Few Americans have noticed the recent French election, much less realized the enormity of its implications. After years of the anti-American policies of France’s Jacques Chirac and his cronies, the election of conservative Nicolas Sarkozy as France’s new leader has come as a surprise to those who follow the politics of Europe’s most stubbornly individualistic society.

But a closer look at French society says that this change may have been a long time coming, and may put France at the forefront of the war against Islamofacism. This past week saw Sarkozy call publicly for European nations to urge the U.N. to apply tougher sanctions and political isolation to Iran. His fearlessness may be a breath of fresh air to the French people, embarrassed by revelations of Chirac’s ultra-close relationship to Saddam Hussein, and deceit toward, and defiance of, official European policy regarding Iraq.

Over the past three decades, France has seen an enormous influx of immigrants from Muslim countries, giving it proportionally the largest Muslim immigrant population in Europe. With this influx has come a rise in unemployment for all French and in violent crime. As the new generation of immigrants became more religiously radical and unwilling to assimilate into French society, frustration in the general population grew. As the French were embracing political correctness and left-wing idealism, their own grim economic reality has risen to bite them in the face. Recently, the U.N. and international human rights groups have criticized a French law that calls for the deportation of any immigrant tied - however loosely - to crime or to terrorist activity. This law makes no allowance for those immigrants who may face political persecution or even torture in their countries of origin. But the French government is standing firm, and insisting that these measures are necessary to protect the safety of the French people.

Since the 1980's, terrorism has been common in France. Subway bombings in Paris were the first sign of the type of Islamist fanaticism that later plagued other northern European countries, and that America is only beginning to see. When Islamist violence broke out in the streets of Paris in October of 2005, left-wing journalists blamed governmental economic policies. But while such policies contributed to the situation, the popular theory failed to address the real problem: the rise of Islamofacism amongst immigrant youth.

It had become so bad that several elderly Arab immigrants of the 1950's and 1960's told the French press that their grandchildren - the second generation born on French soil - were actually far more radical and anti-Western. It was in fact these very youth who burned hundreds of cars across France from the late days of October, through the end of the year, and even into the New Year of 2006. They threw rocks and bottles at police, set fire to buildings, and created such mayhem that France immediately fought back with strict anti-rioting laws. And while the pro-socialist, left-leaning press whined about the oppression of youths in the ghettos, the French told each other the truth over dinner conversations: the Muslim immigrant problem had become far too big to continue to ignore.

The election of Sarkozy (who has openly advocated for tougher policies regarding immigrant law in France, and has taken a firmly conservative and America-friendly stance on Middle East terrorism and the future security of the West), simply may have been an indication that the French, after three decades of an increasingly anti-West Muslim immigrant population, have had enough.

America would be wise to watch what happens in coming months in France and in the rest of Europe. For while Islamists speak of America as the Great Satan, their quiet - conquer them from within - assault on European society began long before 9/11 woke up the average American Joe. The extent to which Europe can cope with - or falls to - the rise of Islamofacism within its shores will predict how America must confront it in coming years.

In his book “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within”, author Bruce Bawer explores the rise of Muslim populations across Europe, how typically they have refused to integrate into the native cultures, and how they have brought violence in the form of political assassination attempts, oppression of women, bombings, terror funding, and outright murder of those they consider to have betrayed Islam. His chilling book shows how these patterns of lack of assimilation repeat themselves in European societies, damaging them from within.

Today, the biggest difference between Americans and Europeans is that the level of Islamist violence, and the openness of confrontation with the host culture by Muslim immigrants, is only now reaching the level in America that Europe has known for years. Although it is unpopular to bring it up, medieval historians know that the Crusades were in fact a response to years of Muslim invasions into European soil, with the explicit goal of conquering Europe for Islam. These early Muslim warriors saw the world in the same way modern Islamists do - as merely a world lying in wait for the day when Islam will rule the land. The French fought Muslim armies in France long before the Crusades, so did Spain, Italy and Greece. Once, what is now Istanbul was a capitol of Christendom. Many Europeans see what is happening today as a repeat of the struggles of past centuries with Islam: today’s Muslim army doesn’t attack en masse by horseback; instead it uses an insidious attack on social structure, hidden terrorist cells planting bombs, imams preaching hate - in Arabic - in mosques in the middle of London, Paris, Amsterdam and other European capitals (as well as in America).

Americans, while not exactly forgetting the horror of 9/11, have too easily gone back to the comfortably self-righteous complacency of the politically correct. The much-criticized policies of Homeland Security have perhaps protected us too well: documented evidence suggests that the foiled attempts at serious disruption of our way of life have numbered in the hundreds since 9-11. Within the warm cocoon of perceived safety, we are lulled into a mind-set of trust, of a rosy picture of the intrinsic goodness of all immigrants, of the pure motives of all who cross our shores only to “build a better life”. Europe has also embraced these ideals, until very recently: now, with rising fear of Islamist anti-Western activity in their streets comes a healthy re-consideration of reality.
In recent months, the voices in Britain who decry “racism” and “Islamophobia” have become a little more hesitant, perhaps intimidated by the unmistakable rise in radical Islamist activity in British cities, as it becomes more blatant, more daring, more comfortable with the sincerely warm welcome its host country offered long ago - a welcome it has used to establish itself in a position of advantage - a position from which the most damage can be done. Scandinavia has all but given up being nice about its struggles with radical Islam - its journalists increasingly more willing to call it the evil that it is, and point out the ways in which it threatens the social structure and heritage of people in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It is now no mystery to anyone who takes any time to research, that next to France, the Netherlands has paid a huge price for its past friendly accommodation to Muslim immigrants.

How unlikely a partner France would seem to America, in future months, during the advancing struggle with a changing world. But Sarkozy may be the face of a coming era - when Western countries find a new alliance born of the recognition of a common threat. As the Nazi menace did more than half a century ago, the Islamofascist menace may be the saving grace that in the end brings the West into alliance, and shows it once again at its best - strong, united under a proud heritage and value system – and determined to preserve the rights of the common man to a safe and free existence.

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Susan MacAllen runs political blog & a contributor to Family Security Matters. She has written on wide topics over the last 20 years.