The remains of St. Denis, the patron saint of Paris, who was decapitated in the year 250 during the brutal pagan persecution of Christians, lie north of the French capital in the basilica that bears his name.

The church is historically noteworthy as the first proper work of Gothic architecture, a style influenced by the Crusades. The basilica is now a rarely visited Parisian landmark, lying as it does within the profoundly Islamized enclave of Seine-Saint-Denis.

“You Christians, you kill us,” were the words of the ISIS knifeman who slit the throat of 85-year old Father Jacques Hamel. The elderly priest officiating at the altar of the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray — a mere three kilometres from the centre of Rouen in Normandy — was slain on July 25, as the two terrorists also took nuns hostage. The terrorists were then shot by police.

On August 5, police swept down on a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” [“Allah is the Greatest”] on the Champs-Élysées, the famous central thoroughfare of the capital of France. Video of the arrest shows passers-by: veiled Muslims, tourists, and presumably indigenous French men and women.

Both of these incidents, when aligned with recent mass outrages across France, including the Bataclan Theatre slaughter on November 13, and the mass carnage caused by a jihadist plot in Nice on July 14, point to a startling reality.

Despite the rhetoric by the government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls on removing dual nationality from those guilty of terrorism offences and closing extremist mosques (20 of France’s 2,500 alleged mosques have been closed down to date), the violent consequences of jihadism are a daily reality and concern stalking the heart of most French metropolitan districts.

At 7.5% of the population, Muslims in France make up the highest concentration of Muslims of any country in Europe, according to Pew Research.

For decades, those warning of the inevitable consequences of mass Muslim immigration, during a time in history when Islamic fundamentalist doctrine was on the rise worldwide, have been maligned, prosecuted, imprisoned or assassinated.

With the security infrastructure now proving inadequate to cope with the sheer scale of enthusiasm for religious war amongst those Islamists born in France, and those able to enter the country — thanks to the open border policies of the EU — the threat continues to increase day by day.

Close to the Champs-Élysées, which runs between the Louvre museum and the Arc de Triomphe, lies the official residence of the president of France.

Presently occupied by the Socialist François Hollande, who closely courted the Muslim vote to gain power in 2012, many French people are looking towards the presidential elections scheduled for April and May 2017, to provide a new occupant of the Élysée Palace in the form of Marine Le Pen.

Le Pen leads the Front National, a party with deeply disturbing roots in the form of its anti-Semitic founder Jean-Marie Le Pen (father of Marine Le Pen), who in the wake of the Bataclan attack called for the return of the guillotine.

The form of execution made infamous during the French Revolution preceded successive Republics in France that were rigorously antithetical to the inclusion of religious matters in political affairs.

Until a few years ago, the unique recipe for secularism adopted by the French seemed able to guarantee the assimilation of the country’s burgeoning number of Muslims, something now, by criminal and terrorist activity in the country, proven a resolute failure.

People in France intimately link the ascendancy of the Front National with the increased incidence of terrorism in France, given the rigorous unwelcoming line the party has taken on Islamic immigration.

In response to the Nice massacre, in which a Tunisian resident of France named Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel ploughed a truck into revellers enjoying fireworks, the leader of the Front National called for the resignation of the French Interior Minister.

“In any other country in the world, a minister with a toll as horrendous as Bernard Cazeneuve — 250 dead in 18 months — would have quit,” she added.

Marine Le Pen also went on to excoriate, “the same old solemn declarations,” from France’s present government, which appear to follow every terrorist outrage — a situation that led Le Pen to remark:

“The war against the scourge of fundamentalism hasn’t started, it must now be declared. That is the deep wish of the French, and I will put all my energy so that they are finally heard and the necessary fight is finally undertaken.”

In a telling move, the president of the regional council of Nice, Christian Estrosi, added to the chorus of criticism of the government. He questioned whether, despite being in a state of emergency, France had either the policing numbers or expertise to face its terror threat.

