Gilles Kepel

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Gilles Kepel - Chatham House 2012

Gilles Kepel (born June 30, 1955 in Paris ) is a French social scientist. He is a professor at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and also holds the chair for the Middle East and the Mediterranean at the Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) Research University at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS).

The author of sociological and political science works is considered one of the best experts on political Islam and radical Islamism . But he also deals with fundamentalist and anti-laicist currents in Judaism and Christianity ( Die Rache Gottes , 1991).

Kepel is also the Philippe Roman Professor of History and International Relations at the LSE IDEAS Center for Diplomacy & Strategy at the London School of Economics and Political Science .

In 2015 he took part in the 63rd Bilderberg Conference .

Life

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Originally trained in classical literature , Kepel began studying Arabic in 1974 after a trip to the Levant. He graduated in philosophy and English , then another in Arabic at the Institut Français in Damascus (1977-78) and obtained his diploma in 1980 at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (“Sciences Po”). He specialized in Islamist movements and spent three years in the French Research Center (CEDEJ) in Egypt. There he conducted field research to obtain a doctorate. In 1980 he wrote his doctoral thesis on Islamist movements, entitled “The Prophet and the Pharaoh. The Example of Egypt ”was published. It was the first analysis of contemporary Islamist militancy and is still a standard university work worldwide today.

When he returned to France, Kepel began his research at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), studying the development of Islam as a social and political phenomenon in that country. This led to the book Les Banlieues de l'Islam (The Suburbs of Islam, 1987), a fundamental work for the study of Islam in the West. Then Kepel began to deal with the political and religious currents in Islam, Judaism and Christianity: “The vengeance of God. Radical Muslims, Christians and Jews on the Rise ”, which became a bestseller and has been translated into 19 languages.

As a visiting professor at New York University (NYU) in 1993, he conducted field research among black Muslims in the United States, which was compared to phenomena such as the Rushdie affair in Great Britain and the hijab controversy in France.

Kepel received his habilitation in 1993 , was promoted to Head of Research at CNRS in 1995 and spent the 1995/1996 academic year in the United States as a Consortium Professor at Columbia University , New York University and the New School for Social Research . He did research at NYU and Columbia University for his bestseller, The Black Book of Jihad. The rise and fall of Islamism. ”This book, based on two years of fieldwork in the Muslim world stretching from Indonesia to Africa, has been translated into a dozen other languages. Initially praised for its far-reaching perspective and its special perspective, the book was criticized after September 11, 2001 because it postulated the failure of political Islamist mobilization for the end of the 1990s. Kepel responded to these criticisms in 2002 with his travelogue “Chronique d'une guerre d'Orient” (Chronicle of an Oriental War), in which he retrospectively referred to this failure as the end of the first phase of the “dialectic of jihadism”. This first phase is the phase of the fight against the "near enemy". Then comes a second phase ( al-Qaeda ), which learns from such a failure and focuses on the "distant enemy" but fails to mobilize the Muslim masses under the banner of the jihadists. Finally, there is the third phase, a network consisting of small jihadist groups in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa: the ISIS phase. This jihad trilogy was featured in “The New Crusades. The Arab World and the Future of the West ”(German 2005) and“ The Spiral of Terror. The path of Islamism from September 11th to our suburbs ”(German 2009) analyzed more thoroughly. With his students, Kepel also published “Al-Qaida. Texts of Terror ”(German 2006) - a translation and analysis of selected texts whose authors are jihad ideologues: Abdallah Azzam , Osama bin Laden , Aiman ​​az-Zawahiri and Abu Mussab al Zarqawi .

