Facing Terrorism In France

From 2015, Europe was hit by a new wave of terrorist attacks, coordinated or supported by an international Islamist organization (ISIS) but sometimes also perpetrated by citizens of the targeted country: the attacks on Paris, Brussels, London, Manchester, Nice and Barcelona probably attracted most attention but the most dramatic were perpetrated in Paris, in January and November 2015. These events shook the foundations of French society not only because of their magnitude but also because of the symbolic nature of the targets. Whilst in January, the targets were carefully selected as emblematic of France (the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the police forces, the Jewish community) and of European liberal values (journalists and cartoonists), in November the victims ordinary people enjoying music, sports and restaurants. The book offers a unique interdisciplinary investigation into the complex responses of French society: from the individual level (survivors of the Bataclan attack, emotional citizens paying homage to the victims, French Muslims) to the meso level of civic association and web communities, and the macro level of the State and public opinion.

From 2015, Europe was hit by a new wave of terrorist attacks, coordinated or supported by an international Islamist organization (ISIS) but sometimes also perpetrated by citizens of the targeted country: the attacks on Paris, Brussels, London, Manchester, Nice and Barcelona probably attracted most attention but the most dramatic were perpetrated in Paris, in January and November 2015. These events shook the foundations of French society not only because of their magnitude but also because of the symbolic nature of the targets. Whilst in January, the targets were carefully selected as emblematic of France (the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the police forces, the Jewish community) and of European liberal values (journalists and cartoonists), in November the victims ordinary people enjoying music, sports and restaurants. The book offers a unique interdisciplinary investigation into the complex responses of French society: from the individual level (survivors of the Bataclan attack, emotional citizens paying homage to the victims, French Muslims) to the meso level of civic association and web communities, and the macro level of the State and public opinion.

The virulent new brand of Islamic extremism threatening the West In November 2015, ISIS terrorists massacred scores of people in Paris with coordinated attacks on the Bataclan concert hall, cafés and restaurants, and the national sports stadium. On Bastille Day in 2016, an ISIS sympathizer drove a truck into crowds of vacationers at the beaches of Nice, and two weeks later an elderly French priest was murdered during morning Mass by two ISIS militants. Here is Gilles Kepel's explosive account of the radicalization of a segment of Muslim youth that led to those attacks—and of the failure of governments in France and across Europe to address it. It is a book everyone in the West must read. Terror in France shows how these atrocities represent a paroxysm of violence that has long been building. The turning point was in 2005, when the worst riots in modern French history erupted in the poor, largely Muslim suburbs of Paris after the accidental deaths of two boys who had been running from the police. The unrest—or "French intifada"—crystallized a new consciousness among young French Muslims. Some have fallen prey to the allure of "war of civilizations" rhetoric in ways never imagined by their parents and grandparents. This is the highly anticipated English edition of Kepel's sensational French bestseller, first published shortly after the Paris attacks. Now fully updated to reflect the latest developments and featuring a new introduction by the author, Terror in France reveals the truth about a virulent new wave of jihadism that has Europe as its main target. Its aim is to divide European societies from within by instilling fear, provoking backlash, and achieving the ISIS dream—shared by Europe's Far Right—of separating Europe's growing Muslim minority community from the rest of its citizens.

Though Britain and France have faced a similar threat from Islamist terrorism in the years following September 11 2001, they have often responded in different ways to the challenges it posed. This groundbreaking work offers the first in-depth comparative analysis of counterterrorist policies and operations in these two leading liberal democracies. Challenging the widely held view that the nature of a state's counterterrorist policies depends on the threat it is facing, Foley suggests that such an argument fails to explain why France has mounted more invasive police and intelligence operations against Islamist terrorism than Britain and created a more draconian anti-terrorist legal regime. Drawing on institutional and constructivist theories, he develops a novel theoretical framework that puts counterterrorism in its organisational, institutional and broader societal context. With particular appeal to students and specialists of International Relations and Security Studies, this book will engage readers in the central debates surrounding anti-terrorist policy.

The violent attacks on journalists at Charlie Hebdo and shoppers in a Jewish supermarket in Paris in January 2015 left seventeen dead and shocked the world. In the aftermath, the public struggles with unsettling questions: What is the cost of free expression? Do the world’s major cities embrace multiculturalism? Is the broad range of proposed new security measures too intrusive? After the Paris Attacks brings together leading scholars and journalists to respond to this tragedy and to debate how we can reach a safer and saner future. In this timely book, experts from fields such as law, political science, and philosophy grapple with the vital challenges of balancing security, justice, and tolerance, and offer astute and penetrating insights into how the world can best respond to these challenges.

