Gilles Kepel, French political scientist and Arabist HARDtalk

Rico and I will be back in half an hour but now on BBC News, it is time

for HARDtalk. There is a grim familiarity

to the fallout from the Manchester Mourning for the innocent

lives lost and an intense focus on the identity and motivation

of the alleged jihadist In this case Salman Abedi,

22 years old, born in The list of Europe's so called

home-grown jihadists is now My guest is Gilles Kepel,

a French expert on Islamist terrorism, whose work has

attracted worldwide attention. Is the West any closer

to an effective Gilles Kepel, welcome to HARDtalk.

Thank you. We are getting more

information by the hour Much of the focus on Salman Abedi,

this young man who appears to have The more we learn, the more

you learn, does it seem to you this fits a familiar template or does

this in any way seem different from Europe's other mass

murders of recent times? I think it fits a familiar

template but it is changing. You know, terrorism

is not always the same. And within that sort of third

generation jihadism that we have Of course as a Frenchman,

what happened in Manchester reminds us of the Bataclan music hall attack

on 13th November 2015. But there it was a whole group

of people who were largely organised, who had come back

from Syria through Belgium, and you know, there were a number

of people, the attacks took place in many places, they were

coordinated, the Stadium of France, in the sidewalk cafes,

this is a loner. Maybe there are people

who helped him but he acted alone. And this reminds us more

of what happened in Nice with the guy who drove his truck

in the crowds, celebrating Bastille Day, or in Berlin

at the Breitscheidplatz. It might lead one to assume

that in recent times, you referred to the Bataclan

which was of course in November 2015, of course in recent times

there has been more focused on this Do you think we are,

in broad terms seeing a trend from highly organised cross-border

operations to more of this Well, I would not call it lone

wolf because you know, lone wolf is something that comes

from the American sort of Columbine thing, and those guys

are sort of brainwashed. They live in the universe

which is full of jihadi worldviews, they spend their time

on social networks and so on. So they are not lonely,

they are cyber wolves, But what has become difficult now

is to coordinate out of the so-called caliphate

territory, because there is military The borders with Turkey sealed Masoe

it's almost impossible to go into the Isis or so-called

caliphate territory, And people there are more busy

saving their neck or fighting on the battle ground than plotting

to coordinate attacks in Europe. If I may interrupt,

what about Libya? Because clearly here

with Salman Abedi, his origins, and the fact that we understand

he had been in Libya very recently, there is this question

about whether Libya must be seen, alongside Iraq and Syria,

as a breeding ground, potentially, for jihadists to come

back to Europe with know-how, with networks, and with

the ability to murder. Well definitely Libya

was perceived as a sort For some time, they had tried

to send people there because it's There is all this illegal

immigration on boats that leave the Libyan coast

and get into Sicily or Lampedusa. And there is an enormous

amount of weaponry there, the old arsenal of Colonel Gaddafi

which was stolen and so So if the Libyan breeding ground had

given to Mr Abedi the possibility to sort of train, that

would be definitely new. Because this, to my knowledge,

has not yet happened. but until recently they remained in

Libya. Libya was not in the capacity

to export jihadists as such. But it does seem in the UK,

maybe in France, these networks The problem is to what extent

these networks function, together with a centre, whatever,

that would be in the caliphate. This is in the book,

I tried to show that there are three The focus against what they called

the nearby enemy, the so-called It did not work out

because they could not mobilise And this is what Osama

bin Laden and the like, these are lessons that they learned

and they sort of designed a new second-generation jihad that

focused against what they call So they thought that, you know,

if they struck at America than they would expose the West

as a colossus with feet of clay. And they had hoped that the masses,

the Muslim masses, would mobilise In Iraq for instance,

the Americans and the West were not defeated, maybe thanks to Iran

which was another ironical story. There is someone, an engineer,

a Syrian engineer by the nom de Trained partially in France,

married in Spain and a resident in London, what we at the time

called Londonistan, when they had all the jihadists here,

about the late 1990s. Who posts a text, 1600 pages

long on the Internet. The Global Islamic Resistance

Call. He says that Europe is the soft

underbelly of the West. Neither America, too far away,

neither Libya or Syria per se because when Muslims fight Muslims

the rest of the world And then as opposed to the sort

of top-down model of Osama bin Laden, which is pyramidal,

it has to be a bottom-up And this is exactly

what we have now. Those networks that were thought,

designed so they would go I remember at the time

I discussed those things here at the Foreign Office

and someone told me, "No, this will will never work

because there can be no terrorism But they just missed

the cultural Revolution of 2005, because on February 14 2005,

on Valentine's Day, YouTube Ie you had this network thing

that could function. And if I may, you placed these

networks very firmly within Muslim communities, whether it be

in the banlieue of Paris or whether it be in the suburbs

of English cities. But the point that some people

looking at your academic research make is that you don't allow

for the importance of individuals. If we are to think of Salman Abedi,

