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The Radicalization of Islam, or the Islamization of Radicalism?
You asked good questions about the report I mentioned on Monday, the one titled “A French Islam is Possible.” I need a break from 24/7 election coverage, and I reckon all of you do, too, so today I’ll translate more of it and (I hope) answer your questions.
Methodology. A few of you wanted to know more about the study’s methodology, and particularly whether the researchers had excluded those under the age of majority, potentially skewing the results. Answer: no.
Here’s the key graph about their methodology — I’m translating a bit loosely because the original text has footnotes in it; I’ve moved them to the body of the text:
This survey is unusual because our aim was to study France’s total Muslim population, not just Muslim immigrants. The general census conducted by [France’s national research body] INSEE cannot ask questions about religion, and traditionally [private] pollsters, when they interview Muslims in France, focus on immigrant neighborhoods. We’ve developed a methodology that aims to survey a broad cross-section of the population of metropolitan France: 15,459 people aged 15 and over responded [the interviews were conducted by telephone]; of these, a specific sample of Muslims, or of Muslim culture, was represented by 1,029 individuals, of whom 874 who defined themselves as “Muslims.” We cross-checked the representativeness of the sample by matching it with known data about gender, socioeconomic status, and such geographic information as administrative region, urban unit size, and the proportion of immigrants in the community. We adhered to standard scientific and ethical principles of polling by sample, and encountered some of the same challenges: The average margin of error for a poll of a sample of 1,000 people is about 3 percent; when analyzing a subgroup within the same sample, the margin increases increases significantly and may be between 6 and 8 percent. The results reflect the state of opinion at the time the study was done, not a prediction.
… There are, obviously, other polling methods, which could lead to different results. However, this methodology seemed to us the best choice for producing reliable results. In the interests of transparency, we’ve published all the technical procedures we used at each step, thus allowing users of different statistics software to verify and replicate our results.
So my guess is that this will probably stand up pretty well to efforts to replicate the results, but of course we’ll only know that once other people have done that. The authors note that their survey is distinctive,
because it includes both the population that describes itself as “Muslim” and those who don’t, but who have at least one parent who does. The latter group constituted 15 percent of our sub-sample. These people have direct Muslim ancestry, but position themselves, subjectively, outside of the religion.
They note that 7.5 percent of the sub-sample (from here on, all figures refer to the sub-sample) have no Muslim parentage at all. These represent converts.
Of their sample, 50 percent were French by birth, 24 percent were naturalized citizens, and 26 percent were foreign nationals.
The reason they asked about parentage was, they say, because “the typology allows us to determine latent dimensions of religiosity.” Of course, they note, this is only one of many possible typologies. The authors thus suggest not attaching too much “absolute weight” to the classification, but rather just seeing in the results the broad structure of opinions and attitudes. Broadly, they suggest, there are six categories of attitude within the sub-sample (here’s that French way of thinking again — once you know the pattern, you see it everywhere):
- 18 percent: Individuals who are very estranged from the religion. They favor French-style secularism, have no desire for greater religious expression in their daily lives, be it at work or school, don’t want to have halal food in their cafeterias, and agree with the statement that French secularism allows the free practice of religion.
- 28 percent: Individuals who share the same values. They agree that polygamy should be strictly forbidden and that the laws of the Republic are above religious law. This group is distinguished by a strong commitment to eating halal food. Some of its members have a favorable view of expressing religious sentiment in the workplace. [NB: Expressing religious sentiment in the workplace is now forbidden under French law — people can wear a small, inconspicuous cross, but not a nun’s habit, a kippah, a turban, or a veil. Since the law went into effect, it seems to me I’ve seen more people wearing a small, inconspicuous cross, but it’s possible I just didn’t notice it before.]
- 13 percent: These are individuals who are more ambivalent. They are opposed to the niqab and polygamy, but they challenge the idea that French-style secularism allows the free practice of religion. Without being radical, they are critical of the Republican model, or at least, some of the ways it has been applied. A large minority of members of this group would like to express their religious sentiments in the workplace.
- 12 percent: This group distinguishes itself from the previous one by largely accepting French-style secularism. However, they’re massively critical of the interdiction of polygamy in France, even as they absolutely condemn the niqab (which is rejected by 95 percent of the members of this group). This category includes many Muslim foreigners who live in France.
