...clearly a youth movement: almost all of them [were] radicalised to the dismay of their parents and relatives (a huge difference if we compare with Palestinian radicals). Most parents not only disapprove of their children's radicalisation, but actively try to bring them back or even to have them arrested by the police. This pattern is found as well among parents of converts (a fact we can expect), but also among Muslim parents (Abaaoud in Belgium). In this sense the radicals do not express an anger shared by their milieus or by the Muslim "community."

It is a peer phenomenon: they radicalise in the framework of a small network of friends, whatever the concrete circumstances of their meeting may be (neighbourhood, jail, internet, or sports clubs). This puts them often at odds with the traditional view of family and women in Islam. These groups are often mixed in gender terms, and the women play often a far more important role than they themselves claim (Boumediene in the Charlie Hebdo killers' team). They intermarry between themselves, without the parents' consent. In this sense they are closer to the ultra-left groups of the 1970s....

The revolt is expressed in religious terms for two reasons:

- Most of the radicals have a Muslim background, which makes them open to a process of re-islamisation (almost none of them being pious before entering the process of radicalisation).

- Jihad is the only cause on the global market. If you kill in silence, it will be reported by the local newspaper; if you kill yelling "Allahuakbar," you are sure to make the national headlines. The ultraleft or radical ecology is too "bourgeois" and intellectual for them.

When they join jihad, they adopt the Salafi version of Islam, because Salafism is both simple to understand (don'ts and dos) and rigid, providing a personal psychological structuring effect. Moreover, Salafism is the negation of cultural Islam, that is the Islam of their parents and of their roots. Instead of providing them with roots, Salafism glorifies their own deculturation and makes them feel better "Muslims" than their parents. Salafism is the religion by definition of a disenfranchised youngster.

Incidentally, we should make a distinction between religious radicalisation and jihadist radicalisation. There is of course an overlap, but the bulk of the Salafists are not jihadist, and many jihadists don't give a damn about theology....

...To promote a "moderate Islam" to bring radicals back to the mainstream is nonsense. They just reject moderation as such.

To ask the "Muslim community" to bring radicals back to normal life is also nonsense. Radicals just don't care about people they consider as "traitors," "apostates," or "collaborators" as long as they don't choose the same path.

To consider Islam only through the lenses of "fighting terrorism" will validate the narrative of persecution and revenge that feeds the process of radicalisation.