After a cascade of terrorist massacres that began with the slaughter of the staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015, the most terrorism-scarred country in Europe has erupted into successive outpourings of grief. Now, admits Time magazine, this grief is turning into anger.

In order for the Front National to prove successful at next year’s Presidential Elections, it will need to defeat the other right-wing force in France, and survive through two rounds of voting.

The Union pour un mouvement populaire party (UMP) is led by former President Nicolas Sarkozy, who exclaimed after Nice that, “Someone who shoots at French people, someone who kills, someone who wants jihad, does not have a place in France.”

Yet, for many, as the president of France from 2007-12, Sarkozy bears significant responsibility for creating the conditions in which fundamentalism was able to take root and prosper in France.

If Le Pen proves the eventual victor in the next presidential elections in France — a nation increasingly focused on religious affairs, occasioned by the country’s radically altering demography — a significant change in its political direction will undoubtedly arise.

The election results might signal the beginning of the end for laïcité, the long-held French principle of strict prohibition against religious influence in the determination of state policies.

A rising star of the Front National is Marion Marechal-Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s niece, who has stated that, “Christians must stand up to resist Islam.” The 26-year old has also urged her fellow countrymen to join the military adding that, “Either we kill Islamism or it will kill us.”

In response to the Nice massacre, 2,500 young French people have joined the nation’s reserve forces.

A conservative Catholic favouring the “traditional family,” Marion Marechal-Le Pen has repeatedly spoken of “true French” identity, and demanded that Muslims adopt values rooted in Christianity, according to the BBC.

Echoing her niece’s views, Marine Le Pen erupted in fury at the sight of French riot police dragging a priest and his congregation from the church of St Rita in Paris on August 3, prior to its scheduled demolition to make way for a parking lot.

“And what if they built parking lots in the place of Salafist mosques, and not of our churches?” she said.

On August 3, French riot police dragged a priest and his congregation from the church of St Rita in Paris, prior to its scheduled demolition to make way for a parking lot. Front National leader Marine Le Pen said in fury: “And what if they built parking lots in the place of Salafist mosques, and not of our churches?” (Image source: RT video screenshot)

It is not necessary to speculate about the scenes on French streets that would result from similar footage if the same treatment were meted out to an imam and his congregation.

A new focus on religious minority issues in France, in the fraught desire to create some sort of harmonious balance in an increasingly divided nation, seems probable.

How successful such efforts are likely to be, however, remains to be seen.

George Igler, between 2010 and 2016, worked with those facing death for criticizing Islam across Europe.

French sociological research seems to have no new books, articles or ideas about French Muslim radicalization. It is not hard to see why: the few scholars tempted to wander off the beaten path (“terrorists are victims of society, and suffering from racism” and so on) are afraid to be called unpleasant names. In addition, many sociologists share the same Marxist ideology that attributes violent behavior to discrimination and poverty. If some heretics try to explain that terrorists are not automatically victims (of society, of white French males, of whatever) a pack of hounds of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars start baying to lynch them as racists, Islamophobes and bigots.

After the November 2015, terrorist attacks in Paris, Alain Fuchs, president of France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), launched a call for a new project to understand some of the “factors of radicalization” in France.

The project that emerged, “Youth and Radicalism: Religious and Political Factors”, by Olivier Galland and Anne Muxel, was thorough. Their survey is based mainly on a poll conducted by Opinion Way of 7,000 high school students, and was followed by a second “poll” of 1,800 young people (14 to 16 years old). The next phase will apparently include individual and group interviews with young secondary-school students.

Galland and Muxel do not say that their survey is “representative” of all French youth. Muslims high school students are over-represented in the polls, in order to understand what is at stake in this segment of the population.

Their proposal, however, is heretical: it means there is a problem with Muslims.

The preliminary results of this vast study were released at a press conference on March 20. To the question in the study: What are the main factors of radicalization? The answer was: religion.

“We can not deny the ‘religion effect’. Among young Muslims, the religion effect is three times more important than in non-Muslim groups. Four percent of youths of all denominations defend an absolutist vision of religion and apparently adhere to radical ideas; this figure is 12% among young Muslims in our sample. They defend an absolutist view of religion — believing both that there is ‘one true religion’ and that religion explains the creation of the world better than science.”

