Why is the French study important?   After the authors were able to look at France’s S “File”, the terrorism watch list, they found some interesting patterns.  For the most part the terrorists were either second-generation French citizens, children of non-religious parent immigrants or young native French converts to Islam. Western recruits to ISIS have a high number of Islamic converts.  Many of the terrorists had degrees in engineering.  It seems the connecting factor was “generational revolt”.   Looking for bonding, they come from secular families and then join small “clubs” called Salafist where the real terrorist is formed.  The threat then being coined as “Islamification of radicalism”.

Terrorists are not the unemployed and uneducated Muslim immigrants but instead seem to come from educated and well-off families.  Why does this radicalization occur?  That was the purpose of the study related in Muslims, Terrorists and the Job.  Namely, the fact that discrimination in France occurs on the job and in society therefore increasing the isolation tendency of Muslims in their new country. This vicious cycle being repeated is the reason proposed by these scholars.

It is clear that discrimination in obtaining middle-class jobs and living a middle-class life leads to distrust of French institutions. Muslims have reasonable but unreachable goals, fail to integrate, and keep strong ties to their native land.  Some join Salafist clubs.

So what can be done?  I’m sure that in reading this, you can determine what you can do on a personal level.  But what about the institutions and Muslims?  The authors suggest:

• Studying and releasing discrimination rates to increase awareness.
• Employers need to study and change their hiring practices.
• Employers need to hire consultants that can deal with cultural tensions in the workplace.
• Muslim communities must ensure gender equality and shame members who refuse to take orders from women.
• Better integration within the host society.

Based solely on their study they do make one important conjecture:  banning immigration is counterproductive, it does not address discrimination and discourages integration into a new society.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-04-26/dont-fear-muslim-immigrants