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HISTORY:
21st CENTURY
PART I
POETRY MONTH
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AS PEOPLE
READERS' RIDES
CALENDAR
The 21st century- the legacy of what came before
-Part I of II-
by Nick White
Exchange History Writer
The 21st century has so far, been a rather eventful one. In the past 6 years, an enormous amount of globally devastating events have taken place. Some haven't been the fault of mankind; there have been a lot of natural disasters. Hurricanes in the Caribbean and the gulf coast, killed over 6,000 people in the 2004-2005 seasons. Earthquakes were big, with 26,000 people dying in Iran in 2003, and in Kashmir in 2005, 80,000 were killed. Or, for people who like really big numbers, there's the 2004 earthquake in the Indian Ocean and the resulting tsunami that literally washed away parts of Indonesia, and over 300,000 people with it.
These events, of course, shot immediately to the headlines. History in the making, if you will. The reactions and responses to these catastrophes will affect the future events and headlines. Just as the headlines of today are directly linked to those from before. Natural disasters are not our fault- but many of the crises and issues we face today are.
One of the big events in the news right now is Iran. The current leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants nuclear technology, and most of the global community, especially the United States, does not want him to have it. Simple on the surface, a leader of a state that can charitably be called extremist looking to develop a uranium enrichment that can easily be turned into weapons technology. It gets interesting when you consider that 30 years ago, Iran was one of the United States' strongest Middle Eastern allies. (See previous week's article). The problems in Iran can be traced back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It took almost a hundred years and several regimes but the line is clear.
France is also a historically significant place for Muslims. There were nasty riots several months ago, beginning in late October 2005. Two boys, Muslims of North African descent that were hiding in an electrical substation from police, (who didn’t even want them), got electrocuted. Tragic, accidental, and by no means should have set off a major riot that lasted for weeks and saw thousands of cars torched along with buildings.
Skipping the cause for a minute, why are there so many north African Muslims in France? It traces back to the time when France was a colonial power, and owned territories in Africa. Especially Morocco Algeria and Tunisia, in North Africa. The big influxes of population came with World War I. French possessions sent thousands of troops to its aid. Following the war, as the country rebuilt, workers came from North Africa to work in the factories, some 119,000 from Algeria alone in 1919. Following the Second World War, France lost most of its colonies, along with the rest of the world's colonial powers. However, that did not change France from being a destination for those in its former colonies, and numbers of immigrants continued to swell.
The problem is rooted in two things, economic and cultural. Economically, the Muslims, immigrants or the children and grandchildren thereof, are mostly relegated to the lower social stratum. Lacking education, and living in a mostly urban environment, they, if they found work at all, almost always were employed in the lowest paying of unskilled labor jobs. This of course created some resentment from the "natural" Frenchmen, as the immigrants (as immigrants tend to do) would work for lower wages, therefore "stealing" jobs.
The cultural aspect was
schooling. France is a secular republic, according to its constitution, and
public display of religious paraphernalia in schools was frowned on.
Students could be disciplined for wearing crosses or yarmulkes. Now send
Muslim girls to these schools wearing the
traditional headscarves, and it's a recipe for disaster. Several girls
were expelled for wearing their traditional garb, although to be fair, it
could be said it was impeding their education, being hardly suitable for
shop or gym classes. In 2004, seeing the rise of Muslim fundamentalists and
extremists, France passed an official law
banning all conspicuous religious symbols in all French schools. Add
this to the fact that the Muslim immigrants already had a ridiculously high
unemployment rate, and felt persecuted by the government and police, it is
no wonder they rioted. And so, due to colonial ambitions and wars long
past, France was turned into a powder keg waiting for a spark.
Next week, Nick wraps up his overview of the 21st century
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