France, Islam and the 'Spreading Hatred'

There's an area of French society bleak beyond any let's-pretend action-plan or incantatory chorus about brotherhood. The country's existential problem of coming to terms with more than five million Muslims in its midst—and how these immigrants and citizens accommodate (or flout) French law and custom—is deepening into a new phase of what is described as intolerance, seeming incompatibility, and political polarization. Minus the multi-syllabic wadding, reality says France is knee-deep in racial and religious nastiness. It is widely perceived at schools, in the metro and on the streets. And it precludes evasion.