Suburban Paris riots and the (lack of) religious element

Reuters posted an intriguing story yesterday about riots in the Parisian suburbs, and corrected an often quickly judged assumption that the unrest is caused solely by Muslims.

The article is long, but pretty self-explanatory, as its author runs down how absurd it is even to call these "Muslim neighborhoods," as the poor suburban areas represent a multitude of less-than-affluent French citizens, and more particularly, the rioters specifically are not identifying themselves — i.e., not just shying away from identifying themselves as Muslims, but not identifying themselves at all.

The writer's personal disclosure (which I always appreciate):

"I’m the Reuters religion editor and I live in Paris. In 2005, when Nicolas Sarkozy was putting out the story that Muslims fundamentalists were behind the rioting, I went out to the suburbs and found the people out there weren’t buying it. This time around, there is not even any suggestion from anybody here that religion has anything to do with it. If I thought it did, I’d write about it."

Effectively, then, the point goes to show that regardless of the rioters' religious or cultural affiliation, there are plenty of other issues present in the Parisian suburbs. However, many people would love to lay the blame on "those unruly Muslims," just like many factions would like to blame all crime in the urban United States on young African-American men. This article is just a nice reminder that there are plenty of other factors in play here; most notably, economic class usually trumps all else.