one more try:
http://www.courrierinternational.com...ccueil&bloc=01
again, this is in french (sorry)--
it is of course difficult to find american papers that will devote anyting like extensive coverage to a situation like this, particularly not at a moment when most of the front pages of the american papers are devoted to grovelling "reports" on the repellent made-for-tv pagent that is the rnc (the dnc was no better, so...)
besides, this is happening to a country that is not america, so no one gets all john wayne about it. people taken hostage apparently only really matter when they are american. or when they serve what is understood as an american political interest. go figure.
further, the american right obviously has its own (fact-free) interpretation of france and so probably see things in the manner indicated in the title of the thread. not much room for analysis if you start from there.
anyway, the article is from a weekly that is something on the order of the world press review. in this case, it is a small collection of opinion from papers mostly from the middle east and europe. the arab press opinion on this matter is of particular interest.
one take seems to be that the french reporters were taken not because they were french but because they were western---that the "islamic army in iraq" has no particular interest in the matter of whether the law regarding the wearing of relgious garb in public schools was or was not in effect in france--most of these papers read the demand as having been formulated after the fact (hey, they're french, what do we do now?) i am curious about this interpretation, where it comes from. the evidence is circumstantial, and is summarized near the beginning of the article.
there are also excerpts from a few "proamerican" press outlets that publish in arabic, most of which repeat something like the "serves em right" line, which, as here, obviously the gateway to a differentiated view of the question at hand. so have a look at it if you like to see maybe how tedious this line is in a different language.
this kidnapping puts the muslim community in france in a really awkward spot. you can see chirac doing things to assuage their concerns like going to a mosque in paris to participate in parayer for the release...on this, the article from le monde above is much better than the one i am posting now.
i imagine the front national will have a field day if these guys are killed. the front national has enlightened politics on matters pertaining to islam that are on par with those of the american neocons. except in france, people who operate from this political position are understood as neofascist, where in the states, they are "conservative."
the relation of the law banning religious garb to the politics of the front national is an interesting matter to consider, if you know anything about french politics--chirac et al argue that it is simply consistent with the principle of a secular state and so is in keeping with the tradition of the republic and not a cave-in to the fn. but the timing is interesting, if you take into account the gradual erosion of traditional forms of natinalist politics in france as a function of many things including the e.u.--and the rise of the fn's fascist-style national essence nonsense--which in this case seems to be operational in the conditions that shaped the promulgation of the law.
so i am not myself sure that i believe chirac on this.