We still don’t know much about why Tunisian-born French resident Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a truck through Bastille Day crowds in Nice on July 14, killing 84 people and injuring many more.
The Islamic State has asserted responsibility for the attack. But Bouhlel apparently did not attend any mosque, and acquaintances described him as an nonreligious divorcé who enjoyed drinking, dating and salsa dancing. Unlike previous attackers, he was not known to counterterrorism intelligence services. Early reports suggest that he had a history of psychological illness and a record of family violence. If he was being funded by the Islamic State to commit the attack, as Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a news conference, “it seems that he was radicalized very rapidly.” More recent information suggests, however, that the “rapid radicalization” theory might not be correct and that Bouhlel had been radicalized quite a while before.
[interstitial_link url=”https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/07/18/france-has-had-more-than-its-share-of-terrorist-attacks-these-3-factors-explain-why/”]Why is France being targeted by terrorists?[/interstitial_link]
If he was, it is no surprise that it happened in Nice.
While many Americans know the city as a tourist destination, Nice now has a reputation as a “breeding ground” for radicals. Of the nearly 2,000 French citizens who have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight or train there as jihadists, at least 55 have come from Nice and the surrounding area. Some report that the number is more than 100. Nice was once the home base of Omar Omsen, also known as Oumar Diaby, a recruiter who makes and distributes videos online encouraging Muslims to go to fight in Syria.
Here’s what political science can – and can’t — tell us about why Nice has become such a breeding ground.
Nice is home to many Tunisian immigrants and the National Front
Nice is well known for its impressive beaches, mild Mediterranean weather, rich artistic history, and interesting mix of French and Italian influences. It is just over two hours from Marseilles, a diverse city tentatively regarded (if for complex reasons) as France’s greatest integration success.
But the politics of Nice are quite different from those of Marseilles. Nice has “one of France’s largest populations of Tunisian origin.” At the same time, the region in which it lies — Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur, known as “Paca” – is considered in political science scholarship to be one of the “traditional regional heartlands” of France’s far-right National Front party. In fact, the National Front’s much discussed up-and-comer, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, lost the race for president of the Paca Regional Council last year to Christian Estrosi by only 9.56 percent of the vote.
Generally speaking, the Paca region has a high unemployment rate — 11 percent — although it is much higher for youths. As in Paris, much of Nice’s Muslim and North African populations live in subsidized housing away from the center of town; however there is also a Muslim middle class there.
[interstitial_link url=”https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/23/new-research-shows-that-french-muslims-experience-extraordinary-discrimination-in-the-job-market/”]French Muslims face extraordinary job discrimination[/interstitial_link]
Area Muslim leaders swiftly condemned the attacks, and adherents of Islam gathered to pray in honor of the dead. Muslims were among the dead and injured. Nevertheless, the daughter of the first victim of the attack, who wears a hijab as her mother did, was verbally abused when she went to lay flowers on the city’s Promenade des Anglais.
Former mayor Christian Estrosi was known for anti-Islam statements and actions
Previous mayor Christian Estrosi was known for making controversial statements questioning whether Islam is compatible with democracy. Estrosi is a member of the center-right party Les Républicains and recently gave up his post as mayor to satisfy French limits on the number of elective positions a person can simultaneously hold.
As mayor, he advocated additional strict security measures against radicalization. Estrosi made headlines in 2014 when he issued an order banning the “ostentatious use” of foreign flags right before an Algeria-Germany football match, claiming it was a matter of public order; the ban, which would have lasted the length of the World Cup, which was being held in Brazil, was suspended by an administrative court. Estrosi made headlines again when he tried to block Nice’s En-Nour mosque from opening, arguing that it was too closely tied to pro-sharia Saudis.
The National Observatory on Islamophobia, which is part of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), monitors Islamophobic discourse and acts in France. When in 2015 Estrosi said that “Judeo-Christian civilization” was threatened by “Islamo-fascism,” the Observatory’s president, Abdallah Zekri, responded: “Christian Estrosi is a recruiter of jihadists.” By arguing that Estrosi’s intolerant discourse so alienates a segment of the French population that it “facilitates the task of terrorists who lure in youths,” Zekri implies that consistent political stigmatization can lead to radicalization.
What leads to radicalization? And is that even the right question to be asking?
Is it true? It is an important and hotly contested social science question: What contributes to radicalization and support of terrorism?
[interstitial_link url=”https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/10/who-becomes-a-terrorist-and-why/”]Who becomes a terrorist, and why?[/interstitial_link]
There is long-standing disagreement between two French scholars, Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy. Kepel argues that the culprit is radical interpretations of Islam pronounced by unintegrated suburban Muslims. Roy argues that most French Muslims have successfully integrated into French society and that only outliers become terrorists – and that those few who do are isolated individuals engaged in a kind of generational revolt using Islam as a protest identity.
[interstitial_link url=”https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/30/want-to-help-the-islamic-state-recruit-treat-all-muslims-as-potential-terrorists/”]Want to help the Islamic State recruit? Treat all Muslims as potential terrorists[/interstitial_link]
Researchers have also looked at potential factors such as poverty and poor education, state-sponsored political violence, human rights abuses committed by the state in the name of fighting terrorism, psychological factors, and even the “aura of success” created by Iraqi insurgents and Hezbollah. The field is rife with disagreement.
What’s more, not all political scientists agree that the right question to ask is what causes radicalization and the support of terrorism. Some instead ask how security threats are politically constructed by the social elite and the media. Others have asked how official security discourse dissuades others (especially women) from articulating their own experience of insecurity. Still others ask how it is that we come to view the loss of certain lives as more “grievable” than the loss of others, and how that may influence our political will to protect certain lives. This literature suggests that France’s insistence that it faces an existential threat from certain Muslims is actually making Muslims in France less secure.
[interstitial_link url=”https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/25/can-france-and-other-mostly-christian-societies-integrate-its-muslims-this-new-book-shows-what-must-be-done/”]Can mostly Christian countries integrate Muslims? This book explains how to do it.[/interstitial_link]
We’ll soon learn more about the life and motivations of the Nice truck driver. But scholarly debates within the social sciences about radicalization and security politics won’t be resolved soon. In a way, these debates are no different from the ongoing ones about what makes for the strongest economy or the best kind of government. But perhaps political science can give us the tools to think about the questions we are asking, why we are asking them and how our perceptions might be altered if we pose different ones.
Jennifer Fredette is an assistant professor of political science at Ohio University. Her book, “Constructing Muslims in France,” was published by Temple University Press in 2014.