering have a wealth of academic and practical knowledge to fall back on.
Making conclusions about causes, in this context, is extremely problematic and open to human error and inaccuracies. The perceived linkages are often influenced by the political persuasions of those making the associations. The suggested solutions and reasons behind riots often say more about those making the comment rather than those involved in the rioting. Since unrest broke out on 27 October 2005 in a housing project outside Paris following the fatal electrocutions of two teenagers while hiding from police in a power substation, many “experts” have passed comment on the whys and wherefores of the riots that quickly spread through poor minority communities across France. It would be reasonable to expect that French commentators would be enlightened and accurate when diagnosing the maladies of their inner cities, considering that France was the homeland of so many famous western philosophers. We may wonder what Voltaire, Rousseau or Descartes would have made of the nights of burning cars and youths sharing cocktails with the jandam. Perhaps the philosophers of yesteryear would have been outraged by the shoddy housing, lack of employment and poor education that many of the rioters were accustomed to. Maybe they could have even offered remedies for the problems faced by the French-born children of North and West African immigrant families.
Some of the modern commentators have made observations relating to French racism and the authorities ambivalence about the abject alienation of the youth that were wrenched away from the Islamic lands through the Gallic colonial ambition and dumped in slums of Paris and Toulouse.
However the comments from the French seem to be bereft of thought or enlightenment. Bernard Accoyer, leader of the Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) in the National Assembly lower house of parliament, told French radio that children from large polygamous families had problems integrating into mainstream society. “There is clearly a problem with the integration of immigrants and, more importantly, their children,” Accoyer told RTL radio. “In order for us to be able to integrate them, there must not be more of them than our capacity to integrate them. That’s the issue. It’s like polygamy…It’s certainly one of the causes (of the riots), though not the only one.” He said polygamy led to “an inability to provide an education as it is needed in an organized, normative society like in Europe and notably France.” So its polygamy that is to blame for burning car in the suburbs of France’s main cities. He is not the only one with who made this correlation, Employment Minister Gerard Larcher was quoted (Financial Times) to have said large polygamous families sometimes led to anti-social behaviour by youths who lacked a father figure and made employers reluctant to hire them.
This link is not merely tenuous it is surreal. It is like us saying that the reason for the rioting is the large number of French figures in high office that commit adultery or cheat on the wives. Senior French politicians from President Mitterrand (who kept his second family under wraps and at state expense for 20 years) to Nicolas Sorkozy, are renowned for their relationships outside the marital home. What kind of a debouched society would be created when the men that are in charge constantly lie to those that they love? We are not in a position to offer definitive answers to the problems for the French suburbs. However we don’t think the riots had anything to do with having more than one wife.
Source: khilafah.com
