Republic of Dunces?

For another, and perhaps more insightful (and certainly more thoughful and original) view, check out evariste's view at Discarded Lies. I found two of his points to be of particular interest. The first:

The funny thing is that the rioters have learned from the French themselves, and surpassed them-urban terrorism is a time-honored French way to blackmail the state into succumbing to a special interest group's demands. They're just taking France's lawless culture of shameless blackmail to heart. In fact, you could say they're just extraordinarily zealous in their pursuit of a special rider to the standard French social contract. The "racial" angle is too simplistic, and the "Islam" angle is also has insufficient explanatory power. The truth is that this is just business as usual in France, only more so.

The second:

France's real problem with its immigrant population isn't their unwillingness to integrate. It's France's racism and unwillingness to integrate them. These young people aren't new immigrants, most of them were born in France to immigrant parents-they just can't get jobs because of their skin color, their names, and their addresses.

That has the ring of truth, to me. These people are simply not considered "French" no matter how longstanding their connection with the country. It's worth reading the whole piece, which concludes that, for various reasons, not least the government's response to the riots, political Islam will be greatly empowered by the last few days' events.