he's a 22-year-old man who did something remarkable,

he was prepared to go out and kill, Now many, including your ferocious

academic critic Olivier Roy, would say that simply using the sort

of mechanistic device of analysing the alienation of Muslim communities

does not get to the heart of why an individual like that would be

prepared to do what he did. Oh, there is definitely

an individual dimension. Which we do not know very well,

like for instance the guy in Nice was diagnosed as a psycho

before he left Tunisia. Maybe that was more

important than the fact that he was a fundamentalist

believer of some sort He probably had some

sort of life crisis. He had some crisis of which we

are not knowledgeable really. But then he sort of cured his crisis

by getting immersed into this

jihadi literature, we know that from his Facebook

accounts and so on and so forth. And what is important

is to understand to what extent someone who has a sort of psychotic

structure or many of them have an absentee father,

and the father is replaced by the peers, who sort

of produce another law. You know, there is no law

which is edicted by the father because the father disappeared,

and then that peers give a much more cogent legal system, sharia,

which fights against the enemy This is the kind of blend

which is the problem Because on the one hand

you have the social dimension, you know, deprivation,

disenfranchisement, On the other hand you have

the ideological pattern, but what makes the chemistry

between the deprivation and the ideological

pattern is definitely And this is something

that we are unable to understand. So we have to walk, if I may say so,

on two feet with our head You advise governments,

you talked about advising the Foreign Office here

in Britain at one point. recently to now-President Emmanuel

Macron. What do state security

services in western Europe, because that is where

we are focusing this conversation, what do they need to do

to develop a really Well, I'm not really an adviser

to them because you know, I talk, but usually academics

are not listened to by governments. So whatever I say is not always

taken into consideration. But I engage in conversation,

which I think is my job. I think what they need

to do first and foremost And there's a sort of battle

between what they call CVE and CT. Ie, those who consider that

countering violent extremism, So this is what you have to do,

you have to do social deprivation, you have to check that pupils

and children have jobs. And others who consider

that the issue is security, that you should only deal

with getting into the internet, eavesdropping, arresting

people pre-emptively, putting them in jail

and so on and so forth. Both have to be taken

into consideration simultaneously. And this is a big difficulty

for our state agencies because they are not used to gather

those different approaches and whoever is more powerful,

for instance under President Obama, CT was not important,

this CVE thing was primordial, because they thought

the issue was mainly social, economic, and they did not

want to talk about ideology. I remember President Obama

never mentioned that, for instance, in Orlando

it was a jihadist guy. This new America,

on the contrary,... So argues saying that

you like the fact that Donald Trump repeatedly refers to,

quote, Islamic terrorism? No, because when he says

Islamic terrorism, he lumps The issue is to understand

because most Muslims just hate the guts of those jihadists,

because they give them And they allow other people to lump

everybody together and this issue. The real problem is to understand

what is at stake in the producing How do you get hegemony

over the discourse? What is the difference

between the Salafis, the jihadists, the Muslim Brethren,

and so on and so forth? This is absolutely crucial

because it's not only an issue of speaking for the sake

of academics, it's an issue that... This isn't about academics

in the end, it's about public And survival.

And so here's the question for you. I believe in France there are deemed

to be more than 10,000, some say 15,000 "people

of interest" in terms of this jihadists extremism...

On a watchlist, yes. Is it realistic for the security

services to monitor, And those people on the watchlist

are not surveilled, So if they happen for instance

to be spotted somewhere, and their name is checked

against a list, this list, so therefore the police usually

makes the connection, but it's impossible of course

to monitor on a daily basis. You would need, if you need

something like ten cops to monitor one person 24 hours

a day, it's impossible. But if politicians are honest

about that, the public, both in France, in the UK too,

where it is deemed that hundreds of fighters have returned from Syria

and Iraq and we don't know where half of them are, the public

is going to be deeply alarmed. Yes, and is going to be interested

in voting for the extreme right, who lump together, that lumps

together all Muslims. This is one of the major

challenges that we are facing. You know, jihadists want to take

the electoral process These provocations, and this is very

clear in Abu Musab al-Suri's global resistance call, what he wants

is that people retaliate, then they separate mosques

and there are pograms for the extreme right raises

tremendously. So that they can tell

their coreligionists, look, the Europeans are racist,

they are xenophobes, There is no future

for you in melting in, in being integrated

in European societies. You have to cling to your atavistic,

your ascribed identity Because to some extent the French

intelligence agencies were able to foil most of the attacks that

took place, that were planned Surely that is to the credit

of Francois Hollande, who declared a state of emergency,

said France is now at war put thousands of security

forces on the streets. But surely it's

what the public wants and as you've just said it

it's been effective. No.

