Of course, such a cultural struggle against Islam generates sig-nificant consequences. As demonstrated by numerous studies, the dis-crimination and the exclusion faced by many French youths with a mi-grant background ultimately translates into a strong sense of injustice:
they feel they are as perpetually condemned to positions of inferior-ity.37This causes a reaction of refusal of the French mainstream soci-ety, which often results in a turn to Islam as a source of identity, as a way to “reverse the stigma” and to claim dignity. Indeed, children of Muslim immigrants show an increased religious consciousness –a tendency that has been termed “re-Islamization”.38 It is precisely this
“othering” process that pushes young second-generation Muslims to interrogate themselves about their belonging, their religion and their
35 Rinus Penninx European Cities and their Migrant Integration Policies. A State-of-the-Art study for the Knowledge for Integration Governance (KING) Project, King Project Overview Paper n.5/July 2014.
36 J. Césari, The Lack of Symbolic Integration of Islam in Europe, as Illus-trated by the Charlie Hebdo Attacks, Reviews & Critical Commentary–Council of European Studies, 2015, http://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/critcom/the-lack-of-symbolic-integration-of-islam-in-europe-as-illustrated-by-the-charlie-hebdo-attacks-2/
(last accessed: 9 January 2018).
37 L. Mucchielli, Autumn 2005: a Review of the Most Important Riot in the History of French Contemporary Society, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 35, 5, (2009), pp. 731-751; L. Arslan, Enfants d'Islam et de Marianne. Des banlieues à l'Université (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2010); Y. Brinbaum, M. Safi, P. Simon, Les discriminations en France: entre perception et expérience, INED Documents de travail, n. 183, 2012; G. Kepel, Banlieue de la République. Société, politique et religion à Clichy-sous-Bois et Montfermeil (Paris: Gallimard, 2012).
38 N. Foner, R. Alba, “Immigrant Religion in the U.S. and Western Europe:
Bridge or Barrier to Inclusion?”, International Migration Review, 42, 2 (2008), pp.
360-392; G. Kepel, Banlieue de la République. Société, politique et religion à Clichy-sous-Bois et Montfermeil (Paris: Gallimard, 2012).
religiosity. For many, such a questioning results in a re-evaluation of their religious affiliation or in a discovery of religion, followed by a firm adhesion to its tenets. This gained particular visibility precisely in the banlieues of major French cities, simply by virtue of the mere presence and concentration of immigrants and their descendants in these areas. However, the “banlieue effect” has remarkable symbolic consequences, because the isolation and the socio-spatial segregation of the banlieues causes stigmatization and racism to be perceived as collective experiences, which are interpreted in light of a conflictual dynamic between a “periphery”, and a “centre” (represented by the French cultural and political elites). The “centre”, by considering im-migrants' religion incompatible and irreducibly “other” (in the terms described above), is seen as denying these young people the opportunity to grow a positive identity –hence, the turn to Islam, which can even culminate in the development of an oppositional iden-tity. Naturally, this “opposition” is not intrinsic to the practice of Islam per se, but is constructed as a reaction to a constructed negative image of Islam and banlieues. Over and beyond material social conditions, what seems to be essential is precisely this tense relationship with mainstream French society.
Thus, this cultural struggle or symbolic battle has started being fought also on the “Muslim side”, and this has gradually become more evident with the diffusion of Salafism. Re-Islamisation is a multifa-ceted phenomenon and has assumed many different forms39 –one of them is Salafism. As documented by several scholars,40 this puritan and intransigent form of Islam has been slowly on the rise during the past ten-fifteen years in Europe and especially in France. Although it is practiced by a very tiny fraction of French Muslims, it spread across the country and gained more and more visibility, in particular in its
39 O. Roy, L'Islam mondialisé (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2004); N. Foner, R.
Alba, “Immigrant Religion in the U.S. and Western Europe: Bridge or Barrier to In-clusion?”, International Migration Review, 42, 2, (2008), pp. 360-392.
40 G. Kepel, Banlieue de la République. Société, politique et religion à Clichy-sous-Bois et Montfermeil (Paris: Gallimard, 2012); G. Kepel (with the collab-oration of A. Jardin), Terreur dans l'Hexagone. Genèse du djihad français (Paris: Gal-limard, 2015); M. Ali Adraoui, Du golfe aux banlieues. Le salafisme mondialisé (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2013).
most impoverished and deprived areas.41Salafism represents a strong form of cultural and identity rupture in contemporary Western societ-ies, as the adhesion to its tenets implies a refusal of modern Western society as “unholy”, “impure” and “depraved” –terms borrowed from the religious language that Salafists employ to describe their conflic-tual relationship with society. Salafism can be characterized as an ant-agonist “counter-culture”, founded on uncompromising, ultra Ortho-dox and ultra-conservative religious norms, which disavow main-stream Western societies' values and codes of behaviour.42
As such, it constitutes an extreme and “radical” choice: even if it concerns only a very small proportion of French Muslims, it repres-ents a powerful source of identitarian cleavages. For a part of disen-franchised youths, who feel refused by a hostile society, this repres-ents a way to reverse the stigma.43 By professing the separation of every single aspect of everyday life between what is “pure” and “im-pure”, seeking to avoid any kind of contact with all non-Muslims, the
“Salafist thinking” promotes a binary vision of the world, as if it was divided between “the good” and “the bad”. To the perceived discrim-ination and humiliation, a fraction of Muslims have slowly started
re-41 G. Kepel, Quatre-ving-treize (Paris: Gallimard, 2012); G. Kepel (with the collaboration of Antoine Jardin), Terreur dans l'Hexagone. Genèse du djihad français (Paris: Gallimard, 2015).
42 M. Ali Adraoui, Du golfe aux banlieues. Le salafisme mondialisé (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 2013).
43 Another major driver of the success of Salafism is the process that Olivier Roy defines as the “deculturation of religion”, i.e. the disconnection between culture and the Islam in contexts of emigration (2004; 2008). Among many second-generation Muslims, such a disconnection fosters a quest for a “purified” Islam, deprived of any cultural reference: this entails “going back to the sources” to learn what the “real”, “pure” Islam is through a literal reading of the Scriptures. In this framework, Salafism gains followers precisely because it claims to adhere to the pure
“Islam of the origins” practiced by the “companions of the Prophet” (according to the etymology of the name of the movement) and to be grounded in an absolutely literal reading of the Quran and of the hadiths: thus, Salafists can easily depict themselves as the “custodians” of the correct religious norm. It is out of the scope of the present Chapter to illustrate the complex dynamics of “deculturation” and their consequences, but understanding them is key to the to the comprehension of today's jihadism. See O.
Roy, L'Islam mondialisé (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2004) and O. Roy, La sainte ignorance (Paris: Seuil, 2008) for a detailed account, or G. Mezzetti, Contemporary jihadism; a generational phenomenon, ISMU Working Papers-July, 2017 for a more succinct explanation.
sponding by adopting the Salafist oppositional habitus, purporting a vision of society according to which “the West” is “bad” and incom-patible with Muslim (Salafist) values and behaviours –indeed, such a Manichean vision ends up being just as paranoiac as the one that con-siders Muslims as “unintegrable”.
5. Is there continuity between Salafism and jihadism? The