“Without betraying our values, let us apply the law forcefully before imagining new systems”

2023-10-15 19:43:06

Again. History seems to inevitably repeat itself. Three years after the assassination of Samuel Paty, Dominique Bernard, professor of literature, was killed by an Islamist terrorist. The traumatic dimension of the event and its repercussions clearly illustrate that society understood that it was not a simple news item.

Indeed, it is neither the volume of the acts, nor their frequency that leads us to see a major social phenomenon in these terrible attacks. It’s a feeling: beyond the terrorists, there is a hostile part of the French population, which does not share the same vision of society, which sometimes goes so far as to justify or even support terrorist acts by despising what represents France.

This feeling is supported by some surveys: in The radical temptation (PUF, 2018), Olivier Galland and Anne Muxel indicate, for example, that a third of Muslim high school students surveyed adhere to ideas “absolutists” (compared to 5% of young Christians), more inclined than other high school students not to totally condemn the attacks which targeted Charlie Hebdo, in 2015. Although this part of the population is a minority, it exists and forms a sort of counter-society.

Ideological war

How to respond to this phenomenon? First of all, the security issue cannot be avoided. It is natural, as the government does, to strengthen the resources of the police and justice. The Minister of the Interior recently announced that 43 attacks had been foiled in recent days: although it is very difficult to counter individual acts, state services manage to contain a very large part of the threats. . Legislative developments have also made it possible to improve the effectiveness of certain measures such as the law of July 30, 2021 relating to the prevention of acts of terrorism and intelligence.

However, public policies targeting only the downstream cannot be enough. There is an ideological and cultural war that must be waged not only against terrorists but also against their more or less direct supporters. Analyzing the trajectories of radicalized individuals or expressing sympathy for them provides avenues for identifying levers for action.

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Attending French schools like Mohammed Mogouchkov, they share a certain conception of Sunni Islam, of Takfirist inspiration. (rigorist practice particularly intolerant towards other religious currents). From modest socio-cultural origins, sometimes from broken families, their school careers are often chaotic. An ideological and cultural void that is not filled by school is expressed: religion then forcefully imposes itself on individuals in search of meaning. After episodes of “petty crime” – with individuals who test the limits of a society which does not always manage to set them – religion allows us to reconnect with a form of self-esteem, a taste for effort. and the work that the school has not managed to transmit.

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