What about the usual explanations of lack of economic integration, fear of being on welfare, social exclusion and so on?

“A purely economic explanation appears not to be validated. The idea of ​​a ‘sacrificed generation’, tempted by radicalism, is confronted with the feeling of a relatively good integration of these populations. [Young Muslims] appear neither more nor less confident in their future than all other French youths; they believe in their ability to pursue studies after the baccalaureat and to find a satisfactory job.”

These young Muslims recognize that they are not suffering from racism or discrimination. But at the same time, many of them say they “feel” discriminated against anyway. They are not the victims of any racist system — it does not exist — but they are the victims of an ideology of victimization, which claims that they are discriminated against because of race and religion.

“The feeling of being discriminated against is twice as strong in our sample especially among young people of Muslim faith or of foreign origin. To explain the adherence [of young Muslims] to radicalism, we must consider that religious factors are combining with identity issues, and mixing themselves with feelings of victimization and discrimination”.

If Islam is an engine of radicalization, the second powerful engine of radicalization is this dominant ideology of victimization.

“Young Muslims who feel discriminated against adhere more often to radical ideas than those who do not feel discriminated against.”

These preliminary results are more than worrying. Against all sociological evidence, social origin and academic level do not outweigh the effect of religious affiliation. In other words, regardless of a young Muslim’s performance at school and his parents’ profession, he is four times more likely than a young Christian to adhere to radical ideas.

“This strength of the effect of Islam is perhaps the most surprising teaching of this study,” points out Olivier Galland. “This is confirmed in school by school statistics. Whatever their sociology, Muslim youths have an identical propensity to become a radical.”

This study is not the first to bring to light the process of the radicalization of young Muslims in France. It is, however, the first to connect radicalization and the ideology of victimization. Victimization is an excuse offered by the state, by most politicians (right and left) and by the mainstream media. Moreover, not only does the policy of blaming victimization fail to be of any help, but the excuse of victimization is actually fueling terrorism. When, on February 17, 2017, French President François Hollande rushed to visit Théo, a 22-year-old youth who claimed that the police sodomized him with a baton during a confrontation with drug dealers — it appeared later that Theo was not so sure of his accusations against the police. The presidential visit was not helpful. The meeting between President Hollande and Theo sparked three weeks of riots in the suburbs of Paris.

When Emmanuel Macron, the new president of France, states that he is in favor of “positive discrimination” (a €15,000 grant of public money for any company that hires a youth from the suburbs), he is encouraging future jihadists to represent themselves as victims.

When Emmanuel Macron, the new president of France, states that he is in favor of “positive discrimination”, he is encouraging future jihadists to represent themselves as victims. (Image source: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

France has Europe’s largest Muslim community, largest Jewish community, largest Chinese community, and largest Armenian community. The French integration model worked for all those groups except one. A growing percentage of Muslims in France are not accepting the rules that everyone else has accepted. To avoid confrontation, all the politicians from the mainstream political parties and all mainstream media are going along with the myth of victimization. The problem is that this is only fueling more violence, more terrorism and more fantasies of victimization.

Yves Mamou, author and journalist, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.

“We are on the verge of a civil war.” That quote did not come from a fanatic or a lunatic. No, it came from head of France’s homeland security, the DGSI (Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure), Patrick Calvar. He has, in fact, spoken of the risk of a civil war many times. On July 12^th, he warned a commission of members of parliament, in charge of a survey about the terrorist attacks of 2015, about it.

French police shoot dead a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist who murdered 84 people in Nice, France, July 14, 2016. (Image source: Sky News video screenshot)

In May 2016, he delivered almost the same message to another commission of members of parliament, this time in charge of national defense. “Europe,” he said, “is in danger. Extremism is on the rise everywhere, and we are now turning our attention to some far-right movements who are preparing a confrontation”.

