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Islamist Extremism in France (Part II), Clarion Project, Leslie Shaw, May 4, 2016

Muslims in France protest against a French law that forbids the wearing of religious symbols (including the hijab) in the primary and secondary schools. (Photo: © Reuters)

France has one of the largest Muslim communities in the West (estimated at 10% of the population), and French corporates have more experience than most in dealing with radical Islam.

City of Paris

In September 2012, in response to the encroachment of radical Islam, the mayor of Paris set up an Observatory on Secularism to ensure the principles of the 1905 separation of Church and State were being respected by the city’s 73,000 employees.

The observatory remained dormant but was reactivated in January 2015 after the Islamic terrorist attacks. Saïd Kouachi, one of the Charlie Hebdo killers, worked in the city sanitation department from 2007 to 2009. He was part of an employment program for young people from the ghettoes surrounding Paris.

A number of these youths were assigned to going door-to-door to inform householders on the benefits of domestic waste segregation. Many created problems for their supervisors due to their increasingly fundamentalist Islamic beliefs: refusing to shake hands with women, bringing prayer mats with them and taking time off to return to their workplaces to pray. Kouachi was moved from district to district as his supervisors, who described him as fundamentalist and unmanageable, became exasperated with his behavior. He was fired in July 2009.

A supervisor later revealed that city authorities had been notified about Kouachi’s radical behavior on several occasions, but that the subject was taboo. A “Charter on Secularism” was posted in the sanitation workshops and a one-day training program held for supervisors in 2013, but no action was taken to deal with the problem.

Since January 2015, the Observatory members meet regularly, have issued a 20-page rulebook to municipal employees and interviewed numerous city managers about the problems of radicalization. Departments most affected are sanitation, parks and gardens, public safety and security, and youth and sport. Common issues are praying in the workplace, refusal to shake hands with, look at or follow instructions from female supervisors, demands for work schedule accommodation on Fridays and during Ramadan, wearing of hijabs and other head-coverings.

RATP Paris Transit Authority

The RATP chapter of the CFDT union claims there is a groundswell of Islamist ideology within the company where Samy Amimour, one of the 2015 Paris suicide bombers, worked as a bus driver. In December 2015, a newspaper reported that several RATP employees were targeted by “Fiche S,” a law enforcement indicator that flags individuals linked to terrorism.

Religion-based workplace incidents are widespread. In 2013, RATP management issued a guidebook to supervisors listing typical infringements of secular principles and outlining rules to enforce. An RATP executive commented, “We pretend the problem has been solved, but the reality is that managers in contact with radicalized individuals in bus depots are left on their own to handle these kinds of things.”

ADP Paris Airports Authority

Following the November 2015 attacks in Paris, CDG Airport CEO Augustin de Romanet revealed that 70 airside security badges had been withdrawn from Muslim airport employees and 4,000 staff lockers raided by police as the employees were considered a security risk.

French Automobile Industry

The problems facing French public-sector companies have long been present in the automobile industry, where Muslims account for around 70 percent of the workforce. Militant Islam began to manifest itself in the 1980s, when it emerged that shop stewards frequently had links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Employees began to shave their heads, grow beards and wear Islamic garb as the Salafist ideology gained ground in the suburbs where the auto plants are located. Automakers Renault and Peugeot integrated Muslim practices into their management model, setting up on-site prayer rooms and planning work schedules to fit in with prayer times and Ramadan.

Employee associations were established to cater to the needs of Muslim staff, organizing religious celebrations, pilgrimages to Mecca and arranging for the repatriation to North Africa of deceased workers. This policy of appeasement benefited the industry since it minimized religion-linked workplace conflict and litigation and fostered employee engagement.

Radical Islam and the Emergence of Jihadism

The first generation of Muslim immigrants who came to France in the 1950s kept their faith to themselves. The second generation was more militant and began making demands for accommodation of Islam. Opting for exclusion rather than integration into mainstream society, some turned to crime. Those caught and imprisoned often converted to radical Islam, spreading the ideology throughout the ghettoes upon release.

The third generation came of age with the nationwide 2005 riots, sparked by the electrocution of two juvenile delinquents who climbed over a fence into an electricity substation to escape from the police.

The same year, Abu Musab al-Suri published a 1,600-page Global Islamic Resistance Call urging the masterminds of jihad to exploit the presence of the huge disaffected Muslim populations in Europe by prompting them to set up terror cells targeting Western civilians. The strategy was rolled out on the internet and by Salafist imams operating in mosques financed by the Gulf states.

A growing number of Muslims in France and Europe converted to radical Islam resulting in the emergence of an informal jihadist army on the continent. In February 2016, the number of radical Islamists identified by French law enforcement was 11,700.

This entry was posted on May 4, 2016 at 4:10 PM and is filed under France, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic jihad, Islamic radicalization, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: France, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic Jihad, Islamic radicalization, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Muslim Brotherhood, Salifists