"And because the lights of Paris epitomize cultural secularism for the world and thus 'ignorance of divine guidance' [for ISIS], they must be extinguished," Scott Atran and Nafees Hamid wrote as French police stormed the very banlieue streets that ISIS, the Islamist terror group du jour, had touched down in before them. The other side of Paris, which the state had neglected for so long and which its laws had demonized for even longer, was fertile soil for ISIS recruitment. The disaffection and despair that riddled Saint-Denis and the other banlieues opened doors for the terror network, which was looking to make pawns out of people who were pummeled by poverty and overpoliced by the state.

XREF: Connects to broader literature on how state neglect and demonization of marginalized communities create openings for radicalization and extremism.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 763