--- title: "A broken jaw, a looted shop, a nonsense chant: France’s autumn of anger" description: "Students mock the police in Arabic-patched slang while looters gut Paris shops and the state counts the cost" author: "Jan Sokol" published: 2026-10-21T10:35:34Z modified: 2026-10-21T14:28:19Z url: https://rews.cc/a/a-broken-jaw-a-looted-shop-a-nonsense-chant-france-s-autumn--c25c72 language: en tags: ["politics", "protests", "police", "education", "crime", "europe"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # A broken jaw, a looted shop, a nonsense chant: France’s autumn of anger *Students mock the police in Arabic-patched slang while looters gut Paris shops and the state counts the cost* By Jan Sokol · October 21, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/a-broken-jaw-a-looted-shop-a-nonsense-chant-france-s-autumn--c25c72 ## In brief - Protesters chant ‘Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres’, a phrase mocking police racial stereotyping traced to a suspect Snapchat message - Minors injured by police spoke to Al Jazeera, including a 14-year-old whose jaw was smashed by a tear gas grenade - Shopkeeper Hassan Rashdul lost at least 70,000 euros in stock when his Paris phone shop was looted; his insurance excludes theft - Paris will cover salaries at about 3,000 affected businesses, fund restocking and deploy 200 investigators - Vinted, Amazon, eBay, Leboncoin, Meta and TikTok were told to pull listings of goods stolen in the looting It begins with a chant that means almost nothing, and that is precisely the point. As violent protests roil France — students demanding better educational conditions marching alongside groups rejecting the high cost of living — one cry has risen above the rest: “Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres”. In the name of God, it is the darkness. Taken literally, [Al Jazeera explains](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/21/why-are-french-protesters-chanting-bismillah-cest-les), the phrase means little; what matters is that students have poured into it the whole array of grievances at the heart of the movement, and that it exists to mock the racial stereotyping of the police. [Euronews reports](https://www.euronews.com/2026/10/19/bismillah-cest-les-tenebres-what-does-the-french-student-protest-slogan-mean) that the slogan was born of a Snapchat message students believe came from an undercover police officer — one that mimicked the blend of Arabic and French spoken by the young of the banlieues — and that it has since jumped the borders into Belgium and Italy. The state imitated its children’s voices to infiltrate them; the children turned the imitation into a banner. The revolt of the lycées is [weeks old now](https://rews.cc/a/a-crisis-of-hope-in-the-lycees-france-s-young-blockade-their-956e04), and last Saturday it merged with the wider fury over prices and wages that has been [spilling across Europe’s south](https://rews.cc/a/belgium-france-italy-and-portugal-protest-the-same-squeeze-o-b843dd). What came back from that weekend was blood, glass and arithmetic. ![A crowd marches along a city street as a raised megaphone emits jagged red sound waves toward a shattered storefront window.](https://rews.cc/img/dad491185ca60fad530fc76617d437321217c8bd.webp) ## The baton and the grenade Enzo is 17. [He told Al Jazeera’s Virginia Pietromarchi](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/21/i-am-still-traumatised-french-police-accused-of-brutalising-minors) that a police officer grabbed his arm while another struck him from behind with a baton; his head covered in blood, he was hospitalised and needed stitches. Eden is 14 and cannot talk right now: his jaw was smashed after a police officer fired a tear gas grenade at his face in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône. “I am still traumatised,” in the words of one of the wounded children whose account the network carried. Crowd-control weapons and police violence, the reporting finds, are deepening the mistrust between the authorities and the demonstrators — each baton stroke manufacturing the next Saturday’s crowd. ## The shop near the Place de la République Jagged shards of glass frame the hole kicked through the window of Hassan Rashdul’s mobile phone shop, near the square that was the epicentre of the looting and rioting that swept that part of Paris on Saturday. “I was crying,” Rashdul says, watching a CCTV livestream on his phone of his own ruin, [as Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith reported](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/21/its-hard-for-us-paris-small-businesses-bear-brunt-of-protest-violence). The countertop is shattered, the floor carpeted with broken glass, the display cases emptied of new and reconditioned phones, iPads and computers, the walls stripped of headphones, cables and cases. “It’s really terrible,” the 32-year-old says. “It was very, very hard for us… It’s already hard for small business owners like us. We’re not operating to keep the business going, but just to survive, really.” He reckons he has lost at least 70,000 euros ($78,600) in stock, and his insurance will not cover it — theft was not in the policy. ![A person stands behind a shattered glass display case strewn with shards, with a red cloth amid the otherwise black-and-white scene.](https://rews.cc/img/c58a9b12f2d320e4e09518c2c23fb6865fbdf4f8.webp) The state has answered with its own arithmetic. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said the government will cover employee salaries at about 3,000 businesses across France hit by the rioting, and a “dedicated support fund” will help shops restock; more than 200 investigators have been ordered to hunt the looters. The loot, meanwhile, moves faster than the law — some businesses found their stolen stock for sale online within hours. “Stolen items from this weekend are being offered for sale on certain platforms,” digital minister Anne Le Henanff wrote on X. “We expect these platforms to remove the listings in question without delay.” She met representatives of Vinted, Amazon, eBay, Leboncoin, Meta and TikTok, along with the French online retail association Fevad, in the presence of Interior and Justice Ministry officials, the commerce ministry said. “They will also be required to cooperate closely with state authorities so that those reselling stolen goods can be prosecuted.” ![Electronic devices travel along a conveyor belt through a giant tablet frame toward a red fishing hook, with a smoky industrial skyline behind them.](https://rews.cc/img/44b94e687f4043c5cdbe89b4d43851c3be1056d3.webp) Around Rashdul’s shop the street reads like a ledger of the weekend: mini-markets, opticians, phone stores and cafes, some boarded up, others left open to the damp October weather because there is nothing left inside to steal. Yet amid it he has found something he did not expect. “There’s another side to it,” he says, “a positive – local customers, people from the neighbourhood.” Strangers have set up appeals on social media to help the shopkeepers. “They really make you want to try again. People are helping us to rebuild our shop, to get back to work and serve this neighbourhood once again.” It took Rashdul, who came to France from Bangladesh, ten years to build what was looted in a night. He calls himself a proud French citizen now — respectful of the right to protest, fearful of what the violence does to businesses like his and to France itself. “Even though I want to rebuild, next Saturday they’ve announced another protest,” he says. “I know we’re in a democracy and there’s a right to protest, but if that ends up in more looting, then that’s hard on France and damaging for its international reputation.” A shopkeeper who arrived with nothing now stands in his wrecked shop lecturing the Republic, gently, on the meaning of the Republic. In France, these weeks, the most reasonable voice in the room is often the one sweeping up the glass. ## Sources - [Why French protesters chant ‘Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres’](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/21/why-are-french-protesters-chanting-bismillah-cest-les) — aljazeera.com - ['I am still traumatised': French police accused of brutalising minors](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/21/i-am-still-traumatised-french-police-accused-of-brutalising-minors) — aljazeera.com - [‘It’s hard for us’: Paris small businesses bear brunt of protest violence](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/21/its-hard-for-us-paris-small-businesses-bear-brunt-of-protest-violence) — aljazeera.com