I’ll admit that I hesitated to give this letter the title I did.
Talking about ethnic and religious groups is always difficult. As Westerners, we are hypersensitized to racism and prejudice.
So much so that we’d rather avoid the conversation about groups altogether.
But in multicultural societies, when people act as groups, we need to talk about the actions of groups.
And Muslims from the third world act as a group.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. All groups exhibit in-group preference.
But several of the ways this group in particular acts are in conflict with Western norms and values, because some third-world Muslim values are fundamentally incompatible with Western values.
(A note on “third world.” I know it’s not politically correct or technically precise anymore. In professional circles it’s considered an outdated Cold War term. But it’s still used colloquially, it’s familiar, and the average person knows exactly what it means: a descriptor of a country’s level of development. I don’t think it’s inherently offensive. So I’m using it here.)
Groups and individuals
Analysis of groups has to be different from analysis of individuals.
It would be irrational to meet a particular Muslim from the third world and assume he values Sharia over national law, sympathizes with Hamas, and supports rioting as a form of protest.
But it’s equally irrational to pretend that, evaluated as a group, there isn’t a disproportionately high expression of all three.
57% of French Muslims aged 15 to 24 say Sharia matters more than the laws of the Republic.
24% of them say they sympathize with Hamas. Among French Muslims of all ages, it’s 19%. Among French adults overall, it’s 3%.
In a hyperpolarized culture, you’re supposed to open with a list of caveats. The problem is that by the time you’re done listing them, nobody cares about the point.
Hence the title.
I’m hoping I’ve earned enough credibility with you for you to know I don’t approach anything from hate. There are 4.5 million Muslims in America, and the vast majority are great Americans. There are progressive Muslims, conservative Muslims, fundamentalist Muslims. None of that is in dispute.
What’s in dispute is whether we’re allowed to say that a significant subset of this population is extremely difficult to assimilate into Western culture, and that where they go, problems go too.
I’m saying it.
A coalition, and why that should alarm you
Third-world Muslims are not the only ones rioting in France.
The riots are the work of a coalition: white leftists, socialists, opportunists, and teenagers with no ideological commitments at all who just revel in the chance to act out.
So why single out one group?
Three reasons.
There is a clear pattern across Western Europe: this particular group grows in numbers and influence, and violence follows. In the UK, where Muhammad is now the most common name for newborn boys in England and Wales, we now know that thousands of British girls, over decades, were molested by predominantly Muslim men of Pakistani heritage (Pakistan is 96% Muslim), and that it was covered up by UK authorities for fear of appearing racist.
In Spain, this July, around 50,000 people crossed from Morocco into Ceuta in a matter of days. 72 died in the rush. The Spanish military was called in. I wrote a whole article about it.
Germany has its own chapter. In August 2024, a Syrian man who had dodged deportation stabbed three people to death at a “Festival of Diversity” in Solingen. He was convicted of membership in the Islamic State. This July, an Islamist already known to German intelligence drove a van into crowds at Berlin Pride, killing one person and injuring 29.
There is a common variable in the disorder across Western countries, and it’s a particular group.
We need to talk about it.
And we need to talk about it without demonizing individuals, and without letting it collapse into a culture war over which group is superior.
Which software is better is the wrong question
Ironically, just as third-world Muslims are moving into first-world Western countries, first-world Westerners are moving into first-world Muslim countries. The UAE gained an estimated net 9,800 millionaires in 2025, more than any country on earth. Dubai is full of Londoners.
There have been Muslim empires that rivaled anything Christendom built: the Abbasids, the Ottomans, Al-Andalus.
People can hold their own views on which cultural software is “superior.” That’s a different argument.
The point is this: if you love the West and the Western project, Islam is the most difficult software to integrate. Within the broader Muslim community, there are significant subsets that are hostile to Western values, and the numbers above say those subsets are bigger among the young, not smaller.
Macron says the people blaming Muslim migrants are “stupid.” The people blaming Muslim migrants say Macron is deflecting. Both are working from half the picture.
This week Macron, speaking in Doha, said foreign leaders had made “unacceptable and even stupid comments” about the riots. He said France had been accused of being “invaded by hordes of migrants and Islamists,” and called that “totally false.” Trump had said the unrest “has to do with immigration.” Netanyahu called it an “invasion of extremist Islam.”
Here’s how that one story looked on Ground News.
Ground News has been my favorite news app for two years, since well before they ever sponsored me, and this screenshot is why.
Their Bias Comparison feature takes one story and shows you how the left, center, and right are each telling it. There’s a big difference between knowing the media is biased and seeing exactly where the bias is. Ground News makes that easy.
And it doesn’t rely on one source. It pulled from 204 sources for this story: 30% left, 38% center, 32% right.
Left-leaning coverage frames Macron as resisting xenophobic misinformation and emphasizes that Muslim migrants were not shown responsible.
Right-leaning coverage foregrounds disorder, looting, and security threats, and spotlights migration, Islamism, ultra-left groups, and domestic mismanagement.
Ground News flags the dividing line in one sentence: whether the unrest signifies xenophobic disinformation or a broader security and governance crisis.
That’s the question this whole letter is about.
I’ll continue to share my thoughts, but the best solution is for you to be fully empowered to form your own. Ground is an essential tool for helping you with that.
Ground is offering my readers 40% off the Vantage plan, their top tier, at groundnews.com/kaizenx.
Signing up keeps you informed, and it directly supports the work I do here.
So is Macron correct?
So let’s consider Macron’s comments about the focus on Muslims being “stupid.”
It’s a fact that these riots started in the Paris banlieues, the ring of suburbs with the highest share of Muslim immigrants in France.
It’s a fact that the three big riot waves of the last twenty years all started in that same ring. Clichy-sous-Bois in 2005. Nanterre in 2023. Créteil in 2026.
It’s a fact that rioters stormed Marseille city hall and hung a Palestinian flag inside.
It’s a fact that Macron’s own government, in May 2025, published a 73-page report warning that “Islamist entryism” by the Muslim Brotherhood threatens national cohesion, and that Macron himself convened a Defense Council over it.
What’s happening in Paris sure looks like a lack of national cohesion.
It’s a fact that the protest is composed of a coalition that’s not just immigrant Muslims.
It also includes white leftists, socialists, yellow vests, opportunists, and teenagers with no ideology at all.
And it’s a fact that the same pattern of social disorder, disproportionately involving Muslims from the third world, is playing out across Western Europe, in the UK, in Spain, in Germany.
Multiple things can be true at once.
It’s not just third-world Muslims and their children.
But the epicenter, every time, is where the third-world Muslim immigrants live.
Two risks
There’s a risk in this conversation, and I’m aware of it.
Genuine bigots will use even the most carefully constructed argument to justify a hatred they already hold. Call that risk Islamophobia, understood colloquially as hatred of Muslims. Western liberals are extremely sensitive to it.
But there’s a risk on the other side, and the West has stopped weighing it.
The risk of social decay from never addressing the compatibility of a group whose norms and values are radically different from your own.
And the risk of admitting the radicalized subsets of that group: Islamists and jihadists, who threaten the physical safety and the institutions that Western societies run on.
The second risk is already here. Marseille city hall is the proof.
And the most alarming part is that it’s happening inside a coalition, with leftists and socialists marching next to the Palestinian flags.
We’ve seen this exact coalition before.
Iran. 1979.
From here, you’ll learn:
Islam, Islamism, and jihadism: why the difference matters more than anyone admits.
What happened in Iran in 1979, and why the history is harder to dismiss than it sounds.
The exodus: who is leaving Europe, and what it says about where it’s heading.
