A study documenting a sharp rise in radical Islamism among young French Muslims has triggered condemnation from France’s top imam and far-left politicians, prompting legal action from Muslim associations and a counter-complaint from the polling organization.
The survey, published by the French Institute of Opinion Polls (IFOP) on November 13, reports that a significant number of young French Muslims privilege Sharia over state laws, prefer to wear a veil, refuse to shake hands with the opposite sex, and sympathize with Islamist organizations.
[W]e have for a long time seen that the later generations of immigrants often are worse assimilated than their parents.
Titled “An overview of the relationship between Muslims in France and Islam and Islamism,” the report expresses alarm that Islamism has won over one in three Muslims, with 38% of Muslims endorsing radicalism, twice as many as those backing Islamism in 1998 (19%).
One in three Muslims (33%) identifies with at least one Islamist movement. Most Islamists align with the Muslim Brotherhood (32%), while others are favorably disposed to Salafism (9%), Wahhabism (8%), Tabligh (8%), Takfir (6%), and Jihadism (3%). Fifty-seven percent of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 believe that Sharia law trumps French laws.
Islam Now France’s Second Major Religion
A major concern of the report is the growth of the adult Muslim population from 0.5% in 1985 to 2% in 2000, 4% in 2009, 5.5% in 2016, and 7% in 2025. This makes Islam France’s second largest religion, with the steep decline in Catholicism from 83% (1985) to 43% (2025) and Evangelical Protestantism slightly behind at 4% compared to 1.5% in 1985. People with no religious affiliation have risen from 13% (1985) to 37% (2025).
Moreover, 80% of French Muslims describe themselves as “religious,” compared to only 48% of Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Jews. Twenty-four percent of Muslims say they are “extremely” or “very” religious, twice as many as in other religions (12%). Muslims who identify as such tend to be the youngest (30% of 15-24 year-olds, compared to 12% of those aged 50 and over).
“Muslims in France are distinguished by a more intensive relationship to religious obligations,” the study finds. The majority of young Muslims pray five times a day (67%) compared to 26% in 1989, while 40% of Muslims under the age of 25 attend the mosque on Fridays, compared to 7% in 1989.
“One of the major findings of the survey is that, across all indicators, young Muslims are more rigorous and more radical than their elders,” the report states. This includes a significant increase in full observance of Ramadan (+32 points) among those under 25, as well as stricter adherence to the ban on alcohol (-23 points).
Gender segregation is also rising. Fifty-five percent of Muslims under 25 refuse at least one form of contact with the opposite sex, compared to 27% of Muslims aged 50 and over. Among Muslims of all ages, 43% refuse at least one form of physical or visual contact with the opposite sex. One in three (33%) refuse to kiss, 20% refuse to go to a mixed-gender swimming pool, 14% refuse to shake hands with someone of the opposite sex, and 6% refuse to be treated by a doctor of the opposite sex.
Islamists and Leftists Launch Attack on Survey
“I’m not surprised by the development, as we have for a long time seen that the later generations of immigrants often are worse assimilated than their parents,” Kent Ekeroth, a former Sweden Democrats MP who has written for FWI, said.
“This is an existential threat to Europe and the only way out of it is a massive shift in demography,” Ekeroth told FWI. “If not, Europe will be one of the many civilisations throughout history that will only be remembered in the history books outside of Europe.”
Chems-eddine Hafiz, the Algeria-born rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, controlled by the Algerian government, agreed that the survey’s figures did not “lack rigor,” but were presented in a manner that “leads to a distorted view of the situation.” A rise in Islamic devotion and practice was being falsely presented as Islamist radicalization, Hafiz claimed.
“A naive statistic is transformed, through a rhetorical shift, into a discourse of danger,” he wrote in a column published on the mosque’s website. “And theological ignorance then becomes a statistical weapon.”
“The overwhelming majority of Muslims remain committed to the Republic and opposed to all forms of religious violence,” Hafiz insisted. “They want neither theocracy nor separatism; they simply want the right to practice their faith without suspicion.”
Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) earlier reported on Hafiz’s involvement with the French Islam Forum (FORIF), a “dialogue forum” which had been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood. He has been accused of engaging in “doublespeak” to conceal his alleged ties to Islamists.
Legal Challenge for Issuing Report
Meanwhile, the four districts of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) in Loiret, Aube, Bouches-du-Rhône, and Seine-et-Marne have filed a legal complaint with the Paris judicial court accusing the poll of spreading “the poison of hatred in the public sphere.”
The survey “violates the principle of objectivity” concerning the publication of opinion polls, is “based on leading questions,” and “focuses on minority results highlighted for polemical purposes,” the CFCM said in a press release. “The conclusions drawn from it have been widely adopted and exploited by Islamophobic circles to portray Muslims as an internal and existential threat to our country and its institutions.”
The far-left parliamentarians, Paul Vannier and Bastien Lachaud, blasted the IFOP survey as an “Islamophobic agenda of the far right” and a “poll tailor-made to manufacture suspicion, stigmatization, and division,” warning of the “sociology of denial.”
But sociologist Olivier Galland and political scientist Gérard Grunberg defended the poll in an essay, explaining that the study proves “the ongoing phenomenon of the re-Islamization of Muslims, which is occurring primarily through the mechanism of generational renewal, a phenomenon of rare magnitude that requires further investigation.”
“It’s dark, I know, but if history has taught us anything, it is that unless we fight for our own civilization, it is going to fall,” Ekeroth warned.
