Muslims make up 60 percent of the French prison population, but just 8 percent of France’s total population:
Youths with a criminal record are excellent material for radicalization: It gives them a cause for which to fight. And yet the French government barely has a system for tracking this risk group’s embrace of radical Islam.
France makes a convenient target for global terrorists, because of the linguistic and cultural heritage it left in its former colonies:
“We must no longer think in terms of French or French-resident people, but in terms of francophones,” Patrick Calvar, head of France’s domestic intelligence, told the commission. “Thousands of Tunisians, thousands of Moroccans and Algerians can be dispatched into our territory.”