Skip to content
  • Image
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Podcasts
  • Email
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Opinion
  • News
  • Features
  • Comment
  • Store
The Arab Daily News

The Arab Daily News

Original news, features, opinions from Chicago to Jerusalem

  • About
    • About
    • Our Writers
    • Subscribe to Ray’s Columns
    • Book Store
    • Contact
    • Submit Book Reviews, Press Releases
    • Advertise
    • Privacy Corrections Policy
    • Profile on Ray Hanania
  • Features
    • Food
    • Book Review
    • Humor
    • Movies
    • Travel
  • Arab Community Network Page
    • Arab Community Network Page
    • Arab Heritage America resources
    • Directory
      • Groups & Organizations
      • Mosques, Churches
      • Restaurants
      • 2008 & 2014 Arab Media Directories
    • National Arab Heritage Month
    • Video: Chicago Arab History
    • Video: Photo Array of Chicago Arabs
    • Overview of Arabs in America
    • Hanania standup comedy
    • Arabs on the Titanic
    • Obituaries
  • Podcasts
    • Arab News Ray Hanania Radio
    • Ray Hanania on Politics Podcast
    • Podcast Info
    • Hanania Podcast intro
    • Live Arab Radio
  • Your Views
  • Submit Press Release
  • Toggle search form
  • Imad Hamad Director American Human Rights Council
    AHRC Calls for Moral Consistency on Human Rights, Urges President Biden to Pause His Trip to Israel: American Arabs
  • The U.S.S. Liberty photo courtesy of the USS Liberty Veterans.
    Survivors of Israel’s strike on USS Liberty commemorate 55th year June 6 – 8 American Arabs
  • AHRC Logo new Feb 2021
    AHRC hosts an open meeting with TSA & community Activism
  • Former City Hall reporter Ray Hanania, ShawnTe Raines-Welch and Nick Kantas, candidates for Judge in the 4th SubCircuit, and Cook County Commissioner Frank Aguilar.
    Nearly 100 candidates, officials address Arab Democratic Club forum Sunday American Arabs
  • Citgo Gas Station and Quik Mart at 3759 W. Chicago Ave in Chicago ordered closed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot because a street gang member with an AK-47 killed someone in front of the store. Only Arab and Muslim stores are being closed by the Mayor
    Arabs and Muslim blast Mayor lightfoot for racist store closings American Arabs
  • Closure notice posted on the doors and windows of Arab American businesses during Mayor Lori Lightfoot's closure of Arab owned stores in June - Sept. 2021. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania
    Chicago aldermen to host “forum” to explore Mayor Lightfoot’s racist crackdown on Arab stores Activism
  • Imam Jamal Saad leads the more than 1,000 muslim attendees in payer at SeatGeek Stadium's open grounds at the Eid al-Fitr celebration May 2, 2022 in Bridgeview
    Local Illinois officials join Chicagoland Muslims for Eid Celebration at SeatGeek stadium American Arabs
  • DCEO Panel discussion on business support opportunities for all businesses including Arab American businesses, April 26, 2022
    DCEO Access to Capital: Arab American Heritage Month business workshop American Arabs
  • DCEO Celebrates Arab American Heritage Month (AAHM) American Arabs
  • Alderman Raymond Lopez addresses the gathering at an Iftar hosted by Radi Abuhashish Thursday April 21, 2022 joined by Dr. Willie Wilson and other candidates for Chicago Mayor.
    Political candidates join local Arab leaders for Iftar Activism
  • U.S. Congressional Candidate Rob Cruz in the 6th District GOP Primary election June 28, 2022
    Republican Candidate for U.S. Congress, Rob Cruz, Opens a Dialogue with the Palestinian Community American Arabs
  • Peak Rock Capital affiliate completes acquisition of Ziyad Brothers, a leading provider of brander Middle Eastern and Mediterranean foods American Arabs
  • Closure notice posted on the doors and windows of Arab American businesses during Mayor Lori Lightfoot's closure of Arab owned stores in June - Sept. 2021. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania
    Chicago aldermen to host forum on Arab businesses closed by Mayor Lightfoot American Arabs
  • April 24, 2022 Illinois DCEO American ArabChamber event
    American Arab Chamber and DCEO host online panel to help Arab Businesses secure funding Activism
  • Oussama Jammal presents Congresswoman Marie Newman with the Courage Award during the USCMO Annual Ramadan Iftar Dinner. Photo courtesy of Marie Newman Facebook Page
    Newman endorsed by major Arab and Muslim leaders Activism

Targeted Paris stadium symbolizes pitfalls of war against the Islamic State

Posted on November 15, 2015June 12, 2019 By James Dorsey No Comments on Targeted Paris stadium symbolizes pitfalls of war against the Islamic State
SHARE ...
          