In 2001 he was appointed Full Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po , where he initiated the Middle East and Mediterranean Program and the EuroGolfe Forum. He supervised more than 40 doctoral theses and founded the “Proche-Orient” (Middle East) series at Presses Universitaires de France, for which he acted as editor-in-chief: this gave his postdocs the opportunity to publish their first book. The series amounted to 23 volumes between 2004 and 2017. In December 2010 - the month of Mohammad Bouaziz's self-immolation in Sidi Bouzid, which triggered the so-called Arab Spring - “Sciences Po” ended the program for the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Kepel was appointed Senior Fellow at the Institut Universitaire de France for five years (2010–2015): This enabled him to concentrate on his field research again. For 2009/2010 he was also offered the Philippe Roman Visiting Professorship in History and International Relations at the London School of Economics .

In 2012 he published “Banlieue de la République” (Suburbs of the Republic), a study of the unrest that began in 2005 in the French suburbs of Clichy and Montfermeil in northeast Paris. The study is based, in collaboration with the Institut Montaigne-Think Tank, on a one-year participant observation with a team of students. The next study, "Quatre-vingt-treize" (or "93", after the postcode of the Seine-Saint-Denis department ) shed new light on Islam in France 25 years after Kepel's groundbreaking work "Les banlieues de l'Islam" .

In 2013, Kepel documented the Arab uprising in the travelogue “Passion Arabe”, a bestseller that received the “Petrarca Prize” from Radio France Culture and was named best book of the year by the newspaper 'Le Monde'. In 2014 he published “Passion Française”, a study with a travelogue. In it he documented the participation of the first generation of candidates with a Muslim background in the parliamentary elections in June 2012 . He focused on Marseille and Roubaix . This study was the third book in a tetralogy that culminated in "Terror in France: The New Jihad in Europe" (2015) in 2016. In it, Kepel dealt with the terrorist attacks in France and viewed them in a larger context. This bestseller was translated into five languages ​​and finally made Kepel an outstanding intellectual and a target for jihad fighters.

In 2016, in his book “Der Bruch” (German 2017), based on a radio program by France Culture from 2015 and 2016, he examined the effects of jihadist terror following the mass attacks on French and European soil. It deals with the attacks against the background of the strengthening of the extreme right in Europe and notes the failure of politics on the Old Continent.

In February 2016, Kepel was appointed chairman of the newly formed Excellence Program for the Mediterranean and Middle East at Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) University at the École normal supérieure . There he is responsible for the monthly seminar on "Violence and Dogma: How Contemporary Islamism Makes Use of the Past".

Kepel is a member of numerous supervisory and advisory bodies, including the "Haut Conseil" of the Institut du monde arabe museum in Paris and the German Middle East think tank Candid Foundation in Berlin.

Banlieue de la République

Kepel first looked at immigrants in France in 1987 with the study Les banlieues de l'islam . With Banlieue de la République (2012) he published two reports for which he had carried out field studies in 2011 with a team in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil , the suburbs where the unrest in France started in 2005 :

  • More than half of the students do not make the transition to upper school, the youth unemployment rate was 43%. Entries in the electoral rolls were 33% (national average: 66%).
  • Between 1987 and 2011, there was a transition from imported to domestic Islam (“Islam en France” to “Islam de France”). The “current” generation of children owes their identity to an Islam that is opposed to the ideas of the republic. Religion is a compensation for those living conditions that are perceived as bad, unjust and degrading. Secularity does not play a role in people's everyday life .
  • Kepel described the fact that his survey revealed that some of the Saudi - Salafist imams in France had mobilized their believers to take part in jihad in the Syrian civil war as very worrying . These imams called for the extermination of all "infidels" in Syria and also for the destruction of "godless France". Kepel described the later return of these jihadists from Syria as a major problem.

