What are we to make of the riots in France which have been going on for a fortnight and which have now spread to many parts of the country?

They are certainly not race riots such as those which occurred in America in the 1960s in the pursuit of civil rights for black people. They are not chiefly self-indulgent disturbances by petulant, middle class teenagers under the pretence of "revolution" such as happened in Paris itself back in 1968. Most of those "revolutionaries" are now safely embedded in society as bankers, brokers, lawyers, teachers, doctors and journalists. And the current disturbances are not motivated by religion. However, there are aspects of all three causes in this new outbreak of civil unrest.

Many of the rioters are from sections of society where there is comparative poverty, lack of opportunity and high unemployment. They are at least, to some extent, also being exploited by the usual suspects - the left-wing, politics-of-envy-people who hate the establishment. And some of the rioters are Muslims mainly from north Africa where, of course, the French are disliked on account of the troubles of the withdrawal from Algeria and other post-colonial difficulties.

The problem is made worse by the amalgamation of all three causes. After more or less ignoring the riots for the first week, the BBC is now being forced to take them seriously. Its Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield, says: "Words like 'intifada' will start being bandied around, and the stakes will suddenly be much higher. The reason for pessimism is that the rioters can read in much of the reaction to their rampages a legitimisation of what they have done."

So the BBC correspondent comes as close as he dare to blaming the world's media! He has a point. In the papers and on TV there has been widespread gloating at the expense of the French authorities as if to say, "Serves 'em right!" - for their perceived policies of neglect and social exclusion of foreigners and the poor. There is truth in this accusation too. But the main reason for the troubles is that the sections of the population producing the rioters has refused to integrate into mainstream French society for more than a generation. They live in impoverished ghettos surrounded by affluence: just the prescription for the politics of envy and unrest.

The truly dangerous moment comes when an old grievance is exploited by new elements. And surely I don't have to spell it out that this new element is the current worldwide uprising of militant Islam? If the Islamic extremists can somehow manage to couple the French riots with this uprising, with their intifada and jihad, then all Europe's worst nightmares will become reality.

We have been here before. In the 1790s and for much of the first half of the 19th century, all Europe was threatened by the French exporting their revolutionary terror by means of the armies of Napoleon. It is odd how history sometimes seems to be running repeats. We have just celebrated the event, Trafalgar, and the man, Nelson, who destroyed that threat in 1805. There is no cause for another such pitched battle today. The appalling danger lies rather in the fact that the same forces of riot, insurrection and terror today causing such disturbance in France lie only semi-dormant throughout Europe. And in Britain too.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.