Interlude
13 July, 2078, Clichy-sous-Bois, France, European Union
The Moslems had not, as many feared and others hoped for, ever become a majority within the European Union. For one thing, the United States and Australia, along with the Republic of Western Canada, had, after a time (and only for a time), refused to take more than a pittance in culturally Christian but politically social-democrat European immigrants. Moreover, the EU itself began to institute border and emigration controls that even Stalin and Castro would have approved of. For another, the unsustainable social democratic state had not, in fact, been sustained. When elderly German or French citizens went hungry, the Moslems were bound to be starved.
This, of course, resulted in violence. But the Euros, always with that mix of bloodthirsty fanaticism lurking beneath the soft exterior, had traditions for dealing with inassimilable foreigners who caused trouble.
The Army and Foreign Legion trucks and buses, bearing two battalions of paras, three of infantry, one of engineers, and a lot of building material, showed up before dawn. In an operation well planned and well rehearsed, the Moslem ghetto of Clichy-sous-Bois was surrounded, and the beginnings of a barbed wire fence put up, before the sun was much above the horizon.
The welfare state required lots of young people and lots of taxes to support it. Unfortunately, both the ethos of the welfare state—which could have been called "Maximum License"—and the taxes, which made raising a large family highly problematic, ensured that there could never be enough babies born to keep up that tax base.
There was a solution, of course: major immigration of young workers from elsewhere. This was a solution not without its problems, however. Those problems eventually became highly pressing, as when a group of Moslem "youths" burned down a few government buildings in Paris on Bastille Day.
And then someone remembered that foreign workers did not necessarily have to be free to be useful.
"Live with the new reality, Imam," said the legionnaire officer to the senior cleric in the banlieue. "Your people will be fed, if they work. But you have abused our hospitality too much for us to allow you the freedom of our country any longer."
Nearby, more Army and Legion trucks and buses, joined now by police vehicles, dropped off Moslems by the hundreds who had been seized in the great sweep up.
"We will riot," answered the imam, huffily. "We will—"
The legionnaire cut him off. "You will maintain control or we will cut off your water, your heat, your food. There will be no riots."
"The conscience of the world—"
"Means nothing. You forgot, I think, that when we banned speech that might offend you and yours, we also took upon ourselves the power to ban any speech we desired to ban. Every silver lining has its cloud, Imam."