Two things. The first thing I wanted to say is,

that, we will say whether it is war so the French presidential election

was not taken hostage of that. Had it been the case, Marine Le Pen

would have made a landslide. The national state of emergency,

this concept of war that the French state must fight appears

to have been effective. Indeed Emmanuel Macron,

whom you have praised, has just said in the last

few days that he wants to see the state of emergency extended

through to November. But no, the war issue

was that there is war The French and others

have sent planes, But then I believe that if you say

that you make war in France then you get into a very

dangerous issue, like the war on terror

by George W Bush. Because then if you have a war it

means that you have an enemy, which has a territory,

which has a country, you know. And, you know, then,

there again there is this danger of lumping

everybody together. I believe that in Britain,

in France, wherever, in Germany, on our territory it is

an issue of police. Against Isis, on the caliphate,

or in Libya or in Mali, where the French are there

to sort of man the borders against the jihadists,

then it is war. Because you are using

military means. But in Britain,

you don't have to use You have just presented

it as an either or between the military

approach and a policing approach, maybe there

is another approach which is a community

outreach approach which actually says to Muslim communities,

you know, we, the state, are not able to deliver security to this

country without your help, and you must find ways to step

up and work with us, whether it be through

the mosques, community groups, the monitoring of children and their

attitudes at school. But the Muslim communities

themselves surely need to be integrated as part

of the approach and the solution? And this is why you should not

tell that you are at war You should not make them believe

or make them fear that when you say war, they are targeted

as a potential enemy. And this is why

language so important. But don't you often

appear to characterise Muslim communities as hotbeds

of radicalism, where the enemy is in No, the enemy is trying

to hijack them. But they don't let themselves be

hijacked, definitely. This is why this issue

of so important. This is why it is

important to know what is are concerned, for

instance, to know Arabic. To understand is the background

of this, or to know Urdu, To have access to the culture and to

understand which are the strategies of the jihadists, so as to control

the hearts and minds of the people Because this issue of

recruitment, this issue of If we don't understand

that then we have If you want Muslim

communities to understand that they are part of

the solution and there is it really helpful for people

like you to support the ban on the in public places and in

schools in France? Is it helpful for someone

like you to support the politicians who spoke out

against the "burkini"? Even though that has now been

dropped but for while it You appear to be a supporter

of an approach which to many Muslims smacks

of Islamophobia. This issue of headscarves

in public places, headscarves are not banned

in public places in France. If you go to Paris you will see

thousands and thousands What is forbidden is that

you conceal your face. Because it is an issue

of public security. Then headscarves in

schools were banned because the French

state being secular... And you are an arch

advocate of that. And I'm just asking

you whether that sort of approach fits with your belief that

one has to work with Muslim Of course, this was not something

that was against Muslims in general. And you know, this measure has been

in place since 2004 and Muslim pupils would come to

school, wear a headscarf in the street, take

the headscarf off when they get in school and put

it back when they go So this has not raised

any significant attack. It did put you on

the same side of the argument as Marine Le Pen,

a woman who you have accused many times of fostering division

and making the It did put you on her

side of the argument, It's not because, you know,

someone breathes air and you breathe air in the same

place that you must decide And Marine Le Pen is hostile

to Muslims in general. And this is not at all the case

as far as I'm concerned. No, I believe that our Muslim

compatriots are part and parcel of And you know, I've been living

with Muslims for all my life, so how would I have survived

if I was so hostile? I'm not at all hostile

to Muslims, neither to Islam I just wonder, let me

end on a personal note. I am aware that you have

faced death threats from some French exiles, Muslim

exiles have gone to vote in Syria, and I know one in particular who is

now dead but he has declared that you should be killed

because of your views on jihadi It's not really

for my views, I think. It's just because, you know,

I'm trying to expose what The guys who wanted to kill me,

as far as I see, I don't think that they speak

in the name of Islam. They just speak in the name

of their own objectives, which is to see terror in France and everywhere,

and to kill me, among other things. In your view, of where

we are in the West, in the battle against jihadist

terror, where are we? Well, we understand how

they function better and better, we accumulate a lot

of material, and I'm quite This thing is not

going to lead anywhere. Because they are going to be,

the jihadists are going to be unable to mobilise

their fellow Muslims. And I believe that, there is a sort

of, if I may say so, jihadi fatigue. Gilles Kepel, we have

to end there but thank