France’s problem with Islamist extremism

In January, 12 people were shot dead by Islamist gunmen at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, while another five were killed at a Jewish supermarket.

The Charlie Hebdo killers, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi (pictured above), shouted ‘The Prophet is avenged’ as they opened fire, later dying at the hands of security forces at an industrial estate outside Paris where they had fled. The loss of life led to the Je suis Charlie (I am Charlie) campaign in defence of freedom of speech.

Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a policewoman on the outskirts of Paris and four people in the kosher supermarket, was shot dead by police. The three gunmen had pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

Following the attacks, British historian Andrew Hussey reported for Channel 4 News from Lyon on the rise of Islamophobia and anti-semitism (video above). He studied in France’s second city in the 1980s and remembered that it seemed to be normal in student circles to hate Arabs, Jews and black people.

Lyon is multi-racial, since the 1960s has been the most Algerian city in France, and has a problem with discrimination, racism and high youth unemployment.

Andrew Hussey visited a suburb with a big Muslim population and talked to Mourad Benchellali, a former Guantanamo prisoner who now works to combat radicalisation.

‘I don’t judge’

He said: “If you are called Mourad, it’s more difficult to find a job than it would be if you had a French name. Not to play the victim here, this is just th reality. Many Muslims feel that people want to make out their religion is a problem, and this idea has been fabricated that you can’t be a good Frenchman and be a Muslim, that Islam has no place inside French identity. “

Speaking of his anti-radicalisation work, he said he was never judgmental. “Even those who today are leaving for Syria, I don’t judge them. I simply tell them they’re making a mistake, it’s not a good idea to go there.

“I have spoken to mums whose kids are in Syria, and also mums who tell me, ‘My son or my daughter wants to go there’. And I was able to talk with them. These kids tell me they feel abandoned and they need someone to talk to them. Many of our young people feel unsettled. There is often anxiety among these young people.”

Lyon, in the south east of France, has been linked to extremism on many occasions. In February, French police detained eight people in anti-terrorism raids there and in the capital in a crackdown on radical Islamist groups which, according to the interior ministry, were “suspected of actively participating in recruiting French youth into jihadism” in Syria. The week before, five men were detained in Lunel in southern France.

In 2014, two teenage girls, who had only “met” online, were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to blow up a synagogue in Lyon. They were said to be part of an Islamist network that was being monitored by the security services.

Children killed

One of the most shocking incidents was the shooting of three Jewish children and a rabbi at a school in Toulouse, in southern France, in 2012 (picture above). Their killer Mohammed Merah, who was killed by police, was of Algerian origin and said he had been motivated by the Palestinian conflict and the ban on the full face veil in France.

In 1995, a car bomb exploded outside a Jewish school in a Lyon suburb, with four people injured. The first car bombing in France since 1982 was apparently timed to coincide with children leaving for the day, but the school clock was running slow.

In the same year, there were several bombings in Paris, while a device was found beside the high-speed rail track in Lyon. The attacks led to a crackdown on Algerians linked to the Armed Islamic Group (GIA).