Two police stations in the northern Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel were torched by rioting teenagers on November 24, and there have been further reports of looting and minor attacks on shops, passersby and cars. The attacks began after two youths were killed when their moped collided with a police car.

There is more to this story than mere teenage rebellion, though it’s hard to tell by reading much of the mainstream news. Stratfor reports (November 26, emphasis ours):

This incident and response looks eerily like the start of the November 2005 riots which started when two youths were electrocuted while fleeing from police. Those were the largest urban riots seen in France in 40 years.Though French media are reporting the riots, news reports have omitted that the suburb where they are taking place, Villiers-le-Bel, is a Muslim slum. The 2005 riots began in a similar neighborhood, Clichy-sous-Bois, but spread for weeks to nearly all the suburbs of every major metropolitan region in France.

Out of all the mainland European countries, France is the most primed for a clash of this nature.

With more than 5 million Muslims living in France—70 percent of them from France’s former colonies of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia—Islam has become the country’s second-largest religion. Though Muslims make up 10 percent of the French population, not a single Muslim sits in the French Parliament. French suburbs, which are in effect Arab Muslim slums, have the country’s highest crime and unemployment rates. French Muslim leaders also assert that racism and discrimination are the root causes of the marginalization that results in high unemployment and thus crime among the Muslim minority.

It will be interesting to see how President Nicolas Sarkozy responds to this growing crisis. Right now he is engaged in a gritty struggle with many of the nations’ unions, and large-scale violent riots by thousands of disgruntled Muslims would be salt in what is already a very painful wound.

It’s also worth considering how other European nations, particularly those with large Islamic populations, might interpret these riots. The sight of hordes of angry Muslims rioting in the streets, clashing with police and throwing Molotov cocktails into homes and stores, will surely cause concern that a broader confrontation between Islam and Europe is imminent.