**6. Applying the Model to France**

The three-tier model is applicable to any polity, as this section will demonstrate, using the case of France's counterterrorism policies in the 21st century.

### *6.1. The First Tier of Religion's Impact on France's Counterterrorism Policy*

The story of France's national security policy in the 21st century is the story of France's counter Islamic terrorism policy, as fighting Islamic radicalization has become the main preoccupation of the

French national security establishment since the mid-1990s. What caused this change in France's security agenda is a question that can be answered by the first tier of religion's involvement in making national security policies: the beliefs embedded in the state's security thinking on the relations between religion and security caused the French authorities from the 1990s onwards to interpret a security situation involving Muslim actors as a real threat to the political ideology of the state.

When, in the mid-1990s, an Algerian group called the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) orchestrated a series of attacks in the heart of France—in retaliation for French involvement in the Algerian civil war between the secular military regime and local Islamist movements—the French authorities and public responded with unprecedented alarm. The GIA attacks were not the first attacks by an Islamic actor on French soil, preceded as they were by the 1980s attacks by Iran and Hezbollah. But unlike Iran and Hezbollah, the North African GIA recruited accomplices among France's own citizens of North African origin—and this domestic group was flagged in 1989 as endangering the political ideology of France due to its Muslim religiosity. During the 1980s, many of the second and third generations of the 1960s and 1970s North African immigration turned to Islam as an alternative source of social identity after becoming disillusioned with their chances of ever integrating into French society (Bowen 2007, p. 83; Bowen 2009, p. 442). Their demand for the right to publicly practice, celebrate and dress in accordance with their religion, which was covered by the media in what became known as the veil a ffair of 1989, was portrayed by the media as challenging France's political ideology, *Republicanism*, which places secularism (laïcité) at the heart of the public sphere as an instrument of domestic security seeking to prevent the return of the religious violence that preceded the birth of modern France in the French Revolution of 1987. Thus, *Republicanism* demands that any religious attachments should be removed to the private sphere, lest they risk destabilizing the homogeneous political community (Beyler 2006; Roy 2007, p. x; Maussen 2009, p. 44). With national media and discourse playing up the connections between young girls wearing headscarves in schools and the broader "Islamic threat", the idea that Muslim religiosity stood at odds with France's political ideology spread from the fringes of the political system into its center.

This securitization of Muslim religiosity as a threat to *Republicanism* was why, when members of this group assisted GIA in 1995, the French authorities saw France as attacked by a unified ideological threat to its identity from the religion of Islam itself, rather than from Islamic terrorism. This securitization of Islam was shaped not only by the republican narrative of "secularism as an instrument of domestic security and national cohesion", but also by another narrative inherited from France's religious history, this time from the French administration of Muslim lands of North Africa: the narrative of the religion of Islam as unified, exceptional to all other religions, and inherently belligerent and irreconcilable with the principle of secularism. As the literature noted, this perception, which guided much of France's policy towards its North African colonies, continued to influence the French political elites long after France de-colonized, leading modern French policymakers to see all North African decedents as unified in violent opposition to France's principle of secularism (Cesari 2007, p. 37; Maussen 2009, p. 253; Bowen 2010, p. 33).

France's counterterrorism policy in the three decades to come was significantly shaped by this particular understanding of the nature of the threat facing France. The construction of Islamic identity as a threat to the secularist "soul" of the republic made nation-a ffirming strategies an inseparable part of the French counterterrorism policies, such as banning the wearing of the Islamic veil and the burka (in 2004 and 2010, respectively), in an attempt to place the concept of laïcité in the forefront of the collective identity. France defined "radicalism" as including only "Islamic radicalism" and deemed radical even signs associated with the process of growing Islamic religiosity that are not necessarily jihadist or violent, such as "abruptly changing their eating habits", "no longer watching television or going to the movies because of images that are forbidden to them" or "changing their attire, especially women, with clothes that conceal the body" (Giambrone 2015; National Consultative Commission on Human Rights 2017, p. 8).

Additionally, the ideological commitment of the French political elite to the assimilationist model of republicanism led them to reject potential domestic inducements for turning to terror, such as the growth of inequalities between the native French and the North African decedents, arguing instead that Islamic terrorism is a phenomenon imported from outside France, which only French criminals enlist in (Dück and Lucke 2019, pp. 22–25). As a result, French counterterrorism policy did not include e fforts to improve the socio-economic circumstances leading young French of North African origin living in the suburbs to radicalize, but instead placed a heavy emphasis on military counterterrorism operations outside France's borders, from the Balkans, Afghanistan and the Indian Ocean, to the Sahel region, Iraq and Syria (Samaan and Jacobs 2018, p. 10; de Villepin 2006, p. 6). The perception of French Islamic terrorists as nothing more than criminals also caused French policymakers to reject, up until 2014, the "soft" counterradicalization measures most Western European countries adopted after the 2004 Madrid and the 2005 London attacks, such as interventions, phone hotlines, dialogues and workshops with Muslim communities, vocational training, counseling and exit programs. This rejection was also informed by the inability of the state to engage with theological matters or religious communities, both legally and psychologically, due to its entrenched policy of laïcité (Hellmuth 2015, pp. 982–87; Ragazzi 2014, pp. 5–10).

