Riots in France

Here's a good blog to keep up on it. I'm more than a little worried about this. The riots themselves, now in their 12th consecutive night, have been mostly deliberately non-violent. They torch a car, then move away before the cops or firemen show up. But now they're getting bolder, torching police stations and churches. An old man was beaten to death by a mob and they've begun shooting live rounds at cops. Some cities are drawing up their own civilian militias to fill the void of the real army not showing up.

We all know how Europe can get when they turn on a minority. France of course happily rounded up their Jews and shipped them off to the Nazi "deportation" camps only 60 some years ago -- as opposed to say Denmark who smuggled their Jews to Norway and Sweden when faced with the same orders from their occupier. To France's credit they have genuinely tried to dispell racism among their own, but old passions die hard.

With some gross generalizations that will annoy any historian who may read this, the first war between France and Muslims was a successful French defense of their country being invaded by Moors from recently conquered Spain in AD 732. French bakers alerted the authorities to strange noises which turned out to be Muslim invaders tunneling under city walls. They created the croissant ("crescent") in celebration, so all could share in eating, and thus denegrating, this Islamic symbol.

Skipping just a teensy bit of history, since then there was Lebanon and a failed attempt to colonize Algeria. This could get ugly, real ugly. Hell, it already is. I expect it to get worse before it gets better.

Good luck France.

UPDATE:
The croissant story was questioned in the comments so I painstakingly looked it up (read: I put "croissant" into Wikipedia).

...

Fanciful stories of how the pastry was created are modern culinary legends. These include tales that it was invented in Vienna in 1683 to celebrate the defeat of the Turkish siege of the city, as a reference to the crescents on the Turkish flags, when bakers staying up all night heard the tunneling operation and gave the alarm; tales linking croissants with the kifli and the siege of Budapest in 1686; and those detailing Marie Antoinette's hankering after a Viennese specialty.

...

Snopes has nothing. I dunno. Suffice it to say that it's open for debate. And thanks for forcing the fact checking JB. Even if the croissant story is true, it didn't happen in 732 but 1683. And it was Vienna and not some French city. I'm glad there's no public record of this.