I have noticed a disturbing tendancy amongst a number of diarists and commenters to try to understand the extensive urban rioting in France through the prism of Salafi/Wahabbist extremist of the Al Qaeda vintage, and to try to draw comparisons to some of the events occurring in the Netherlands and Britain. To put it briefly, such opinions are either the result of people who know nothing about French society or who are paranoid Islamophobes, because they are just flat out wrong and bear zero scrutiny.
In other words, eliminate any thought of Iraq and or AQ style Salafism from your analysis of what is happening. The reasons for these riots has a distinctly French context, and if it can be internationalized in any way, a better analogy would something like the LA riots in the US in '92, or the nationwide urban riots of the late 1960s. The youths involved in these riots share a culture similar to urban African American and Latino in the United States, oscillating between a glorification of "thug life" and criminality and searing criticism of injustices, past and present. Indeed, there is a large and very good hip hop scene in France that largely comes from the "Banlieues" that are currently rioting, as well as a kind of form of street slang known as "verlan," not unlike American hip hop lingo, or ebonics. (I won't get into what verlan is, you can ask me below). As a starting point, try watching Mathieu Kassovitz's film La Haine, which, while 10 years old, pretty much captures exactly what is happening today in France. If there is a tendency towards Islamic traditionalism, it is found much more in older generations, who are strongly opposed to the current rioting. This is not to say that there isn't stray youth who might fall pray to Salafism extremism. But they represent a tiny minority of the youth, and these folks have nothing - nothing - to do with the current riots.
Indeed, if you look more closely at who is involved, while a substantial segment of the rioters are Arab North Africans, probably a majority aren't, and include subsaharan Africans from places like Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, etc. as well as probably a number of "white" native French youth. Economic impoverishment and social exclusion are the primary factors driving what is occurring. Culture is a factor at work, but not in the ways you want to describe. If radical Islamic AQ things become involved, it is only because they will be trying to capitalize on discontent after the fact, much as Marxists have done in the past - i.e. try to coopt a discontent and protest after the fact for their own ends. They have nothing to do with why these riots are happening in the first place. Nothing. As such, the situation is fundamentally different than the London bombings and the societal crisis the Netherlands is experiencing. Indeed, France has a reputation as being especially ruthless at rooting out Al Qaeda like organizations and sympathizers. In fact, the French approach is often favorably contrasted by counter-terrorism experts and even hardline American rightists like Daniel Pipes, to the policy of the British government, which has, in the words of various members of the French intelligence and security community, created "Londinistan" (there is actually a French book with this title)
So what is causing the rioting? Well, I allude to the causes above, but the problem is deeper and more structural than that, and I think it goes to the very heart of the French notion of republicanism. IMO, the republican ideal is a very "modern" (in the technical sense) concept (indeed, perhaps a hyper-modern construct) in a post-modern world where the kind of unifying narrative and assumption of the fundamental similarity of people is no longer viable. Strangely, this is exactly how the neo-cons think too, and it is why they think you can invade a country and "remake" a culture, indeed a region, in an American image. Indeed, there is much about the French republican model that the American right would like - ie "color blind," all individuals are basically the same, they must conform to some kind of model of "Frenchness," etc. Its not for nothing that neo-cons are often called "Jacobins," as too are those who favor a centralized state-model in France.
As such, the French republican ideal has difficulty dealing with a multi-ethnic society, and as such, I think it has to be rethought to provide a more flexible, decentralized polity.