One of the biggest problems facing France is that it does not assimilate its Muslim immigrants, says James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute.
"America does and that's the difference. That's who we are ... within a generation you become an American," Zogby told J.D. Hayworth on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV Tuesday.
Story continues below video.
Note: Watch Newsmax TV now on DIRECTV Ch. 349 and DISH Ch. 223
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system — Click Here Now
"We've assimilated generations of people who came here with anarchist ideas and communist ideas and fascist ideas, and they become Americans," he said.
"That doesn't happen in France — you're there for three generations and you're still an Arab, you're still looked at as Algerian," he said.
According to Zogby, this is also a problem in other European countries as well, such as England and Germany.
"In England, I recall being there after one of the recent elections, and the story in the Sunday Times said, 'Historic Election: 23 Immigrants Won Seats in the Parliament,'" Zogby said. "I knew some of those guys, they'd been in London for three generations, and yet they were still called immigrants."
The same problem has also happened in Germany, but "[German Chancellor Angela] Merkel has taken the right step by saying we are all German and committing herself to that," he said.
"France has to commit itself to that, too," he added.
"I'm not absolving, of course, in any way the horrendous violence, but understand that France has a problem, and that is that it doesn't assimilate because it doesn't expand the definition of being French to include other groups," he said.
France was hit last week with three days of terrorist attacks, beginning with a shooting at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 were killed. A total of 17 people, including three police officers, died.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.