Opinion: What Sarko Did Wrong; France's top cop has erred in statement and more important, in policy.(Nicolas Sarkozy)

Byline: Olivier Roy (Roy is a senior researcher at France's National Center for Scientific Research and author of "Globalized Islam" (Columbia University Press, 2004))

Riots have been erupting in the destitute suburbs of Paris since the '80s. Almost always they have been triggered by this or that action of the police deemed as racist, particularly in the eyes of young second generation immigrants. That such incidents degenerate into riots reflects the background of the neighborhoods: they are racked by endemic violence, petty delinquency, drug trafficking, joblessness and a sense of exclusion. But seldom do they involve more than 200 or 300 often adolescent firebrands. The rest of the population looks on, ambivalently, from their windows. For they are in fact the chief victims. The cars burning are theirs. The buses coming under attack serve their neighborhood. Doctors don't answer calls, and firefighters must work under police protection to save their homes. So let us be clear. This is not a revolt of the Muslim community .

The latest riots have brought something new, however. In the past, such events have usually been limited to particular neighborhoods. Rivalries prevented local gangs from uniting against the police; most residents have a parochial sense of identity, more tied to a street address than to a feeling of belonging to a specific underclass, generation or ethnic community. But this time, although we cannot speak of coordination, as Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy would have it, different neighborhoods have emulated one another, the process accelerated by the use of cell phones. Indeed, Sarkozy himself may be partly responsible. Having challenged these youths by calling them "scum" and promising to "clean up" their neighborhoods, he essentially dared them to take him on, man to man. He personalized a confrontation that until then had no real ...