Beside "secularism as a domestic security instrument" and "Islam as unified, exceptional, belligerent", a third operational belief on religion that has been found to be influential in shaping French counterterrorism policy over the years is associated with a past strategy of regulating religion, the strategy of *Gallicanism. Gallicanism* dates from the establishment of the Gallican Church (1682–790), and maintains that the best way to "neutralize" the destructive force of religions is through an official state-recognition of "organized religions" (*le culte*), which are closely regulated and required to select a single "privileged interlocutor" from each religion to represent them vis-à-vis the state (Caeiro 2016, p. 72). As this strategy succeeded in establishing a national form of Catholicism in France in the 17–18th centuries and the incorporation of the Jews into the state in the early 19th century, French policymakers of the 21st century were united in the belief that the best way to counter the threat posed by Islam was to domesticate it along the same lines. All French governments from the 1990s to the present adopted the policy objective of creating *Islam de France* (French Islam), an Islam compatible with France's republican norms, values and institutions and free from external influences. To that end, they adopted several religion-domestication measures, such as encouraging the creation of a representative body for French Muslims to serve as a privileged interlocutor of Muslims vis-à-vis the state, and encouraging the opening of imam training programs in France, so that imams preaching in France would preach a civic-minded form of Islam (Laurence and Vaisse 2006, p. 157; Laurence 2012, p. 121; Çitak 2010, p. 623; Husson 2007, p. 16).

It can be seen that the operational beliefs on religion embedded in France's political and security thinking were an enduring and significant influence on French national security policy. They greatly influenced the French understanding of a security situation involving religion as a national security threat, as well as the French understanding of the best response to this newly identified "religion threat". All the patterns mentioned here transcended any political di fferences that existed between the French governments of the 21st century, and the organizational memory of the Ministry of Interior—the body regulating religion in France—played a special role in the continuous turn to Gallicanism as the best security solution to the French security predicament. The influence of operational beliefs on religion, however, does not cover the entire story of religion's impact on French national security making. France's counterterrorism strategy was also delimited by the role religion played in global, regional and domestic politics, but as this delimitation was more ad-hoc and on a lesser scale, it should be referred to as an independent tier.

### *6.2. The Second Tier of Religion's Impact on France's Counterterrorism Policy*

Did religion's place in France's political competition delimit which policy national security decisionmakers could adopt? It did. The anti-Muslim party, the Front National (FN), began posing a real political challenge to the traditional governing parties after it came second in the first round of France's 2002 presidential elections, as more and more of the French public had adopted the FN's claim that Islamic identity was a direct threat to French identity. The tight inter-elite competition compelled French decisionmakers at times toward or away from certain counterterrorism policies that were more aligned with the FN's worldview, when it seemed that the public supported that worldview. For example, after President Jacques Chirac won the second round of the 2002 election, his center-right governmen<sup>t</sup> adopted a far more negative position against signs of Islamic worship and communalism, such as headscarves, out of the fear that the FN would repeat its 2002 victories in the spring regional election of 2004 (Kuru 2009, p. 129; Bowen 2007, pp. 242–43). In another case, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy moved away from his intention to modify Article 2 of the Law of 1905, to allow the state to fund mosques and other houses of worship, after almost all sectors of the French population declared their opposition, as such a modification would reduce France's Laïcité, which is the best weapon against Islamic communalism (Peter 2008, p. 101; Bowen 2007, pp. 60–61). This illustrates that, as in Israel, the pressure of unified French public opinion on religious matters was found to delimit which counterterrorism measures decisionmakers were able to adopt, although it did not seem to influence the heart of French strategy.

What of policy opportunities and constraints coming from religion's role in the international arena? In addition to worsening an already existing religion threat, the global religious phenomenon of the rise of jihadism and Islamism during the 21st century also delimited France's freedom of action in pursuing external measures against Islamic terrorism. For example, the rise to power of an Islamist governmen<sup>t</sup> in Tunis during the Arab Spring halted security cooperation with the country for a few years, since France's secularist identity made President Francois Hollande's governmen<sup>t</sup> reluctant to cooperate with an Islamist government—a reluctance that was not shared at the time by other European countries, such as Germany (Krüger and Ratka 2015, pp. 49–54). This illustrates the interaction between the first and the second tiers.

