Workers at Charles de Gaulle airport praise Sept. 11 attacks

It's always nice to learn the real news about France from abroad, and from a leftwing newspaper, on top of that.

From the Los Angeles Times (registration needed), via Atlas Shrugs.

Employees set up clandestine prayer areas on the grounds of the Euro Disney resort.

Workers for a cargo firm at Charles de Gaulle airport praise the Sept. 11 attacks.

A Brinks technician is charged with pulling off a million-dollar heist for a Moroccan terrorist group allegedly led by his brother. Female converts to Islam operate a day-care center that authorities eventually shut down because of its religious radicalism.

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[A] recent study by a think tank here paints a picture of rising fundamentalism in the workplace, ranging from proselytizing to pressure tactics to criminal activities.

In companies such as supermarket chains in immigrant-heavy areas, for instance, militant recruiters cause workplace tensions by imposing fundamentalist ideas on co-workers and pressuring managers to boycott certain products, the study says.

On a more sinister level, the study asserts that Islamic networks are trying to establish a presence in firms involved in sectors such as security, cargo, armored cars, courier services and transportation. Once they gain a foothold, operatives raise funds for militants via theft, embezzlement and robbery, the study alleges.

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Denece's study cites a case examined in 2004 by Renseignements Generaux, the domestic intelligence agency, involving the discovery of "about 10 clandestine prayer rooms" on the grounds of Euro Disney.

Denece also alleges that fundamentalists were detected in the resort's security force, but a spokesman for Euro Disney said that claim was inaccurate.

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There are a few clear-cut examples of alleged infiltration of companies. Last year, police investigated a heist at the Brinks Co. that was allegedly engineered by an operative of a Moroccan terrorist network that has been implicated in the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

Hassan Baouchi, who was 23 at the time, worked as a technician stocking ATMs; his brother, Mustafa, was a veteran of two stints in Al Qaeda's Afghan camps and an alleged leader of the network.

In March 2004, Hassan Baouchi claimed that stick-up men had waylaid him during his rounds north of the capital and stolen about $1.2 million. But he now awaits trial on charges of faking the robbery in cahoots with a gang of known jihadis. About $40,000 later turned up on a fugitive captured in Algeria.

"That's a real concrete example of terrorist financing," said the senior law enforcement official. He also said extremists have been detected trying to establish a presence in sensitive sectors related to defense and transportation.

The report describes a case in which police investigated a cargo company at Charles de Gaulle International Airport with about 3,000 employees. Managers complained that a small group of radicals had tried to gain influence by preaching to co-workers and threatening repeated strikes. Some of the activists "expressed satisfaction" with the Sept. 11 attacks, the report says.

The French intelligence official confirmed that authorities closely monitor the notable presence of Muslim fundamentalists among the many immigrant employees at the airport.

In 2002, a 27-year-old systems engineer working in the airport's control tower was abruptly barred from secure areas. Police had discovered that he was a devout disciple of a radical imam and frequented militant mosques here, in his native Morocco and in the Middle East. The Iraqi-born imam is now under house arrest, accused of hate speech.

"There are worries about the presence of extremists at the airport," the intelligence official said. "There was no link found to violent jihad groups, but [the engineer] was certainly very active in a fundamentalist movement with anti-Western, anti-American ideas. Because of the particularly sensitive job he had, a decision was made, in the name of caution, to reassign him."

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Executives say pressure groups in supermarkets and other companies advance oppressive ideological agendas: They pressure co-workers to wear religious garb, defy the authority of female managers and demand boycotts of products such as alcohol, pork, Israeli oranges and American brownies, Denece said.

"For French companies, the rise in power of radical Islam represents a new threat," the report states. "This trend expresses above all a move to take control of behavior and ideas of other workers in order to impose a value system conforming to extremist ideology."

Nonetheless, demographics and perception make the debate difficult. As the report points out, Muslim employees in France are starting to organize themselves along religious and ethnic lines rather than following the lead of traditional leftist unions. Management may sometimes allege extremism when workers are finding new ways to organize and defend their interests.

"It's more and more frequent for us to hear about attempts at infiltration, but it's not rampant," the intelligence official said. "It's full of dilemmas. Sometimes you will have fundamentalist employees, but they do not cause trouble. And sometimes you will have a mix of labor politics and religion that is more about establishing power than anything else."

Of course, this is absolutely taboo in France. You can hardly talk about it with friends without them automatically labeling you as racist.

I used to work with a Moroccan girl. Soon after 9-11, her boyfriend, a Muslim too, was summoned by his boss after one of his co-workers found in one drawer of his desk a book about Islam and how to practice the religion. She was furious, talking about it all day long and of course automatically claimed his boyfriend was going to get fired by a racist boss.

Nothing happened to him in the end. His boss just explained that he could not bring the book with him at work, which neither him nor my co-worker understood. I later met him. Nice guy until we came to talk about 9-11. My co-worker, his girlfriend, told him I was in NYC that day. He looked at me with a satisfied smile and said: "so you saw the Towers before and after", as in a comparative ad.

After a Jewish boy was violently attacked during so-called peace demonstrations in Paris to supposedly stop the war in Iraq, demonstrations my co-worker participated in, I sent her an article about the agression to which she answered that Jews weren't the victims, among other nice things about Bush, Blair and well, of course, the "evil" Jews.

No, all Muslims are not radicals and/or terrorists. But if we keep on refusing to acknowledge that radicals exist in France too, and on refusing to state that we won't let them do whatever they or Allah feel like doing to France and its society, then France is doomed. And I'm afraid it is already too late.