Jardin Antoine - Terror in France: the rise of jihad in the west

TERROR IN FRANCE

PRINCETON STUDIES IN MUSLIM POLITICS

Dale F. Eickelman and Augustus Richard Norton, Series Editors

A list of titles in this series can be found at the back of the book.

THE RISE OF JIHAD IN THE WEST

GILLES KEPEL
With Antoine Jardin

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright 2015 by Editions GALLIMARD, Paris

English language copyright 2017 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press,

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New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,

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First published under the title Terreur dans lHexagone: Gense du Djihad franais.

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All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-0-691-17484-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959947

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Sabon LT Std

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

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In memoriam Julien Jalaledin Weiss
and
Wladimir Glassmann,
who died together with the Syria we cherished

From Flash Infos, Communiqu sur lattaque bnie de Paris contre la France croise (Communiqu on the blessed attack in Paris against Crusader France), 2 Safar 1437 (November 15, 2015; translated from Arabic and transcribed verbatim)

In the name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the Very Merciful.

Allah the Most High has said: and they that their fortresses would defend protect them from Allah. But Allah came upon them from where they had not expected, and He cast terror into their hearts. They were demolishing their houses with their own hands and the hands of the believers. So take warning, O people of vision. Surah 59, verse 2.

In a blessed attack whose causes Allah has facilitated, a group of believers, of soldiers of the Caliphate, to whom Allah gives power and victory, has taken as its target the capital of abominations and perversion, the one that carries the banner of the Cross in Europe, Paris.

Eight brothers wearing explosive vests and assault rifles took as targets places carefully chosen in advance in the heart of the French capital, the Stade de France during a soccer match between two Crusader countries France and Germany which the imbecile of France Franois Hollande was attending, the Bataclan where hundreds of idolaters had gathered in a celebration of perversity as well as other targets in the tenth, eleventh, and eighteenth arrondissements, and did so simultaneously. Paris trembled beneath their feet and its streets became narrow for them. The toll of these attacks was at least 200 Crusaders and even more wounded, the praise and the merit belong to Allah.

Allah helped our brothers and granted them what they hoped for (martyrdom)they triggered their explosive belts in the middle of these infidels after having exhausted their ammunition. May Allah accept them among the martyrs and allow us to join them. And France and those who follow its path must know that they remain the principal targets of the Islamic State and they will continue to smell the odor of death for having taken the leadership of the Crusade, having dared to insult our Prophet, having boasted that they were fighting Islam in France and striking Muslims in the land of the Caliphate with their airplanes that have been of no benefit to them in the malodorous streets of Paris. This attack is only the beginning of the storm and a warning for those who want to meditate on it and learn from it.

Allah is the greatest.

Now it is to Allah that all power belongs, and to His Messenger, and to the believers, but the hypocrites do not know. Surah 63, verse 8.

CONTENTS

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Between the attack on Charlie Hebdos offices in Paris on January 7, 2015, and the attack on an elderly French Catholic priest named Jacques Hamel, who was assassinated as he was celebrating mass in his church in Normandy on July 26, 2016, 239 persons of all nationalities and religious denominations were killed by jihadist terrorists in France. Included in this number are the 130 people murdered on November 13, 2015, in the attacks at the Stade de France, in the streets of Paris, and at the Bataclan music hallthe worst single massacre of French civilians since the one committed by the Nazis in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane during World War II. France was the first victim of this new Islamist terrorism during the second decade of the twenty-first century, but Belgium was also struck, notably in March 2016, with the suicide attacks on Brussels National Airport and the Maelbeek metro stationwhich serve the European Unions institutions. In addition, Denmark and Germany were attacked, as 2016 ended with Tunisian jihadist Anis Amri driving his black truck into the Berlin Kurfrstendam Christmas market on December 19, killing twelve, as a reminder of the attack in Nice that had killed eighty-six on Bastille Day. That first truck was whiteblack and white are the colors of the flag of ISIS, which claimed both attacks. Europe, seen by the jihadists as the Wests soft underbelly, was the prime target of this third-generation jihadism. Starting in 2005, this form of jihad spread after the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, failed to mobilize the worlds Muslim masses.

The United States has remained a tempting target of this new wave of jihadism, as was shown by the attacks committed in the name of radical Islamism in San Bernardino and, especially, in Orlando, at a gay nightclub called The Pulse, on June 12, 2016just a day before the assassination of two French police officers by a jihadist in Magnanville, near Paris. The explicit objective of these multiple attacks in the West is to provoke reprisals targeting Muslims living in Europe and the United States. Such reprisals would, in the jihadists imagination, cause Muslims to view themselves as victims of Islamophobia and would rally all Muslims together under the jihadists banner, triggering religious war that would ultimately lead to the destruction of the West and the worldwide triumph of jihad. Such is the jihadists dream, but they are far from realizing it, owing to the calm resolve of European societies, which have avoided conflating the Muslim population as a whole with jihadists trying to take that community hostage.

Nonetheless, the electorates exasperation has been reflected in growing support for far-right and populist candidates campaigning on ethnic and cultural issues. The rise of Marine Le Pen and the National Front in France, of the Alternativ fr Deutschland in Germany, and of Geert Wilderss party in Holland (which wants to ban the Quran), as well as the success of far-right groups in Austria and Denmark (which are at the center of governing coalitions pursuing policies hostile to immigrants and to Islam), have been in large part fueled by jihadist attacks on European soilattacks committed mainly by young Muslims who were born and brought up in Europe and who are citizens of European countries. The election of Donald Trump, who promised during his campaign to prevent Muslims from entering the United States and to enact a government registry of Muslims, has galvanized these European right-wing, identitarian parties that are battling not only against immigration and Islam but also against the European Union and for the reaffirmation of a national identity that seems to them to be their sole protection against the anomie felt by a white lower middle class disoriented by a globalization that also threatens its jobs and its way of life. These groups feel that traditional European identities are being submerged both by migrationswhich the far right calls the Great Replacementfrom the southern and eastern Mediterranean region and by transfers of sovereignty to a European Union that is perceived as dysfunctional, bureaucratic, dominated by the business world, and favoring outsourcing and consequent unemployment.