What kind of confrontation? “Intercommunity confrontations,” he said — polite for “a war against Muslims.” “One or two more terrorist attacks,” he added, “and we may well see a civil war.”

In February 2016, in front of a senate commission in charge of intelligence information, he said again: ” We are looking now at far-right extremists who are just waiting for more terrorist attacks to engage in violent confrontation”.

No one knows if the truck terrorist, who plowed into the July 14^th Bastille Day crowd in Nice and killed more than 80 people, will be the trigger for a French civil war, but it might help to look at what creates the risk of one in France and other countries, such as Germany or Sweden.

The main reason is the failure of the state.

1. France is at War but the Enemy is Never Named.

France is the main target of repeated Islamist attacks; the more important Islamist terrorist bloodbaths took place at the magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Hypercacher supermarket of Vincennes (2015); the Bataclan Theater, its nearby restaurants and the Stade de France stadium, (2015); the failed attack on the Thalys train; the beheading of Hervé Cornara (2015); the assassination of two policemen in Magnanville in June (2016), and now the truck-ramming in Nice, on the day commemorating the French Revolution of 1789.

Most of those attacks were committed by French Muslims: citizens on their way back from Syria (the Kouachi brothers at Charlie Hebdo), or by French Islamists (Larossi Abballa who killed a police family in Magnanville in June 2016) who later claimed their allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS). The truck killer in Nice was Tunisian but married to a French woman, whith whom he had three children together, and lived quietly in Nice until he decided to murder more than 80 people and wound dozens more.

After each of these tragic episodes President François Hollande refused to name the enemy, refused to name Islamism — and especially refused to name French Islamists — as the enemy of French citizens.

For Hollande, the enemy is an abstraction: “terrorism” or “fanatics”. Even when the president does dare to name “Islamism” the enemy, he refuses to say he will close all Salafist mosques, prohibit the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist organizations in France, or ban veils for women in the street and at university. No, instead, the French president reaffirms his determination for military actions abroad: “We are going to reinforce our actions in Syria and Iraq,” the president said after the Nice attack.

For France’s president, the deployment of soldiers in the homeland is for defensive actions only: a deterrent policy, not an offensive rearmament of the Republic against an internal enemy.

So confronted with this failure by our elite — who were elected to guide the country through national and international dangers — how astonishing is it if paramilitary groups are organizing themselves to retaliate?

As Mathieu Bock-Côté, a sociologist in France and Canada, says in Le Figaro:

“Western elites, with a suicidal obstinacy, oppose naming the enemy. Confronted by attacks in Brussels or Paris, they prefer to imagine a philosophical fight between democracy and terrorism, between an open society and fanaticism, between civilization and barbarism”.

2. The Civil War Has Already Begun and Nobody Wants to Name It.

The civil war began sixteen years ago, with the second Intifada. When Palestinians executed suicide attacks in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, French Muslims began to terrorize Jews living peacefully in France. For sixteen years, Jews — in France — were slaughtered, attacked, tortured and stabbed by French Muslim citizens, supposedly to avenge Palestinian people in the West Bank.

When a group of French citizens who are Muslims declares war on another group of French citizens who are Jews, what do you call it? For the French establishment, it is not a civil war, just a regrettable misunderstanding between two “ethnic” communities.

Until now, no one wanted to establish a connection between these attacks and the murderous attack in Nice against people who were not necessarily Jews — and name it as it should be named: a civil war.

For the very politically correct French establishment, the danger of a civil war will begin only if anyone retaliates against French Muslims; if everyone just submits to their demands, everything is all right. Until now, no one thought that the terrorist attacks against Jews by French Muslims; against Charlie Hebdo’s journalists by French Muslims; against an entrepreneur who was beheaded a year ago by a French Muslim; against young Ilan Halimi by a group of Muslims; against schoolchildren in Toulouse by a French Muslim; against the passengers on the Thalys train by a French Muslim, against the innocent people in Nice by an almost French Muslim were the symptoms of a civil war. These bloodbaths remain seen, to this day, as something like a tragic misunderstanding.

