DUBAI, 9 November 2005 — Influential Muslim scholar Yusuf Al-Qaradawi has called for calm in French riots led by disaffected immigrants, many of them Muslims of North African origin, the official Qatar News Agency reported.
Al-Qaradawi, known to millions of Arabic-speakers through a weekly show on the Al-Jazeera television, also called on the French government to address the root causes of the violence.
“As Arabs and Muslims we wish for security, safety and peace for France and its friendly people, not least because France has an attitude toward Arab and Islamic issues which is just and free from American domination,” the agency quoted him as saying late on Monday.
“He (Al-Qaradawi) called on Muslim religious and political leaders in France to intensify their efforts and their calls for calm,” the Doha-based agency said.
“He called on the French government to deal with the situation not only from a security perspective, but also use dialogue with religious and political leaders to treat the real reasons behind the deteriorating conditions of (minority) communities in France.”
Meanwhile, the Arab media criticized France for its failure to integrate immigrants. They raised fears that the riots’ consequences could spread across the Arab-Muslim world.
Pictures of burning cars and ransacked shops were splashed across the front pages of Arab newspapers while television networks have mobilized to cover what one daily called the “civil war” and another the “uprising”.
While condemning the spread of violence, the Arab media have mainly blamed riots on long-standing social malaise, unemployment and alienation.
