Political Modernity 83(for Britain, see The Guardian, 30 November 2004). This reinforces the sense of
alienation from mainstream society, especially felt by the young, who also suffer
disproportionately from racism and the hostility to Muslims following 9/11.
France is where such youths, living in slum suburbs (les banlieues) of Paris and
the main cities, rioted violently in 2005, causing a national crisis. It is signifi cant
that the grievances of those rioters were framed in terms of economic and social
demands, with particular objections to repressive policing, rather than in terms
of religious ideologies or solidarities. The International Crisis Group 2006 report
on these events in the context of the transformations of the politics of Muslims in
France concluded that there was a process of depoliticisation of Muslims, after
the political surges of the 1980s and 1990s, of which the riots were one manifes-
tation. The political and religious associations, some encouraged by the French
government as offi cial interlocutors, had become ever more distant from ordi-
nary Muslims, especially the young. The political Islam, led mostly by offshoots
of the Muslim Brotherhood, became more integrated into offi cial institutional
structures, respectable and recognised by the state as interlocutors on Islam. The
report distinguished a number of orientations of Muslims in depoliticised direc-
tion. It highlighted two strands of Salafi sm: ‘shaykhist’ and jihadist. The fi rst is
a pietistic orientation emphasising observance and ritual, fostered by Wahhabi
clerics from Saudi Arabia, with their funds and mosques. It discourages political
participation in favour of individualised piety. Jihadism, as we have seen, is the
violent face of Salafi sm, emphasising equally observance and distance from non-
believers, but with active hostility towards the latter as enemies of Islam. Riots
are forms of spontaneous and equally apolitical response. All these orientations
are distinct from the communal and ethnic Islam of the earlier generations, and
the political Islam of the 1990s. Some Muslims are receptive to the appeal of
jihadist Salafi sm, and the idea of a universal confrontation between Islam and
the West. Much of this receptivity remains at the level of sentiment, and only
a few of them progress into organisation and action. Radical and jihadi groups
are recruiting among this minority. However, an interesting phenomenon is
that they are also successful among converts to Islam, especially those from
other disadvantaged groups, notably Afro-Caribbean youth in Britain. The
young radicals of immigrant origins are mostly second and third generations. As
such they are culturally integrated into the life of the host community, having
been through the education system and being able to speak the language like
natives. They are mostly alienated from the ethnic cultures of their parents.
The radical Islam they embrace is not that of their parents, but a de-ethnicised,
de-territorialised Islam, with Salafi or Qutbist ideas and motifs. Equally, many
of the educated middle-class Muslims, in so far as they believe and practise,
embrace a modernist reformed Islam with universalistic orientations, distinct
from the ethnic Islam of their parents. It is important to note, then, that Islamic
affi liations, whether radical or liberal, are typically modern and individualised,