3. The French Establishment Considers the Enemy the Poor, the Old and the Disappointed

In France, who most complains about Muslim immigration? Who most suffers from local Islamism? Who most likes to drink a glass of wine or eat a ham-and-butter sandwich? The poor and the old who live close to Muslim communities, because they do not have the money to move someplace else.

Today, as a result, millions of the poor and the old in France are ready to elect Marine Le Pen, president of the righ-wing Front National, as the next president of the Republic, for the simple reason that the only party that wants to fight illegal immigration is the Front National.

Because, however, these French old and poor want to vote for the Front National, they have become the enemy of the French establishment, right and left. What is the Front National saying to these people? “We are going to restore France as a nation of French people”. And the poor and the old believe it — because they have no choice.

Similarly, the poor and the old in Britain had no choice but to vote for Brexit. They took the first tool given them to express their disappointment at living in a society they did not like anymore. They did not vote to say, “Kill these Muslims who are transforming my country, stealing my job and soaking up my taxes”. They were just protesting a society that a global elite had begun to transform without their consent.

In France, the global elites made a choice. They decided that the “bad” voters in France were unreasonable people too stupid, too racist to see the beauties of a society open to people who often do not want to assimilate, who want you to assimilate to them, and who threaten to kill you if you do not.

The global elites made another choice: they took the side against their own old and poor because those people did not want to vote for them any longer. The global elites also chose not to fight Islamism, because Muslims vote globally for the global elite. Muslims in Europe also offer a big “carrot” to the global elite: they vote collectively.

In France, 93% of Muslims voted for the current president, François Hollande, in 2012. In Sweden, the Social Democrats reported that 75% of Swedish Muslims voted for them in the general election of 2006; and studies show that the “red-green” bloc gets 80-90% of the Muslim vote.

4. Is the Civil War Inevitable? Yes!

If the establishment does not want to see that civil war was already declared by extremist Muslims first — if they do not want to see that the enemy is not the Front National in France, the AfD in Germany, or the Sweden Democrats — but Islamism in France, in Belgium, in Great Britain, in Sweden — then a civil war will happen.

France, like Germany and Sweden, has a military and police strong enough to fight against an internal Islamist enemy. But first, they have to name it and take measures against it. If they do not — if they leave their native citizens in despair, with no other means than to arm themselves and retaliate — yes, civil war is inevitable.

Yves Mamou, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.

During the past 15 years, it is estimated that tens of thousands of Jews have fled France.

Of these, approximately 40,000 have fled to Israel, according to Israeli figures. Many thousands of others have fled to Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. France is increasingly becoming a nation in which it is no longer safe to be openly Jewish.

To explain why so many Jews are leaving Europe, it helps to understand the increasingly toxic context developing in France for Jews.

Synagogues and Jewish schools across France are regularly guarded by police officers and soldiers. Jews in Europe see their holy sites and places of worship under threat.

In December 2015, 14 Jews were poisoned by a toxic substance which had been smeared on to the keypad to access a Paris synagogue. No one was killed by the poison, but “25 firemen rushed to the synagogue, where they treated congregants and traced their condition to the daubed lock.”

Another Paris synagogue was vandalized and a window smashed. Synagogues seem to be one of the targets in a new wave of anti-Semitism rising across France and Europe.

On the way to a synagogue, a 13-year-old boy was called a “dirty Jew” and then seriously assaulted. The attackers are said to have attacked the boy because of he wore a skullcap. Only 71 years after the end of one of the darkest periods of European history, after which we pledged “never again,” it seems to have become open season to hate and persecute Jews.

The terrorist attacks on Jews in France are the culmination of years of Jew-hatred tolerated with little official criticism. In 2014, supposed anti-Israel protesters attacked a Paris synagogue and trapped the congregants inside. The attackers’ chants apparently included “Death to the Jews,” “Murderous Israel,” and “One Jew, Some Jews, All Jews are Terrorists.”

