This is very much a specific French problem, arising from a specific French attitude and history.
You really have to go back to de Gaulle and the way that he reinvented French pride in itself as a nation, on the myth that it had freed itself (with some token help from the allies) in the war. So France heard a lot about de Gaulle liberating Paris (sic) and about the Resistance, and quietly forgot the Vichy.
Part of Gaullism was to hold on to the remnants of French empire, specifically Algeria, although paradoxically it was then de Gaulle who surrendered it after a bitter struggle for independence. So those North Africans aren't just their 'because their papers say so', they are there because their parents were born in what was left of the French Empire.
France has no truck with multiculturalism, liberte, fraternite egalite is supposed to be enough for everyone. But there isn't a real egalite. For example, muslim girls were banned from wearing headscarfs in schools, as religious symbols, but it was only large and ostentatious crosses that were banned, not the sort that every Catholic French girl gets at her first communion.
And, although it's been a good few years since I was there, the Parisian police in particular would harass North Africans, forever running sweeps on the Metro and stopping them and asking them for their papers. I never once got asked to show mine, yet I was a foreigner and they were French. From what the vox pops are saying, it hasn't changed.
Add in the banlieus, which are an effective shanty town ring around Paris, keeping the North Africans outside the peripherique unless they are wanted for work, add in Sarkozy calling them scum, and it's hardly surprising that they've finally had enough. Riots in the summer happen from time to time in large cities; when you get riots in November, particularly the sort of wet November we've been having in Europe, you've got a problem.
If you are black, brown or beige in France, you can't get most jobs, if you are lucky enough to get one, you have to work twice as hard as your white colleagues to prove yourself and your every error is seen as a sign of natural incompetence when the same errors are seen as a normal part of learning a new job for whites. Cabs don't stop for you. Police stop you all the time for no reason and ask for your papers as if you were a foreigner. Police treat you like rubbish when they stop you, often beating you. They don't apologize when they fail to find anything to charge you with, but tell you to watch your rear, because they'll get you next time. You see decent people swallowing complete rubbish served up by the police and the white society they protect every day and then one day it's enough, just another couple of dead kids--but it's enough--you're ready to kill the next cop who asks you to justify your existence and so is everyone you know. It really isn't about Islamism or any other ism, but you'll say you love Osama, if it seems to scare the ruling elite.
Well, who knows? It sounds very familiar to me. And here too, everyone ignores the plainly stated grievances of the rioters and comes up with all manner of whacked out explanations and solutions. "Ship them back to where they came from." "Clamp down on immigration." "Unleash the police." "If only we were really, really reactionary and oppressive, then these young men would be on our side--we can only fight Sharia by imposing Levitical law (or something harsher)." "How can these people be angry? They should be grateful for the life we so generously permit them to enjoy in our wonderful society!"
There's just no way it could come down to the predictable result of boxing people in to ghettos with 50% unemployment rates--five times the national rate--or policing them with a generous helping of brutality and racial abuse. It's just people who should be grateful, biting the hand that feeds them!