But their portrait is not limited to these common features. Rather, it is their diversity and the differences among them that dominate the study. A large group - around 50 % - is on a slow and steady path towards secularisation. This does not however mean that they will stop eating halal food or that they will drastically cut back on their religious practices. Their belief system will allow them to adapt to French society, which will in turn evolve thanks to specific aspects of their religion.
The median 25 %, embodying the traits of religious conservatism, are the focus of the current political and ideological struggle. This struggle is also impacting the last and most problematic group, which represents another 25 % of Muslims in France, and, among them, many low-skilled young people facing high unemployment and living in poorer immigrant areas on the outskirts of large cities. This group is no longer defined by conservatism, but by its appropriation of Islam as a mode of ideological rebellion against the rest of French society. This is evidenced by values and behaviours which go against the norm, resisting the common habitus.
Let us make an attempt to understand the reasons behind this reality. At this stage, we find ourselves facing a complex situation, with many influencing factors, a real lack of understanding from both sides, and questions of identity fuelled by elements both intrinsic and extrinsic to French society.
The transitional crisis of the Arab world, which is rapidly abandoning its traditional system of organisation and is faced with the need to invent a new modernity, has clearly had an impact on French Muslims. The same can be said of the political and geopolitical crises affecting this part of the world. The transformations taking place in Arab societies, with the resulting violence - and Western interventionism -, form an integral part of their everyday lives and give rise to internal conflicts. They are aware that they cannot rely on traditional systems to resolve their everyday issues, and that the assurance represented by their ties to stable traditional societies is now gone. They also perceive their homeland, and their culture, as being taken hostage in a game played out by Western powers, identifying with the victims in the Middle East (Palestine, Iraq, Syria, etc.). A victim mentality is slowly forming in opposition to certain enemies: Americans, Israelis, the West - soon transformed by some radical Islamists into "Crusaders" and "Jews". Anti-Semitism has therefore become a characteristic of this group32, which positions itself both as a victim of hostile powers and the bearer of a solution: Islam. An Islam which offers answers to an identity crisis brought on by the question: "Who am I if I am neither truly French, nor a citizen of my parents' homeland?". An Islam which seeks to break away from their grandparents' religion, and from parents who have kept their heads down throughout their lives, themselves victims of what they condemn (the West, colonisation, even the "Crusaders"). An Islam which is no longer transmitted within the home, but through different political and religious groups (Tariq Ramadan, the Muslim Brotherhood, Tabligh, the Salafists, and even the Islamic State). An Islam that focuses on feelings of victimisation and the need to "hold your head high", even if that means praying on fear, since it also means rising above victimhood.
But external factors cannot in themselves explain this phenomenon: obstacles to integration play a major role. Transitioning from a patriarchal system, based on solidarity between brothers, and in which the position of women (and especially girls) is inferior to that of men (especially boys), to a republican model which promotes female education (girls from immigrant families have far higher rates of success than boys, and also fail far less than boys from immigrant backgrounds), represents a true paradigm shift within families, notably those of Arab origin.
This anthropological shock is taking place while French society is itself facing four transformative crises, which are primarily impacting the children of Muslim immigrants. Firstly, de-industrialisation, which is striking at the heart of the manual workforce. Immigrants from North Africa, Turkey, and to a lesser extent Sub-Saharan Africa, were recruited in order to reconstruct post-war France. They participated in the 32 Dominique Reynié, L’antisémitisme dans l’opinion publique française Nouveaux éclairages, Fondapol, November 2014. A FRENCH ISLAM IS POSSIBLE 31 industrial boom of this flourishing era, and provided a solution to the lack of qualified labourers which "the great migration from rural to urban areas", that Alfred Sauvy often spoke of, could not satisfy. When, at the end of the 1970s, first the iron and steel industry, then coal mines and the car industry, and finally the remaining French industries began to cut production staff on a national scale, immigrant families paid a high price in terms of unemployment, as well as economic and social instability.
Secondly and concomitantly, working-class political structures have slowly been disappearing. The Communist Party is on its way out, trade unions never managed to integrate immigrants and their children, and De Gaulle-era politics left them sidelined (with the exception of the Harkis). By definition, the Church was far removed from their everyday and spiritual lives. Schools, victims of ghettoisation, were not able to offer them a means of upward social mobility. And as for the State, it has failed to provide them with the ideological and material framework to allow them to rise above their initial condition. What remains is Islam.
The rise of Islamism and fundamentalism, a third transformation, is therefore a phenomenon which is not extrinsic to French society. Islamist ideologues created an intellectual and ideological system which allowed them to encroach upon a society the very moment they were given room to do so. Their rise in power is, in some sense, the consequence of the breakdown of a traditional national identity, and not its cause, as many would have us believe. This latter idea would indeed be reassuring: the culprits would be known - in this case the Islamists - and could easily be swept aside.
Finally, this large-scale movement is taking place in the broader context of a French society suspended in a generational power struggle, in which the integration of young people into the labour market, the housing market, and the ideas market, has become remarkably hard for everyone involved, including university graduates, many of whom are leaving France. Those left behind must suffer the scourge of endless internships and unstable forms of employment. Within this context, the position of young people from immigrant backgrounds is extremely difficult, since they endure added forms of discrimination, the intensity of which has now been concretely measured33. The result is what the INED and INSEE call a "denial of Frenchness", felt by 40 % of immigrants' children.
It would be a grave error to ignore these causes intrinsic to French society. The rise of religious fundamentalism represents a failure on all of our part, and is not merely "their problem". To ignore what this says about the fate of the French youth, about the functioning and barriers of our society, would be to turn a blind eye to an obvious and disturbing reality. And finally, to believe that the problem can be resolved simply by denouncing religious symbols is to misunderstand the scope of this rebellion. By condemning it, we reinforce it, since these symbols are markers of identity. Evidently, the more we attack such identity markers, the more we strengthen the expression of this identity.