It seems people who openly call for hatred against Jews, to the point of murder, can now claim to be just “anti-Israel,” rather than anti-Semitic. Incitement to murder Jews was described by the French press as “mild mannered”. When talk of racial murder is dismissed in such a way, is it any wonder that radical clerics continue to preach vicious dehumanising hatred that culminates in violence?

If the media were more accurate, it would describe these “anti-Israeli” protesters as “anti-Semitic” and “inciters of violence and genocide.”

When swastikas are painted in one Paris’ largest squares by those claiming to oppose Israel, and ISIS and Hamas banners and flags are flying, and groups pledge the genocide of the Jews with impunity, is it any wonder that individuals might support these groups? When chants of “Death to the Jews,” ring out publicly, is it surprising that people might actually begin to think that killing Jews is just fine?

Both far-right Islamists and neo-Nazis joined forces in Paris during a “Day of Rage.” More than 17,000 of them marched, chanting “Jew, France is not for you.” Is it surprising that Jews are flee the country in increasing numbers?

When Islamists chant outside a central Paris synagogue, “Hitler was right,” whilst some of his victims still walk this earth, is it surprising people in French society may start to emulate him, or at least aspire to?

Synagogues are not the only institutions facing serious threats. Jewish schools across France are under heavy guard by police and soldiers.

French soldiers guard a Jewish school in Strasbourg, February 2015. (Image source: Claude Truong-Ngoc/Wikimedia Commons)

The tragedy is that we have allowed French and European societies to need these guards by tolerating those promoting injustice, prejudice and hatred.

Paul Fitoussi, principal of the Lucien de Hirsch Jewish school in Paris, summarises why France has become so toxic for Jews:

“People nowadays think it is dangerous to be Jewish in France because there was a series of events: The kidnapping and murder of Ilan Halimi ten years ago, the terror attack at the Jewish school in Toulouse four years ago, the stabbings in Marseille, last year’s attack at Hyper Cacher market – there is a problem. For the French, worrying about security issues is new to them. I talk to the police but they do not know what to do. They brought armed soldiers to the schools, but I know that in the long term this is not a solution.”

There seems to be a common thread running throughout the incidences above and attacks on Jews today. In the Ilan Halimi case, the victim was targeted on the basis of his race, and the perception that being a Jew made him wealthy. A similar attack was noted by a fifth-grader at the Lucien de Hirsh school. He said his attackers, foreign in origin, “asked if I was Jewish, I said yes, they said that the Jews are full of money, and if I did not give them my coat, they will kill me.” It seems that stereotypes of Jewish wealth perpetuated often by Islamists and others now seem commonplace in French society, and individuals are increasingly threatened with murder, robbery and extortion.

Not even public transportation is safe for Jews; in December, 2015, a man on a train in Paris verbally abused a group of Jews, stating that he wished to kill them. “If only I had a grenade here,” he said, “how do you call it, a fragmentation grenade, I would blow up this wagon with the fucking Jewish bastards.”

There has also been, since 2000, a troublingly large increase in the number of violent anti-Semitic attacks by Muslims in France. Multiple official figures have illustrated that in the last 20 years, the number of violent anti-Semitic acts has tripled. In France in 2014, there were 851 recorded anti-Semitic incidents, more than doubling the total from 2013.

Jews may represent less than 1% of France’s expanding and diverse population, but they are the victim of 40%–50% of France’s recorded racist attacks.

Jews are only the start of where Islamists begin to target people to whose existence they seem to object. Next, Islamists come for the LGBT, as seen in the Orlando shooting and with ISIS throwing gay people off buildings, and of course Christians, as we have seen in slaughtered in just one small example on a Libyan beach; and most frequently other Muslims, the majority victim of Islamists. Evidently no one is safe, and that includes all of us.

Perhaps it is best to finish on a note inspired from the work of Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), a prominent Lutheran pastor and scathing critic of Adolf Hitler. Consequently, Niemöller spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps, but had the fortune to survive.

His timeless poem does not need much transposing:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Robbie Travers, a political commentator and consultant, is Executive Director of Agora, former media manager at the Human Security Centre, and a law student at the University of Edinburgh.