- 13 percent: This category is comprised of individuals with authoritarian traits. Some 40 percent in this category favor the wearing of the niqab and polygamy, challenge French secularism, and believe religious law should take priority over the laws of the Republic. The vast majority of this group do not believe religion belongs to the private sphere, and thus are in the main in favor of the expression of religious sentiment in the workplace
- 15 percent: This group is different from the previous one because, while it’s also comprised of people with a “hard” vision of religious practice, this group sees faith as a private matter, not a public one. Almost all its members approve of the niqab; nearly 50 percent oppose French-style secularism and look favorably upon expressing religious sentiment in the workplace. [In other words, they adhere to a “harder” version of Islam, as the authors term it, but they are not authoritarian.]
These six groups, the authors say, have “three different stories.”
Group 1 (categories 1 and 2, or 46 percent of French Muslims): They are completely secularized, and on the path to achieving integration in the value system of contemporary France and contributing to its evolution with their religious distinctiveness. They don’t deny their religion, which they often identify with halal food, and they clearly practice their religion more regularly than the national average.
Group 2 (Categories 3 and 4): This is more of a composite group, and clearly in the middle of the other two. Proud of being Muslim, those in this group are attached to the possibility of expressing their religion in the public sphere. Very pious (the Sharia is very important to them, so long as it doesn’t conflict with the laws of the Republic), they often look favorably on the expression of religion in the workplace, and have for the most part adopted the norms of halal as the definition of “being Muslim.” They clearly reject the niqab and polygamy, and accept French-style secularism.
Group 3 (categories 5 and 6): This is the most problematic group. In it are Muslims whose value system is clearly opposed to the values of the Republic. The majority of them are young, unskilled, and often unemployed. They live in the densely-populated suburbs around major cities. They’re defined by the way they use Islam to symbolize rebellion through conservatism. If some believe that French secularism allows them freely to practice their religion, or believe faith to be a private matter, one can nonetheless read in their attitude a retreat from, and a separation from, the rest of society’s ideas about the meaning of French-style secularism. [NB: I’m throughout translating laïcité as “French-style secularism.”] Some 28 percent of French Muslims may be placed in this category, which comprises both authoritarian attitudes and ones that we might term “secessionist.” Islam is a way for them to affirm their marginal status in French society.
Now that we’ve put everyone in their proper category, the interesting part starts. First, the effect of age. There are fewer Group 1 members among the younger generation: More than half of the over-age-40 respondents are in Group 1. But only a third of the under-40s are. And the Group 3 members only constitute 20 percent of the over-40s — but they’re nearly 50 percent of the youngest cohort. Group 2 members, by contrast, are more stably distributed among age brackets. To put it simply, younger Muslims are more radical than older ones.
“It’s not possible,” write the authors,
to check, statistically if there’s an age effect, rather than a generational effect [my emphasis], but this is the most plausible hypothesis. The mechanism seems to involve an intensification of religious identity among the younger cohorts (compared to their elders when they were the same age). The alternative hypothesis requires us to imagine that over the course of their lives, people of Muslim culture in France become less rigorous in their relationship to religion. Although this hypothesis can’t be rejected a priori, it seems unlikely in light of other published work on the subject.
Next the authors describe the effect of socio-economic status on these categories. In short, the higher it is, the more likely the respondents were to be in Group 1. Group 3 members were apt to be unemployed or working-class.
“Age and class together,” they write, “allow us to predict the likelihood of authoritarian religious attitudes among young Muslims who live in France.” Then they note, with emphasis: This relationship is not specific to young Muslims who live in densely-populated areas. It is also found among young people who define themselves as Christian or without religion. It is expressed by other opinions and behaviors instead of Islamic identitarianism.
So with that sentence, the authors wade into Le Big Debate in France — although notably, they wade into it after looking at the data, not before. And what is that debate? The debate is whether what we’re seeing in France represents the radicalization of Islam or the Islamization of radicalism.
This post is already very long, and I don’t want to overwhelm you, so I won’t go into all the details of this debate, but in brief: You may recall that a while ago I posted a link to an interview with Gilles Kepel, one of France’s better-known experts on Islam and the Arab world and the author of Terror in the Hexagon: Genesis of the French Jihad.
Kepel believes we are seeing the radicalization of Islam:
In the often-hysterical debate over the origins of ISIL-inspired “bottom-up” terrorism seen in the Nov. 2015 Paris attacks, and echoed by the San Bernardino massacre, a leading French intellectual refuses to let either radical Islam or Western elites off the hook.
