The jihadogenous urban structure

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The boys from the “hood” or banlieue film, La Haine.(1995).

By jihadogenous urban structure I mean an urban
setting that is the venue for jihadist callings, at a much higher rate than in
the other districts of the city.

In Europe, one of the significant and even essential
factors of jihadist radicalization is the city. Not any city. But a type of
district within the city that we may call the jihadogenous urban structure.

In almost all European countries there are
neighborhoods where the number of young people leaving for Syria (foreign
fighters) as well as the number of followers of internal jihadism (homegrown
jihadists) are much higher than the national average. The trial of the
survivors of twenty young people who joined Syria between 2013 and 2015 from
the southern French town of Lunel is a case that is replicated in other
European countries in more or less similar forms. In Lunel, it is the social
housing district of Abrivados, in which a significant number of young people were
indoctrinated by the extremist Islamic holy war ideology.

Jihadist concentration in some neighborhoods may be
due to two distinct types of effects:

– because, within these neighbourhoods, young people
have known each other through formal or informal networks, friends, or members
of the same family and their ties; the district may be that of the middle
classes, without any apparent sign of disadvantage among candidates for the
holy war; this type of neighborhood and the calling of the middle classes
towards Jihadism are largely in a minority in Europe.

–  because of the specificity of the urban
structure: the concentration of young people of similar ethnic origin (in
France, North Africa, Great Britain, Pakistan and Bangladesh, in Belgium,
Morocco …) in areas with the following characteristics: stigmatization and
anger among a part of the population; ghettoisation and the development of an
underground economy (which attracts a part of the youth and predisposes them towards
any form of transgression in contrast to the norms in force); a much higher
unemployment rate than the national rate (in Lunel, around 20% and double this
rate for young people of immigrant origin); a very high school drop-out rate; a
delinquency rate well above the national average; a feeling of high
stigmatization among young boys, mostly of immigrant origin; a fragmented
family structure: decapitated patriarchal families, single-parenthood and
family instability, with the development of violence within the family and the
children's homes (the Merah and Nemmouche families in France shared these
characteristics); a strong sense of stigma, largely based on everyday life
experience, amplified by the "aggressive" behavior of excluded youth
who feel themselves victims of society; the isolation of the neighborhood which
is more or less separated from the city for objective reasons (the absence of
subway or bus lines) and partly imaginary (a line of mental demarcation often
separates the stigmatized neighbourhood from other areas awakens in these young
people the feeling of a dichotomous humanity where communication between the
two is impossible).

Cultural inferiority

This type of urban
structure shapes the identity of those who are socially excluded, and
culturally stigmatized. They internalize social exclusion and make it an
identity principle as well as a way of life. In turn, victimization accentuates
exclusion and becomes an aggravating factor insofar as the individual separates
himself from society and no longer tries to enter it through normal channels.

In the majority of
cases, this type of individual is of immigrant origin with a background that
makes him a social reject or someone who suffers from "relative
deprivation" (especially in the Scandinavian countries) or poverty and is
at the same time treated as culturally inferior. They are often economically
marginalized, and they internalize this predicament and define themselves in an
antagonistic manner towards society. To ensure their social promotion they become
deviant, members of gangs or more or less outlaw groups. In France, most of
these districts are in the suburbs and are called “(poor) suburbs” (banlieues).
Sometimes, the segregated district is not outside the city but part of it (like
the “Northern districts” that are part of the city of Marseille or Neuhof, part
of Strasbourg).

The suburban
structure or that of isolated, poor and "segregated" neighborhoods
within the big city (as in Waltham Forest in London) or in the small town where
exclusion and stigmatization are even more accentuated (Lunel) in many cases
promotes jihadism. This model is not only French. It is less common, it is
true, in Germany (one finds it in the Lohberg district of the city of
Dinslaken), Sweden (Malmö in his district of Rosengärd …), Belgium (Molenbeek
and Vilvoorde …), Denmark (in Copenhagen the district of Mjolnenparken and
Norrebro…), in Holland (in Amsterdam, Omertoomseveld district …) …

