French Jihadis Go Underground to Avoid Scrutiny by Authorities

Rod Dreher exposes a new trend among French jihadis, who are shaving beards, stopping their prayers, and using other methods to avoid scrutiny from authorities. Dreher quotes from a New York Times article by Gilles Kepel, a French scholar focused on Islamic radicalism.

And:

With all this attention focused on them, many jihadis are now adapting, and have become far better at disguising their beliefs. Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist who has spent many years researching Muslims in the French prison system, told me it has become almost impossible to get honest testimony out of the inmates. Many of them shave their beards, Khosrokhavar said, and adopt a mild demeanor, and sometimes they even stop praying and fasting during Ramadan, all so as to deceive the authorities and, presumably, get out of prison faster.

… Just before we left, I asked the North African [Muslim prisoner] whether he expected the recent wave of terrorist attacks in France to continue. This was just after the arrest of several terrorist cells, and two months before a machete-wielding jihadist attacked guards near the Louvre. He gave me a somber look. “This is just the beginning,” he said.

Read the whole thing. The author talks to French Muslims who actually agree with Kepel, and say that the real problem is the spread of Gulf-sponsored Salafism among French Muslims.

Poor France. Like Scott McConnell said, France is in the vanguard of issues that will eventually confront most Western nations.