Controversy with Olivier Roy about French Islamism today

Since 2015 there has been a high-profile argument between Olivier Roy and Kepel in France , which Roy comments as follows:

QUESTION: The Islam researcher Gilles Kepel accuses you of downplaying the Islamic dimension of terrorism. ANSWER: That is a good sign that he is aggressive, it means that he has to deal with my theses. It doesn't suit him that I point out the psychological dimension. From my point of view we urgently need a pluridisciplinary examination of the phenomenon of Islamist radicalization. "

- Interview with Michaela Wiegel, FAZ, March 26, 2016

In the Tages-Anzeiger , Kepel went into detail about his view of Islamist terror in 2016. One of the foundations of terrorism in France is the following: In his 2004 “appeal for global Islamic resistance”, the engineer Abu Musab al-Suri anticipated what is happening today. In contrast to Osama bin Laden, the most important target group for attacks is not the USA but the European countries. The poorly integrated, unemployed Muslim youth in the French suburbs see Al-Suri as an inexhaustible field of recruitment for the jihad . In contrast to the hierarchically organized Al-Qaida, he propagated a network of terror consisting of individuals and small groups, which should spread in the countries of the "infidels". Al-Suri's formula is: A system instead of an organization. About the youngest generation of jihadists, Kepel said: Prisons are of paramount importance for recruiting new ISIS members. In France, around 70 percent of prison inmates are Muslim. They are told by radicalized fellow prisoners that they are not to blame, but rather atheism , the modern secular society of France and the racist opponents of Islam. This propaganda perverts the crimes for which the young Muslims are imprisoned into virtues. Their ability and willingness to assault, rob, and kill people would be interpreted positively, provided that it was not for personal gain but for a religious purpose. France is serving as a target precisely because you are dealing with a predominantly Arab jihad, not a Turkish or a Pakistani jihad. France is the largest Arab country in Europe, and it is also a former colonial power . The hatred that arose during the Algerian war is having an impact in many immigrant families. In addition, in the eyes of the Islamists from North Africa, France is the “breeding ground” of the Enlightenment , that is of atheism. For example, they felt ashamed to speak French when it was their mother tongue. Ali Belhadj , the most important ideologue of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front , has said that his hatred is particularly directed against those Algerians who have sucked in the poisoned French language and culture like their mother's milk.

Kepel says we know that around 1,500 people have traveled to IS territory and that some of them have returned. And that the secret services classified around 8,000 people in the country as violent. There are indications of the existence of parallel societies in France. In certain suburbs the influence of the Salafists is now so strong that a Muslim can hardly afford to eat, smoke or drink in public during Ramadan . There are French politicians from all parties who have come to terms with these conditions and even made pacts with the Salafists because they believed they could save social peace in this way. Kepel thinks that this may work in the short term, but in the long term this is how society is divided. The children of the immigrants have miserable career opportunities because unemployment is high in France, because the economy does not start and because the elites have failed. If you ask yourself whether “we” are “at war” with the Islamists, as François Hollande said, Kepel rejects the statement. The war was taking place between armies in the Middle East, not France. The fight against the French Islamists is the task of the police and the secret services. To speak of a war is to fall into a trap for extremists.

In June 2016, Kepel specified in an interview with Daniel Binswanger :

“Musab al-Suri, who comes from Syria, developed the IS terror strategy with his call for global Islamic resistance . He sees Europe as the soft belly of the West and wants to turn European Muslims recruited for jihad into 'soldiers of the caliphate' ... I lead a controversy with Olivier Roy and his supporters, who start from the thesis that it is from the terrorism of the Reds Army Group on IS gives a kind of continuity. From their point of view, terrorism was red yesterday, before maybe brown, and today it is green. Every time it is said to be a violent generation conflict. I am not denying that social and psychological factors are crucial. Terrorism can only recruit followers under certain conditions. If it weren't for the discrimination against 2nd and 3rd generation Maghreb immigrants, if mass unemployment did not exist, radical Islam could not spread. Nevertheless: the Salafization of the heads is a precondition. It leads to a total break with European society, with the Enlightenment, with secularized civilization. Salafism completely rejects basic values ​​such as democracy, freedom and equality of the sexes ... A real cultural war is taking place within Islam. The Salafists would have to pull the moderate heretics to their side, this is the only way they can turn from a small avant-garde into a mass movement. "

- Gilles Kepel, IS is unlikely to repeat this mistake. Tages-Anzeiger, June 7, 2016

In 2017, Michel Wieviorka accentuated the difference between Kepel and Roy as follows:

"... whereby Kepel insisted on the religious dimensions of Islamism in a narrower sense, while Roy pointed out above all that Islamization among the jihadists was often the result of radicalization that had not even started religiously."