Both must share part of the blame, says Gilles Kepel, internationally recognized expert on the Arab world and the politics of Islam in Europe, for laying the fertile ground that has enabled the rise of “3G” or third-generation jihad: born alongside YouTube, and with the decline of second-generation “top-down” satellite TV-driven terror organizations, like al-Qaeda. …
“Behind the jihadist eruption, lies the entrenchment of Salafism … the most radical elements of which, their eyes fixed on Syria and Daesh, are aiming for the destruction of Europe through civil war,” Kepel tells Quartz in an interview from Paris, where he is professor of political science at Sciences Po. …
.. Still, the journey to fighting for the “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq, and subsequently returning to commit terrorist acts of horrifying violence on European soil cannot be simply attributed to an adolescent crisis fueled by cyber recruiters. Scathing though he is about the failure of France’s power elites to create a more inclusive society for the children of post-colonial immigration, and young people of all backgrounds, Kepel refutes the “Islam has nothing to do with this” argument by detailing the calculated and alarming surge in radical Islamic separatism exemplified by Salafism.
This obscurantist strain calling for a return to “original” Islam was exported from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, then launched in France by its neo-purist ideologues with heightened zealotry from 2005. The “new wave” Islamists refusing to shake women’s hands, fetishizing the full-body covering veil, and banning sport and music, seized the opportunity after the conservative Muslim Brotherhood was sidelined for its perceived failure to control the spectacularly violent youth riots around public housing projects across the country.
Having documented the transformation of many banlieues into separate ethnic, religious, consumer and cultural identity spaces created by Salafist radicals, Halal entrepreneurs and colluding politicians, Kepel wades directly into a high-stakes politico-cultural battle by taking aim at this neo-fundamentalist branch of Islam and its detrimental effects on the cohesion of multi-ethnic, multi-cultural French society. …
Now, contrast his views with those of Olivier Roy, another one of France’s better-known experts on Islam and the Arab world and Kepel’s great rival. While of course he recognizes that Islam, as a religion, has something to do with what we’re seeing, he believes, basically, that if these people weren’t embracing Islamic radicalism, they’d be embracing some other kind of radicalization:
The rallying cry of these youth is opportunistic: Today it is the Islamic State; yesterday, they were with al Qaeda; before that, in 1995, they were subcontractors for the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, or they practiced the nomadism of personal jihad, from Bosnia to Afghanistan, by way of Chechnya. Tomorrow they will fight under another banner, so long as combat death, age, or disillusion do not empty their ranks.
There is no third, fourth, or nth generation of jihadis. Since 1996, we have been confronted with a very stable phenomenon: the radicalization of two categories of French youth — second-generation Muslims and native converts. The essential problem for France, therefore, is not the caliphate in the Syrian desert, which will disappear sooner or later, like an old mirage that has become a nightmare. The problem is the revolt of these youth. And the real challenge is to understand what these youth represent: whether they are the vanguard of an approaching war or, on the contrary, are just a rumbling of history.
I haven’t cited enough of their work to really let you see why they take the positions they do, but if it interests you, both have written about this widely and it’s easy to read more.
Their disagreement isn’t just an academic squabble. It really matters — it goes to the heart of the way the West understands Islamist extremism, and has important implications when we ask ourselves what our policy response ought to be. Here’s how The Washington Post characterized the debate:
Roy says that we should stop looking for religious or cultural explanations, given that only a tiny fraction of European Muslims have been drawn to such extremism. He also refutes the idea that racism or discrimination is what radicalized Muslims in European societies. If this were the case, he argues, why do a substantial number of white European converts join groups such as the Islamic State? If these converts were brought up outside the Muslim faith, how can we blame “Muslim culture” for their radicalization?
Instead, Roy argues that these terrorists are engaged in a generational revolt — much as when a handful of angry young Europeans in the 1970s turned to left-wing terrorist groups such as the Red Brigades and the Red Army Faction. According to Roy, today’s nihilists are instead turning to a warped version of Islam as the best way of rebelling against society. They simply use the promise of paradise to justify their actions after being manipulated by extremist organizations. …
… Kepel thinks that the social, economic and political marginalization of French-born Muslims helped create what he calls the “third generation of jihad” — those who emerged between 2005 and 2015. Their marginalization has pushed them toward extreme forms of Islam, including Salafism, a highly conservative version of Islam imported from the Middle East with the help of Saudi Arabian petrodollars. Kepel thinks that one cannot separate violent jihadism from the nonviolent forms of Salafism, and stresses the importance of such religious beliefs in creating the conditions for being drawn to terrorism.