Non-citizenship

In everyday language a whole vocabulary is found in
Europe to emphasize the non-citizenship of these sons or grandsons of
immigrants (girls and granddaughters are perceived differently and generally
behave differently): they are modestly called in Sweden "non-ethnically
Swedish" individuals, much like the "French on paper" in France,
"Passdeutschen" in Germany (those who have a German passport – but
are not genuine Germans) and even more pejorative in England the
"Pakis" (of Pakistani or more largely Southeast Asian origin, with a
strong depreciative nuance), in Denmark the "Perker" (with the same
pejorative as the Paki in English), "Arab", "Bougnoul",
"Bicot", "Beur”, pejorative expressions in France…

Mirror game

These individuals feel coerced by the predicament of
being neither French nor Arab, neither Pakistani nor English… they bear the
stigma of double “non-identity” (in France they are “dirty Arabs”, in Algeria,
they become “dirty, arrogant Frenchmen”). They find a substitute identity in
Islam, and by espousing it they put an end to their dual non-identity.

In response, they develop characteristics that
accentuate their non-citizenship through aggression, a gesture perceived as
threatening by others, ways of being that are considered provocative. In terms
of language they develop their own slang about the locals they do not belong to
as "babtou" (the white), "gaouri" in France … Racism and
counter-racism inextricably mix in a mirror game. The transition to jihadism of
a small minority of them restores, on the imaginary plane, pride, even dignity
in opposition to society, legitimizing blind violence against it.

Hotbeds

Poor districts in
a large global city can become “hotbeds”[1] of
Jihadism: East London, in which Tower Hamlets, Newham and Waltham Forest have
concentrated half of Jihadists in London is a case in point.   

On the whole, in
Great Britain, more than three quarters of the jihadist acts have been
perpetrated by individuals coming from poor districts and almost half of the
jihadist acts have been committed by people living in the poor districts[2].

Sometimes the
association of two cities or a city and an agglomeration in another city
promotes jihadism : one can quote several cases of this nature in France like
Toulouse-Artigat and Cannes-Torcy.

Often the
proximity of a poor and a rich neighborhood can give rise to forms of
frustration and indignation favoring jihadism. There is certainly no strict
causality, but this urban phenomenon is found in many European cities where
jihadism has developed. This is the case of North Kensington, where Grenfell
Tower caught fire on June 14, 2017, causing at least 79 deaths. This district
is part of the 10% of the poorest neighborhoods in England but at the same time
rubs shoulders with wealthy neighborhoods where luxury hotels are bought up by
foreign owners who rarely live there. This is also the case of social housing
in Parisian districts in the process of gentrification, such as the nineteenth district,
where members of the network of Buttes-Chaumont also live, for the most part in
public housing areas. This is also the case of the young people of Molenbeek in
Belgium: in this district, poverty is adjacent to other neighborhoods in the
process of gentrification. We find these same phenomena in the city of Nice in
France (the district of Ariane).

The excluded

The history of the
last half a century can also play a significant role. In Nice, the establishment
of the members of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) and, later, the GIA (Armed
Islamic Group) in the 1990s after the military coup in Algeria that ousted the
Islamic group, the Islamic Salvation Front, had a significant impact on the
indoctrination or even the radicalization of a part of the population of
immigrant origin in the following decade.

Even if the city
does not explain everything, most European jihadists come from areas, cities or
regions relatively well circumscribed in space, mostly poor, stigmatized and
inhabited by sons and grandsons of immigrants.

jihadists can also
be recruited in middle-class neighborhoods, but here it is the malaise of
middle-class youth, the absence of utopia, the fear of social downgrading and
an often atomized and anomic individualism that are at the origin of
radicalization for a youth that can no longer refer to the ideals of the extreme
left. In the latter case, the urban structure does not play the same role as in
the case of poor neighborhoods. Still, the latter case is by far the majority
among European jihadists.

In conclusion

In short, Europe is sick of its enclaved and impoverished
neighborhoods where young people, mostly of immigrant origin and economically
marginalized, are locked up. Not knowing how to integrate them, and as long as
this urban structure is not challenged, we can expect either jihadism or a
frenzied delinquency in an enclosed environment where at the same time we have the
development of a puritanical and sectarian religiosity, a pietist Salafism.

Norrebro, Copenhagen. Wikicommons/Jay Bergesen. Some rights reserved.

[1] Jihadist Hotbeds – Understanding Local Radicalisation Processes,
European Foundation for Democracy, ISPI Milan, July 15, 2015.

[2] James Monroe, Event Summary : « HJS Report Launch :
Islamist Terrorism : analysis of Offences and Attacks in the UK, Henry
Jackson Society, 3 August 2017.

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