Muslim Extrimism in France

Jailhouse Jihad

Fears that terrorism is
breeding in french prison

HOME to Europe’s biggest Muslim population and a robust counter-terrorism system, France has long kept a keen watch on Islamic radicalism. In recent years it has been spared big bombings of the kind seen in London and Madrid. But France is no stranger to attack by jihadists, and officials fear it is just a matter of time before they strike again.
The authorities are particularly worried about recruitment to militant Islam in France’s overcrowded prisons. “French prisons are a preferred recruiting ground for radical Islamists,” Michèle Alliot-Marie, the interior minister, told Le Figaro newspaper. She and her EU counterparts have been working on a joint handbook on how to counter the phenomenon, which touches many European countries, notably Britain. At the end of September, Ms Alliot-Marie will host an EU seminar, in the heavily Muslim Paris banlieue of Saint-Denis, to discuss what to do.

Fiercely secular, France does not collect official statistics based on religion. But Farhad Khosrokhavar, a French specialist on the subject, estimates that Muslims make up well over half France’s prison population—far higher than their 8% or so share of the total population. Among these there are currently some 1,100 people behind bars in France for terrorist-related activities, according to Alain Bauer, a criminologist. Ms Alliot-Marie said that another 55 have been detained this year.
Proselytising among inmates is common. Security officials are worried that many radicals jailed around the time of the 1998 football World Cup, hosted by France, are starting to be released. “Radicalised Islamists become more influential in prison,” says Mr Khosrokhavar. He reckons there are a few hundred Islamists actively recruiting behind bars in France.
It is hard to know how to counter this. Concentrating jihadists in one or two penitentiaries, as many countries do, may help them plot attacks from prison. Yet dispersing them, or regularly moving them between high-security prisons in order to disrupt networks, may spread radical ideology and increase recruitment.
Less crowded cells might help. France, whose jail population has grown by 30% since 2001, is building three new prisons to this end. Another idea is to provide more Muslim chaplains to offer a moderate spiritual outlet for Muslim inmates.
Azzedine Gaci, head of the Regional Council of the Muslim Faith in Lyon, makes such visits to the prison in Villefranche-sur-Saône, where he reckons 70% of its 700-odd inmates are Muslim. “They need a different interlocutor,” he says. In the absence of competent chaplains, extremists fill the vacuum. France currently has 1,100 chaplains accredited to visit its 63,000 inmates across 195 prisons—yet only 117 of them are Muslim.

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