 
  

  • Tweet

By James M Dorsey

James M. Dorsey, author, writer, blogger
James M. Dorsey, author, writer, blogger

Zouhair, a security guard of immigrant background, was one of several security officers, who on Friday prevented three of the Paris suicide bombers from entering the city’s Stade de France stadium. The bombers were forced to blow themselves up outside the stadium and at nearby McDonald’s.

Little is publicly known about the background of Mr. Zouhair who described to The Wall Street Journal what happened at the stadium where French President Francois Hollande was among 80,000 people watching a friendly between France and Germany.

What is clear however, is that Mr. Zouhair represents a significant view among members of France’s Muslim community, even if many migrants feel side lined, marginalized and hopeless in a country that has yet to come to grips with becoming an immigration society.

ISIS photo
Photo by Libertinus

Like Ahmed Merabet, the police officer killed in Paris in January when two brothers attacked Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine that at times mocked his religion, Mr. Zouhair was standing guard for a symbol, the French national soccer team, that disillusioned Muslim youth have come to reject as not representing them.

Instead, they often support the national teams of Algeria and Morocco and in some cases of other African states. Their rejection is akin to notions among militant soccer fans in Egypt who in the past refused to support their national team because it was ousted President Hosni Mubarak rather than Egypt’s squad.

The juxtaposition of Mr. Zouhair, the security guard, and the three Muslim suicide bombers, suggests that the Stade de France was chosen as one of several targets for Friday’s attacks not simply because of the large number of people present. The juxtaposition was further thrown into sharp relief with an announcement by French midfielder Lassana Diarra that his cousin had been killed in the IS attacks while he was playing in the stadium

The targeting of the stadium fit the goals of the Islamic State (IS), which has claimed responsibility for the attacks, of polarizing communities, exacerbating social tensions, and driving the marginalized further into the margins.

Stade de France is one of ten French stadia slated to host next year’s Euro 2016, the first major international soccer tournament in France since the 1998 World Cup.

By focusing almost exclusively on stepped-up security and declaring war against the backdrop of mounting anti-Muslim sentiment in the wake of the Paris attacks on an Islamist group with which France and Europe were already at war for more than a year, European leaders risk becoming the Islamic State’s unwitting helpers.

By failing to adopt social and economic policies at home that would undermine IS’s attraction to disaffected youth who feel they have little to lose, they exasperate the very divide between Mr. Zouhair and the suicide bombers that has turned the French national soccer team, a reflection of France at both its best and its worst, into a divisive symbol.

Some analysts suggest that the Paris attacks may mark IS’s beginning of the end with calls for a far more robust military confrontation of IS in Syria and Iraq. The problem is that the battlefield stretches far beyond IS’s bases in the Middle East and would not be resolved by simply defeating the jihadist group.

The struggle against what IS represents needs to be waged as much in its Syrian capital of Raqqa as  in the dismal banlieues or satellites of French cities that furnish the jihadists with the largest contingent of European foreign fighters; the populous neighbourhoods in Tunisia that account for the single largest group of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq; in Saudi Arabia, whose citizens account for the second largest number of foreign fighters and whose decades-long effort to propagate a puritan, intolerant, interpretation of Islam has been a far more important breeding ground for jihadist thinking than the writings of militant Islamist thinkers like Sayyid Qutb; and in Western capitals led by Washington who view retrograde, repressive regimes like those of Saudi Arabia and Egypt as part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

The fallout of the failure of French governments to wage war on discrimination and marginalization at home as fervently as Mr. Hollande is likely to wage war against IS in the wake of the Paris attacks is reflected in the ups and downs of the French national team. When the team made up of a majority of players with an immigrant Muslim background won the 1998 World Cup, it was feted as a model of successful French multiculturalism. The team’s success was celebrated by Frenchmen irrespective of their cultural and ethnic background.

Little was left of that success little more than a decade later when the team became an embarrassment for France during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Its players revolted, refused to train, and ultimately were denounced as having shamed France at the very moment that their German soccer rivals captured the crown of successful European multiculturalism.

In the 12 years between victory and humiliation, France witnessed its worst race riots in the heavily Muslim populated banlieues of major cities. Zinedine Zidane, widely viewed as one of his generation’s best players, was given the red card during the 2006 World Cup for head butting another player who had allegedly insulted the Prophet Mohammed. Last year’s celebrations in France of Algeria’s defeat of Russia in a 2018 World Cup qualifier sparked riots that prompted National Front leader Marine Le Pen to demand the reversal of a law that allows French citizens to have dual nationality.

