France is the only great colonial power whose misdeeds abroad keep haunting it, more or less constantly, at home.

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Andrew Hussey, dean of the University of London Institute in Paris, has written about French philosophy and cultural history, both rightly considered sources of national pride. His latest book, «The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and Its Arabs,» is primarily about French North Africa, which is a matter of national shame.

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Mr. Hussey’s book is mostly historical, spiced lightly with reportage from both France and its former colonies. He suggests that the result of past French involvement in North Africa today is the «intifada» (Arabic for «uprising») among Muslim youth in the suburbs of Paris and other cities. In these areas, known as banlieues, even native-born Frenchmen of North African heritage don’t feel French, and they denigrate successful North African Frenchmen like soccer star Zinedine Zidane as collaborators. They call white Frenchmen «sons of Clovis,» after the fifth-century Frankish king (evincing at least some knowledge of European history). The crime and anarchism are bad enough to make the banlieues, in Mr. Hussey’s slightly hyperbolic phrase, zones of «anti-civilization,» where every norm and convention that binds people together as a society is aggressively flouted in favor of mayhem.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304393704579529640713244378