Gilles Kepel’s book, Terror in France , recently published by Gallimard, deserves the benefit of those who wish to understand the development process of the jihadist phenomenon and, more broadly, radical Islam in France.
Adopting a chronological plan Kepel analyzes in detail this historic process, we recalling the different phases and the complex and allowing us to link together the different events we have too often and too long analyzed in their singularity.
For it is indeed a process of which the author distinguishes two great periods, the incubation of the 2005 to 2012 and then of the eruption after that date to the particularly dramatic events of the year 2015. For him, 2005 is the pivotal year that occurs when a large swing in Islam of France. Year of major riots in the suburbs, when reaches the front of the stage a new generation of Muslims, the third year, finally, where is posted the text of the main thinker of the new jihadism, The Call to Global Islamic Resistance Abu Musab al-Suri. “Such a coincidence, Kepel writes, between the mutations of the suburbs, the change of generation leaders of Islam in France and transformations of the ideology of international jihadism has everything a meeting of the” third kind “.”
This call for civil war in Europe is mainly for French Muslim immigrant youth, indoctrinated and trained militarily by the action which will engage, according to Suri, the final disintegration of the West, prior to the global triumph of ‘Islamism. This true manual that will be followed to the letter by those who commit deadly attacks later, especially in France and Belgium, will mark his seal the next decade. According to Kepel, jihadist propaganda by means of the internet and social networks, and the Arab Spring in particular leading to the civil war in Syria and calling for jihad in this country will be the two major facilitators of mobilization in France young jihadists. From 2012, the bloody terrorism will grow from this Call to the commitment of believers against the disbelievers.
The book by Gilles Kepel, replace the jihadist phenomenon in the more general trend of radical Islam in France, notably of Salafism. It describes the gradual empowerment of Muslim territories with the most complete imposition of Sharia as possible. “In poor neighborhoods, he writes, where the markers are conspicuous Islamization it became socially difficult or impossible to break the young public in daytime during Ramadan when Muslim is” facies “.” In Sarcelles, including demonstrations in Gaza to support culminated in the attack synagogues and looting of Jewish businesses and the departure of the Jews of this county. The conversion to Islam is growing. This burst of Salafism, numerically small but strong through its influence, introduced a complete break with the values of French society, offering an alternative lifestyle in “disbelief” widespread in the Western world.
Analysing the dynamics of radical Islam in France, the author is led to question the responsibility of public policy in many areas. Including inconsistent prison policy making prison the best incubator of jihadism, the slow awareness of the tremendous effectiveness of cyber-jihadism to disseminate anti-Western propaganda, the gaping flaws in city policies and responsibilities some local governments in installing Salafists pockets, failures, finally, of the School, the High School as the University. He is right to question the training of our political and administrative elites and their insufficient diversity. More broadly, our company has left Islamists perversely manipulating the concept of Islamophobia in order to impose the French to confession or a Muslim background victimhood identity. In short, we have underestimated the success, at least in part, the Islamists to prevent the integration of the young Muslim generation, particularly strong success in its most fragile part, the most threatened by unemployment and most likely to fall into crime and trafficking.
The civic integration process was halted. Thus, the electoral participation of young Muslims, strong in 2012, collapsed in 2014. On the European stage to stage, and we follow with Gilles Kepel development of this cancer that is radical Islam in our society and in understand the wide variety of reasons.
Kepel is not limited to the analysis of the process that led to the killing frenzy that explodes in 2015 with assassinations and Charlie Hebdo magazine Hyper Hide after many other attacks, and finally with the massive killings of 13 November. It expands its reflection by paralleling the joint development of Islamic reference and identity nationalism of the extreme right.
This is according to him of two types of protest mobilizations which are both products of the late industrial society, rendering obsolete the “party of workers”, “young unemployed or living in the informal economy and various traffics , many in the generation of immigrant as the popular classes, no longer recognize themselves in it. ” These two new types of mobilizations are one and the other, he said, carriers such as PCF formerly a strong utopian load re-enchants a disaster social reality by projecting a myth where left behind Today will be the victors of tomorrow. Hence the opposition of two cultural isolationism. “Islamophobia or Salafism, Kepel writes, are symptoms of the same social crisis. Sometimes opposite responses are a public with a segment of society that lives like forsaken. ” “Almost perfect mirror effect,” he said.
Kepel is right to want to compare these two “isolationism”, although this comparison is only sketched. While recognizing that these two parallel processes feed each other, it could however go further in the analysis of their common characteristics. These do not refer only or even first in their common origin, the explosion of the proletariat, especially as the social origins are diverse in both populations concerned. The common originality of these two processes is that they participate in both the Wake passions, to use the title of the book by Pierre Hassner just published by Gallimard and which Telos has already referred.
Hassner still quoting his master Raymond Aron who wrote: “those who believe that the people will follow their interests rather than their passions did not understand the twentieth century.” Hassner and adds “nor the twenty-first.” Or, more often, in a dialectic of opposites, passions oppose passions. In our country, as in our continent, this awakening passions occurs first today by the systemic opposition between these two movements are radical Islamism and identity nationalism. Let us add that this double phenomenon, is a European phenomenon to say the Western underdeveloped dimension in the work of Kepel. But this clash of passions, in the context of our societies has a real threat to civil peace. So in those with Kepel does not speak, because this is not about those who do adhere to any of these negative passions, hot and dangerous, it is important to be aware of the current situation and try to correct before it is too late.
Then it is to revive and reinvigorate and influence to cooled passions but positive that match the humanist and rationalist values: freedom, brotherhood, tolerance, pluralism, solidarity, secularism, the equality between men and women and, in general, the Human Rights; Briefly the values that our Western history has occurred and to which our citizens are most attached. In sum, rather the defense of civil peace that replication of the Battle of Poitiers!
But such a revival should take more rest on a better understanding of the phenomenon which is the main subject of the book by Gilles Kepel. We would like to know more about the development and the influence of Salafism today, the complexity of its relations with jihadism, the state of the secularization of the population of Muslim origin, degree of integration in French society. Kepel laments itself, rightly, that we have left a well collapse once covered field of study in France. Without knowing how to act well? From this point of view the book by Gilles Kepel is a successful example of what to do.
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