Though Britain and France have faced a similar threat from Islamist terrorism in the years following September 11 2001, they have often responded in different ways to the challenges it posed. This groundbreaking work offers the first in-depth comparative analysis of counterterrorist policies and operations in these two leading liberal democracies. Challenging the widely held view that the nature of a state's counterterrorist policies depends on the threat it is facing, Foley suggests that such an argument fails to explain why France has mounted more invasive police and intelligence operations against Islamist terrorism than Britain and created a more draconian anti-terrorist legal regime. Drawing on institutional and constructivist theories, he develops a novel theoretical framework that puts counterterrorism in its organisational, institutional and broader societal context. With particular appeal to students and specialists of International Relations and Security Studies, this book will engage readers in the central debates surrounding anti-terrorist policy--

This fascinating report was issued in March 2019. The volume of extreme Islamic-inspired attacks in France in 2012-2016, the hundreds of French foreign fighters supporting the Islamic State's ruthless violence in the Levant, and the low level of assimilation to mainstream French culture by young French Muslims have quickly become major concerns for the security and stability of France. The French Republic is a European sovereign nation with inclusive immigration policies, an active proponent of full assimilation for minorities and immigrants, and a non-participant in the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. The French government and the nation's citizens therefore did not anticipate this spate of jihadist terrorism. This thesis investigates the large-scale terror attacks, including the backgrounds and motivations of the perpetrators, and then assesses relevant analytical explanations by prominent French scholars of the increase in religion-inspired violence in France in 2012-2016. These scholars' views differ on the origins of radicalization and terrorist behavior, and notably in regard to the role of religion in terms of social alienation and marginalization. By neutralizing the disruptive message at the source, deradicalizing the French prison system, and properly censoring the online channels of manpower recruitment, the French government can enhance its ability to prevent the infection of today's youth by this radical doctrine of salvation.This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.A new era of terror in France began in 2012 when a French citizen with ethnic ties to North Africa went on a killing spree in the south of the country. The subsequent sequence of attacks illustrated a new and more sinister level of religious-inspired violence in the French homeland. Homegrown extremists, born and raised or naturalized and inculcated into French culture and society conducted these attacks. These attacks, exceptionally violent and claimed by known terrorist organizations, sent a shockwave of terror into the heart of the French Republic. Al Qaeda (AQ) and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) enthusiastically applauded and emphatically claimed these unprecedented and sadistically vicious attacks. The violence escalated dramatically in January 2015, when three French citizens conducted a well-coordinated assault against the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. Each of these Frenchmen-radical extremists-fought to his death against local law enforcement. Later that same year, the violence escalated yet again. The terrorist attacks on the Stade de France and the Bataclan Concert Hall in Paris represented a new level of violence, one not witnessed in France since the Nazi occupation of World War II. The violence reached its zenith in 2016 with the catastrophic attack directed against the crowds gathering to celebrate Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in the southern French city of Nice. When all these large-scale and religiously inspired terrorist attacks concluded, jihadists were responsible for taking the lives of more than 247 people and injuring more than 800. These homegrown terrorists, responsible for the large-scale jihadi violence in France from 2012 to 2016, represented a new demographic of terrorism, a younger population of French citizens responsible for committing Islamic-inspired violence against their own government.

This book examines radical Jihad terrorism in contemporary France and sheds light on the vicious circle of violence, based on reciprocity. Building upon the theoretical heritage of Pierre Bourdieu, the book develops a methodology and a concept of the vicious circle of violence in France, based on three pillars: actors, dynamics, and effects. Discussing the development of global terrorism between the 9/11 attacks and the launch of the European front against global terror in Spain and Great Britain, the book goes on to analyze why France has not been attacked during the 2000s and why it, in turn, became a primary target of terrorist attacks during the 2010s, with a special emphasis on communication theory and the concept of reciprocity. Studying these attacks on the international level, the book offers insights into violent acts of revenge of the radical home-grown jihadists for the French military interventions in four Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries, especially Libya and Syria. It further investigates the following growing radicalization of the Muslim community on the national level as a reason for terrorist attacks. Finally, the book sheds light on the reactions from within the French military to these developments, before closing with a presentation of the new political context after the 2022 presidential and legislative elections. Based on empirical evidence and a theoretical background this book will appeal to students and scholars of political science and international relations, as well as policy-makers and practitioners interested in a better understanding of terrorism, French politics, and communication theory.