On the other hand, for France, as for Israel, the external religious phenomena of the global war on terrorism and the Middle Eastern "war of religion" between Shi'i Iran and Sunni Arab countries enhanced the policymakers' freedom of action, as it generated significantly greater external support for France to fight against jihadist terrorism. For example, after the launch of the global war on terrorism, France enjoyed greater security cooperation from other European countries which, before 9.11, all too often responded indifferently to its frequent requests for international cooperation in the fight against Islamic terrorism (Cettina 2003, p. 92). Additionally, the deterioration of relations between the Sunni Gulf countries and the US, due to the latter's Middle East policy that tipped the scales of power toward Iran, allowed France to fill the vacuum and to foster exceptionally close relations with the Sunni Gulf countries, which helped in the pursuit of French interests in the region, including counterterrorism interests (Barnes-Dacey 2015; Chacker 2018; Samaan 2018).

Thus, after the factors of the first tier shaped the French understanding of the nature of the threat it was dealing with and the best strategy to counter it, the factors of the second tier—religion's role in international, regional and domestic politics—delimitated France's implementation of this strategy.

### *6.3. The Third Tier of Religion's Impact on France's Counterterrorism Policy*

Further to strategy implementation, the remaining part of religion's impact on French national security policy is the government's utilization of religion for the sake of counterterrorism objectives.

Like Israel, the French governments utilized religion in the diplomatic, military and informational instruments. In the military instrument, for example, the French military and police tried to recruit youths of North African origin, because familiarity with Muslim culture and the Arabic language was necessary for the success of counterterrorism missions in the 21st century (Bertossi 2014, p. 84). In the diplomatic instrument, we have President Hollande holding the first official meeting of his 2013 visit to Mali in the ancient Djingareyber mosque in Timbuktu, six days after French forces liberated the city from Al-Qaeda forces, in order to reinforce the image of France as the savior of Mali's cultural

heritage, rather than a neo-colonizing force (Associated Press 2013). This utilization is an example of a utilitarian utilization of religion, as secularist France does not usually mix religion and state a ffairs. In the informational instrument, during the 2000s, French leadership propagated the message that, rather than a clash of civilizations between the West and Islam, there was a clash between states and "extremists" who "hijack Islam's humanist tradition and pervert the religion for the goals and causes that the criminals claim to be serving", in the words of the French 2006 white paper (de Villepin 2006, p. 114; Bosco 2014, pp. 42, 72–73; Fragnon 2019; Dück and Lucke 2019, pp. 15–16). These are just a few examples of France's utilization of religion in these three instruments.

In addition, France exhibited a type of utilization of religion that is missing from the Israeli case—the reorganization of religion–state relations for national security goals. For example, banning the wearing of the Islamic veil in schools and the burka anywhere in public. The reorganization of religion–state relations for national security goals is a common enough practice among countries and it is done for a variety of reasons. Saddam Hussein secularized Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War in order to win the ideological battle against newly-Islamized Iran, despite domestic pressures inside Iraq for Islamization (Baram 2011, pp. 5–7), whereas General Zia ul Haq religionized Pakistan in the early 1980s, in order to create more religious-oriented students who would join the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan (Ahmed 2012, p. 286). Israel, on the other hand, has not opted for this practice in its fight against Islamic terror, as one of its operational beliefs on religion is that any change in the existing religious status quo regarding Islam is bound to cause further violence against the state, thus illustrating the connection between the first and the third tiers. Another example of this connection is the fact that secularist France utilized religion less than Israel did. For example, unlike the utilization of Islamic ideas by the Israeli diplomacy apparatus in the 2010s, or the German campaign explaining to the public Islamic terms, such as *jihad* or *Khilafa*, France ruled out the use of religious ideas or themes, or engaging with the religious worldviews of jihadi terrorists, in its informational campaigns (Mielcarek 2015; Said and Fouad 2018, p. 7; Hughes 2019, pp. 61–63).

Finally, there has been feedback between France's utilization of religion (third tier) and the French understanding of the nature of the threat (first tier). The French reorganization of religion–state relations in the form of banning Islamic female wear, along with France's harsh nonreligious counterterrorism measures, fed the radicalization of the Islamic milieu in France. As more and more youths of North African origin became radicalized and joined Islamic terror groups, French policymakers had to change their long-standing objection to soft deradicalization measures as "inappropriate", when it became evident that hard deradicalization measures were insu fficient to prevent radicalization.

All in all, it can be seen that religion's involvement in shaping France's national security policies can also be analyzed through the *operational beliefs-conditions of choice-utilization* model o ffered by this article. There is every reason to believe that this model fits other polities as well, but it must be empirically tested.