“In this climate of terror, it is important for all of us who represent our country and its diversity to speak out and stay united in the face of a horror that has neither colour, nor religion. Let us together defend love, respect and peace,” Mr. Diarra said. His appeal is as much incumbent on Muslim leaders as it is on Mr. Hollande and European leaders in an environment of mounting Islamophobia and anti-migrant and anti-foreigner sentiment.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, a syndicated columnist, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with the same title.

Photo by Libertinus

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
James Dorsey
Follow Me
James Dorsey
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies as Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a forthcoming book with the same title.
James Dorsey
Follow Me
Latest posts by James Dorsey (see all)
  • Soccer highlights domestic drivers in Saudi-Iranian dispute - January 4, 2016
  • Soccer: Iranian moderates and hardliner lock horns on the pitch - December 29, 2015
  • Trade unions test Qatari sincerity with demands for labour reform - December 20, 2015

  • Tweet

SHARE ...
          
 
  
 
          
 
 Tweet 
Arab World, Bloggers, Commentary, Sports, Syria Tags:Daesh, France, ISIL, ISIS, Paris, sports stadium, terrorism

Post navigation

Previous Post: Paris violence: ISIS terrorists need to be stopped
Next Post: Battle of Paris: the French capitol after the ISIS terror attacks

Related Posts

  • Middle East Migrants. Photo courtesy fo Pixabay
    Algeria Migration Policy: National Security Concerns Vs. Humanitarian Morality  Abdennour Toumi
  • Strawberry harvest continues in Gaza Strip, Palestine Arab World
  • Taybeh Golden Hotel in Taybeh, West Bank, Palestine
    Taybeh announces OctoberFest details, Sept. 16 – 17 Arab World
  • USS Liberty: 47 Years of Lies American Arabs
  • Yalla! Fight Back podcast
    Arab Radio Podcast: Iraqi Artist Michael Rakowitz American Arabs
  • Cody O’Rourke a Good Dad from the Holy Land Telling the Truth: Florida and Michigan May-June 2018 Arab World

More Related Articles

American Muslims for Palestine slams Northeastern University for discrimination American Arabs
The Crisis in Palestine Arab World
Jewish settler terrorists burn Christian Arab land at the only Christian village in the Israeli occupied West Bank, Taybeh UAE-Israel normalization is not a breakthrough in peace making American Arabs
The Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah by Adam Levinson Adam Levinson releases new book The Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah American Arabs
US Israel Nuclear Entanglements and Occupation of Palestine #FreeVanunu #FreePalestine Arab World
Is Syria revival about “boots on the ground?” American Arabs

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

  • OPINION COLUMNS
  • Palestinian refugees forced to flee their homes at gunpoint by Jewish terrorist groups operating in Palestine in the 1930s, 1940s and after Israel was created on May 14, 1948. Photo courtesy of the United Nations
    Unresolved status of Palestinian rights makes UNRWA essential
    May 7, 2022
  • The Ray Hanania Radio Show Live Wed 5 PM EST in Detroit, Washington DC, Ontario and on Thursday in Chicago. Watch the program live at Facebook.com/ArabNews
    Second Season of “The Ray Hanania Show” Arab American radio launches April 6
    April 4, 2022
  • Hollywood Sign
    Will Smith violence takes Oscar protests to dangerous level
    March 31, 2022
  • Chicago's racist Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered more than 150 Arab owned stores closed in 2021 in a racist effort o fight street gang crimes
    Arab Daily News launches Arab American Network to fight racism
    March 12, 2022
  • NEWS
  • Imad Hamad Director American Human Rights Council
    AHRC Calls for Moral Consistency on Human Rights, Urges President Biden to Pause His Trip to Israel:
    May 24, 2022
  • The U.S.S. Liberty photo courtesy of the USS Liberty Veterans.
    Survivors of Israel’s strike on USS Liberty commemorate 55th year June 6 – 8
    May 23, 2022
  • AHRC Logo new Feb 2021
    AHRC hosts an open meeting with TSA & community
    May 19, 2022
  • Former City Hall reporter Ray Hanania, ShawnTe Raines-Welch and Nick Kantas, candidates for Judge in the 4th SubCircuit, and Cook County Commissioner Frank Aguilar.
    Nearly 100 candidates, officials address Arab Democratic Club forum Sunday
    May 15, 2022
  • NEWSWIRE
  • Imad Hamad Director American Human Rights Council
    AHRC Calls for Moral Consistency on Human Rights, Urges President Biden to Pause His Trip to Israel:
    May 24, 2022
  • The U.S.S. Liberty photo courtesy of the USS Liberty Veterans.
    Survivors of Israel’s strike on USS Liberty commemorate 55th year June 6 – 8
    May 23, 2022
  • AHRC Logo new Feb 2021
    AHRC hosts an open meeting with TSA & community
    May 19, 2022
  • Closure notice posted on the doors and windows of Arab American businesses during Mayor Lori Lightfoot's closure of Arab owned stores in June - Sept. 2021. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania
    Chicago aldermen to host forum on Arab businesses closed by Mayor Lightfoot
    April 15, 2022