- Wieviorka, in blue, white, red . ISBN 9783423261524 , pp. 104 - 121

Fonts (selection)

  • Les banlieues de l'islam. Naissance d'une religion en France . Le Seuil, Paris 1987
  • La Revanche de Dieu. Chrétiens, juifs et musulmans à la reconquête du monde . Le Seuil, Paris 1991
  • Le Prophète et le Pharaon. Aux sources des mouvements islamistes . Le Seuil, Paris 1984, éd. rév. 1993
    • The Prophet and the Pharaoh. The example of Egypt . The development of Muslim extremism. Piper, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-492-03786-0
  • A l'ouest d'Allah . Le Seuil, Paris 1994
  • Between Cairo and Kabul. A trip to the Orient in times of jihad . Übers. Ursel Schäfer. Piper, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-492-27301-7
  • Jihad. Expansion et déclin de l'islamisme . Gallimard, Paris 2000, éd. rév. 2003
  • Chronique d'une guerre d'Orient, automne 2001. Brève chronique d'Israël et de Palestine, avril-may 2001 . Gallimard, Paris 2002.
  • Fitna. Guerre au coeur de l'islam. Essai . Gallimard, Paris 2004.
  • You jihad à la fitna . Bayard, Paris 2005.
  • The new crusades. The Arab World and the Future of the West. Piper, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-492-24533-1 . Table of Contents (PDF)
  • with Jean-Pierre Milelli (Ed.): Al-Qaida. Texts of Terror . Piper, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-492-04912-5 .
  • The spiral of terror. The path of Islamism from September 11th to our suburbs . Übers. Ursel Schäfer. Piper, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-492-05264-1 . Table of Contents (PDF)
  • Terreur et martyre. Relever le défi de civilization . Flammarion, Paris 2008.
  • Banlieue de la République . Gallimard, Paris 2012.
  • Quatre-vingt-treize. Essai . Gallimard, Paris 2012.
  • Passion arabe . Gallimard, Paris, 2013.
  • Passion française. La voix des cités . Gallimard, Paris 2014.
  • Terreur dans l'Hexagone. Genèse du jihad français. Gallimard, Paris 2015, ISBN 978-2-07-010562-5 .
  • La Fracture: Chroniques 2015-2016 . November 2016, Gallimard, ISBN 978-2-07-270129-0 .
  • Sortir du chaos, Stratégie pour le Moyen-Orient et la Méditerranée , Gallimard Jeunesse publishing house (January 1, 2018), ISBN 978-2-07-277047-0 .
    • Chaos. Understand the crises in North Africa and the Middle East . Kunstmann, Munich 2019. 448 pp., ISBN 978-3-95614-320-5 .

Media coverage

Web links

Links in French

Links in English

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ List of participants on bilderbergmeetings.org ( Memento from June 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Candid Foundation, Board of Trustees: Our Board and Affiliated Experts. Retrieved on October 23, 2019 (German).
  3. ↑ FAZ, January 24, 2015 (p. 13) / Lena Bopp: How France lied to itself
  4. ^ FAZ, April 18, 2013: France has to reinvent itself , conversation with Gilles Kepel
  5. ↑ Interview GK Leiden and Passion with Beat Stauffer, al-Qantara 2014
  6. ↑ according to Tages-Anzeiger “Jihadism wants to plunge Europe into a civil war”, February 7, 2016
  7. ↑ Reviews: Caspar Shaller: zeit.de ; Bernhard Schmid : School or Jihad ( jungle world )
  8. ↑ A book that has lost patience , Deutschlandfunk, March 18, 2017, accessed March 20, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Kepel, Gilles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris