Do not misidentify the target: to fight jihadism, one must first understand it.
Most terrorists who have committed or attempted to commit attacks on French soil have gone through the Republic’s school system, were monitored by social services and French intelligence, and were detained in French prisons. Very few regularly attended mosques.
Modern terrorism is a complex and multifactorial phenomenon, a convergence of multiple and interdependent causes.
Fighting Daesh requires considering the international dimension of the conflict, as well as understanding the national dimension of the conflict and the social determinism that obviously influences the path of many French terrorists.
Fighting Daesh also involves taking into account the sectarian processes implemented by this organization and the psychological approach that allows for a better understanding of certain actions.
Firstly, a clear fact: French secularism entails non-interference of religion in the political domain and, conversely, non-interference of politics in religious affairs.
Secularism must be treated for its own sake and should not be used to eradicate the terrorist threat, nor as a pretext to reaffirm the dominance of one religious identity over another by exalting the Christian roots of France against Islam, nor as a cover for anti-Arab racism that today takes advantage of the fear of attacks to spread with impunity.
Millions of French people of Muslim faith demonstrate daily that the practice of their faith does not threaten the Nation.
If attacks are claimed in the name of a religion, it is not the first time that a religion has been instrumentalized to establish political domination.
If French Muslims are publicly pointed out to non-Muslim French people as being linked to terrorism, it is a major political error that can only result in setting them against each other, and handing Daesh a victory by dividing French society.
A conclusion is evident: one does not fight a military organization, a totalitarian ideology, and sectarian excesses by targeting a religion.