Soon this debate went the way of all academic feuds:
Early this year, Kepel openly mocked Roy’s “Islamization of radicalism” concept in TV and radio interviews. In a March article for the left-leaning newspaper Libération, he accused Roy of being “ignorant of social realities.” Roy responded a few weeks later in the pages of the bestselling magazine L’Obs, claiming that Kepel was waging a war of egos to secure research funding and comparing him to Eugène de Rastignac, an opportunistic money-grubber in Balzac novels.
Of course he did.
Anyway, that’s the debate. And now you know a little more about the survey, its methodology, their data, and what it suggests. So what do you think we should conclude from it so far? Does it support Kepel, or does it favor Roy? Why do you think so?
To be continued …
... and funded entirely by my generous readers. Coming up soon: I’m going to interview some of the people who are really getting their hands dirty with this — French security officials. I’m so curious to learn more about how they view this problem. I’ll bet their perspective is different from the academics. I’ll report, with your help. THANK YOU!
I think the problem is a function of numbers. A small Muslim population could be perceived as a colorful diversity addition, accepted, non-threatening and welcome to remain highly religious within its own enclave, even tolerate an ideological extremist sliver which would not have enough co-religionist cover to be a threat. But millions with a large contingent of uneducated in large urban clusters is a problem whether there is just youth alienation with a radical islamasist veneer or a deeply held religious radicalization.
Western nations need to have some humility and their cultural transformation powers and carrying capacities.
Thank you, an excellent read.
Following 9/11 I made an attempt to understand what was happening. Prior to that day, I saw such terror as being mostly PLO related, and not actually based in religion.
I purchased Thomas Friedman’s “Searching for the Roots of 9/11 ”
Then go into Bernard Lewis. And followed with a somewhat in-depth study of jihad in the Koran, and how abrogation applies.
It is a complex problem, no easy answers. Seems to be an interesting thing that many of the ISIS fighters are not all that knowledgeable on the Koran or Islam itself, but seem to be easily manipulated through the religion. What Islam requires of a believer does seem to counter rational thought and reason, and as there are no differing theological groups within Islam, that Islam itself is not forced to be competitive in its theology.
But in the end, it is rooted in Islam. Other radical ideologies, such as Maoism, morphed and changed and had different expressions by different groups.
Very interesting debate. Thank you for this translation and summary, Claire. I suspect that, as with so many complex social and cultural phenomena, it can’t be accounted for by one explanation. There is truth in both arguments. Still, I find myself more persuaded by Keppel. The historical pattern of Islam cannot be ignored. The imperative to wage jihad has never been abrogated in more traditional Islam; it has only been put on hold at times of weakness in the Dar al-Islam. When the Dar al-Harb seems to be weakening, on the other hand, and Islam seems to be growing in power, the reemergence of jihad is inevitable. We are seeing it play out before our eyes.
Claire,
But you then say:
Llimiting to 15+ still skews the results.
Your prior post said:
That reflects the 874 whereas the 1029 number may be more relevant.
Did they compensate for differential rates of phone ownership, number of adults in households, etc?
Thank you, Claire. One of the frustrating things about studies like this is that the methodology is given short shrift. One never knows if the conductors of the poll really understand their business.
One of the big problems with studies like this is that the researchers usually can’t answer questions such as “who didn’t respond.” As France doesn’t collect religion-based census questions, there’s no way of knowing if the younger members of the target population didn’t just wad up the survey and pitch it. A lower than expected number of young respondents could be that, or it could be there are fewer of them that were believed.
Good work on your part in any case.
I think so — that’s compassed under ‘standard techniques of polling,” I would guess. I don’t remember reading that specifically in the text body, but it may be in the annex, I’ll check for you later today. I don’t know whether excluding the under-15s would result in a very different set of responses: I wouldn’t be surprised if polling under-15s pushed the results back in a more “liberal” direction, since kids that young tend to be more under the sway of their parents. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if it pushed the results that other direction, since they also tend to imitate big brothers and sisters. But I think it was considered methodologically problematic to poll younger respondents, or perhaps unethical — that’s sort of the way that was worded.
It was a telephone survey, so that helps them to figure out what the rate of non-response was.
They would only know that there is a 30% no-response rate over all or in a given area code, etc. That would not uncover whether the Muslim response rate was much lower and the non-Muslim higher.