The Tabboun Column

The Political Grapevine Political Tabboun. Original photo by tim-mossholder-KX1BBNY69Ao-unsplash
  • Tabboun
  • The Political Grapevine Political Tabboun. Original photo by tim-mossholder-KX1BBNY69Ao-unsplash
    The Political Grapevine/The Tabboun, Friday Dec. 16, 2021
    December 16, 2021
  • The Political Grapevine Political Tabboun. Original photo by tim-mossholder-KX1BBNY69Ao-unsplash
    Tabboun: Chicago remains strongest Palestine voice
    September 7, 2016
  • The Tabboun: Israeli human rights violations hit
    June 30, 2016
  • The Political Grapevine Political Tabboun. Original photo by tim-mossholder-KX1BBNY69Ao-unsplash
    Tabboun: Himes questions troop deployment to Syria
    November 3, 2015
  • The Political Grapevine Political Tabboun. Original photo by tim-mossholder-KX1BBNY69Ao-unsplash
    The Tabboun: Dearborn removes statue of racist former mayor
    September 29, 2015

Creative Commons License
All work on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Do not edit original work. Give credit to the original source.

  • 08-09-21-Ziyad-Sices-Ad.jpg
  • ZiyadBrandLogo-2016BlackRedBackgrnd.jpg
  • 08-09-21-Ziyad-Ad-Pantry-essentials.jpg
  • HANANIA Arab News Op-Eds
  • Ukraine conflict gives Palestinians chance to redefine their conflict
    March 9, 2022
  • Mishmeshan PHC medical center destroyed in Syrian Government assaults. Photo courtesy of UOSSM Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations
    President Biden’s dyslexic policy in Syria is a mess
    October 20, 2021
  • Annissa Essaibi George and family
    Annissa Essaibi George faces “race hypocrisy” in campaign to be Boston Mayor
    October 20, 2021
  • Jerusalem image of Jews and Arabs walking together. Shutterstock. Courtesy of Arab News Newspaper
    Jewish Michigan lawmaker leads push for Two State Solution
    October 7, 2021
  • BOOK REVIEWS
  • Stories My Father Told Me by author and artist Helen Zughaib, book cover. Photo courtesy of Cune Press
    Stories My Father Told Me by author and artist Helen Zughaib
    November 1, 2021
  • Girl Fighters, new book on Yemen Book Cune Press
    New Book: Girl Fighters: Break Tradition in Yemen 
    October 25, 2021
  • ENTERTAINMENT
  • The Ray Hanania Radio Show Live Wed 5 PM EST in Detroit, Washington DC, Ontario and on Thursday in Chicago. Watch the program live at Facebook.com/ArabNews
    Second Season of “The Ray Hanania Show” Arab American radio launches April 6
    April 4, 2022
  • American Arab CHamber President HassanNijem accepts the Proclamation from Chicago Ald. Roderick Sawyer at the Chamber dinner March 30, 2022
    Chicagoland celebrates Arab American Heritage Month
    March 31, 2022
  • Hollywood Sign
    Will Smith violence takes Oscar protests to dangerous level
    March 31, 2022
  • 03-30-22 Arab Chamber Heritage Month Flyer
    Arab Chamber to host Arab Heritage Month dinner March 30
    March 14, 2022
  • “Rupture”, the psychological thriller produced by MBC STUDIOS, has won Best Saudi Film at the 2021 Red Sea International Film Festival (RSIFF).
    MBC GROUP’s Rupture wins Best Saudi Film at the inaugural Red Sea International Film Festival
    December 15, 2021
  • New-iTunes-1400-x-1400-The-Ray-Hanania-Show-Podcast-Icon-300-x-300.jpg
  • Podcast-iTunes-Logo-Chi-City-Hall-1985.jpg
  • powerpr300x300ad.jpg
  • The-Kings-Pawn-Book-300-x-300.png
  • terroristbookcover-300-x-300.jpg
Arab News Newspaper Logo
Read the Arab News, the leading English language newspaper in the MIddle East

Follow Ray Hanania at Gab.com, MeWe.com and IDobbinate.com, the alternatives to Facebook and Twitter Censorship.

Click here to get information on The Ray Hanania Radio Show and its podcasts

Copyright © 2022 The Arab Daily News.

Powered by PressBook Premium theme