Hi guys, I'm french, and I live near Marseille, the second country here in France, and talked about in the "report".
I read almost everything that was written here, and I thought 2 times before posting here.
Concerning french situation, we are between 60 and 70 millions of french. It is said that there are 6 millions of muslims in the country.
Here in marseille (for you who don't know where this city is, it's on mediteranean coast), it's true, there is a lot of arabs living. Because it's a harbor, and it's just in front of northern africa.
I can speak for marseille, where, I think the situation is better than paris for example. We have criminality, it's true. There are some areas of the town, where muslin are concentrated, and if you are looking for marijuana it's the place to go, right.
In these areas cops are not welcome, but I don"t really think that they can't go there.
When I sometimes go downtown, I can see peoples dressed according arab's habits, and since a couple of years, you can also see some burquas!
There is a big project for building a big mosquée in marseille. This project had been long to come true, and the work has now begun.
Do I feel threatened when I go to Marseille? Not really, the city is like this, and has always been an entry point for every imigrants. In the past they were italians (my granparents were!), spanish, armenians, eastern europe people... Since 40 years, it's muslims.
When my granfather was young, he was called "dirty italian"... Now we say " fuc*ng arabs"... History is like that I guess, and human doesn"t like what doesn't look like him.
Is it a problem? Will we be invaded by "them", will we loose our identity? Will we speak arab in a near future? Will my wife be obliged to obey charia's rules?
I don't thnik so;
Of course, they concentrate all the problems, violence, drugs dealing, agressions, unemployment and so on. But, hope I won't be flamed for that, we have to consider the "problem" in its globality.
The firt immigrants generation came in france in the 50- 60's, because we needed workers. They came, as previous colonised people...
They had all the "dirty works" as spanish did before them, and italians did: making roads, building houses...
Because of a bigger cultural differences, they failed to raise their childrens into a eastern spirit. Childs were taken between their parents culture, and the culture of the country where they were living and raised.
A lot of them failed in school (despite some did it and became doctors and so on), didn't found a job, and you know the story, no job, no money, no money, no social existence.
I'm pissed off when I see a Burqua! i'm pissed off when I see a guy with a big barb and dressed with something which looks like a pyjama.
My thoughts is that poverty is the source for all that crap. When your are hopeless, you go right to whatever could give you hope and the feeling that you belong to a comunity I think. And this is what makes the game of all this middle aged Imam who are preaching a radical islam.
of course, everybody is responsible of himself, and they could have tryed harder and harder to get integrated. True.
Well all that to say that it's true, we have a lot of them, but at least in the south, the situation isnt that bad.
A last thing, the french guy interviewed in the report is some king of a neo-nazi movment member... Not the opinion of every french, just a few of them, even if I have to say that the "Front national" a french extrem right party had made good scores @ the last elections.
If you have questions, I'd be happy to answer.
olivieR.<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