Oops. I read that but didn’t process it.
How does this demographic fit into the pattern of European religious or nationalist radicalism?
Meaning they’re obviously not of the same class as the Baader-Meinhof (or the Red Brigades?) but what about other expressions going back before the War all the way to the Anabaptists?
Similar or different?
I don’t know if it even makes sense to speak of socioeconomic analogues in the late medieval era: So much was different about daily life and the structure of society at that time that I can’t really imagine it being anything but a vain effort to impose really modern concepts on societies that just … were not modern. What do you think?
But why are you so quick to dismiss the idea that they come from the same class as B-H or the Red Brigades?
B-M were middle class children of privilege. This crowd is not.
Wrt earlier patterns, I’m just wondering if cultures express marginality in the same ways over time – Iow are there recurring memes (society corrupt, destruction/ purification by an elect group, subculture with its own laws, martyrdom…) and indicator demographics (young men, though that’s perhaps a universal).
Yes, I think. The medievalist Norman Cohn certainly thought so. He wrote The Pursuit of the Millennium, which is an absolutely riveting study of millenarian cult movements in Europe. Chapter 3 is called “The Messianism of the Disoriented Poor.” From the dust jacket:
I don’t know whether all cultures express marginality in the same ways over time, but certainly they seem to in Europe.
So do European jihadis fit this mold (in which case it’s a startling argument that integration has gone further than we assume) or are they different in essence? If different how?
It’s a niggling question – because the historical circumstances of each iteration are so specific and different – but are they responding in a European manner, despite the trappings, to European circumstances, or are they responding utterly differently? Or perhaps it’s just that the Muslim/Arab world and Europe are essentially not that different.
Just that gives Kepel a leg up over Roy. The 9/11 perpetrators were just about all from comfortable circumstances. One would be tempted to call them dilettantes, except for their suicidal dedication.
The “self-radicalizers” are a little more Joe Six-pack than their predecessors.
That’s the question I’m asking, and it’s the crux of the debate between Roy and Kepel. As with most of these academic feuds, the two points of view aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive: European jihadis can be both European and jihadis at once. Clearly they do have elements in common with other radical movements — they’re not reacting utterly differently to social dislocation than Europeans have in the past. But they are reacting differently enough, and they have enough in common with Islamic radicals the globe around, that it seems absurd to say, “This is just another European radical movement, same as the old ones.”
The answer can be “both” — and it almost certainly is.
Yes, probably both. But let’s parse it:
Are they acting similarly, in significant ways, to jihadis in Muslim countries? Are there signfiicant differences?
My feeling is – again – both.
There are suicide bombers and random carnage carried out in places like Turkey and (endlessly) Afghanistan and Pakistan (and Iraq, and Syria, and…)…and some of them are efforts to terrorise and shake the hold of the State. But it seems more focused on specific outcomes (take that position, destroy that border crossing) than it does in the West.
Is this just a matter of degree, and of circumstance, or does it show a different view of the battle field and what they want to/can win or lose?
The 9/11 attackers were (thank you Percival) the equivalent of the Baader-Meinhof – well off middle class boys who perceived themselves (?) as being from the heart of the polity they were attacking. (I think it was about the Sauds…if the US wasn’t a Saudi ally NYC would not have registered.)
May I just add that I would like to be compared to a character from Balzac?
I don’t think that’s true. Islamist movements from their earliest iterations defined themselves in opposition to the West. Qutb’s complaints go way deeper than the US-Saudi alliance, for example.
Sure, but not the West in isolation. The West as it interacts withe Muslim world. That’s the context that gives this opposition meaning.
I’d shoot for a character from Dumas père and get stuck with one from Voltaire.
I’m not sure they can be disambiguated — where does “the West” end and “industrial and post-industrial modernity” begin? “Westernization” and “modernization” overlap, which is part of the reason people are so conflicted about the West. (Including Westerners.)
I just read wiki on Qutb. Is it just me, or does he sound like a Conservative?
Have they looked at the welfare state and the administrative state’s impact, roll or prevalence relative to French Muslim youth? Do French welfare and employment policies erode opportunities for and motivation to seek low skilled employment? Do these welfare state incentives as Sowell says here and in the UK lead Muslim kids in France to perverse behavior whether rooted in religion, simple cultural or racist hate, or openness to these things? In short do policies remove the consequences for dysfunctional behavior as they do here and in the UK?