France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve estimated that roughly 930 of his citizens, including upwards of 60 being women, are waging jihad on behalf of Islamist groups in Iraq and Syria.
France is set to host a summit in Paris on Monday with the expressed goal to develop proposals to more efficiently combat the Islamist State, France 24 reports.
Representatives from twenty countries are expected to be in attendance, including Iraqi President Fuad Masum and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Over the weekend, the Islamic State released a video showing the barbaric killing of British aid worker David Haines. The office of France’s deeply-unpopular Socialist President Francois Hollande said that the “heinous killing” was a reason to develop a coordinated global strategy to defeat the Islamist entity.
France has seen a surge in domestic popular support for the Islamic State within its Muslim community.
A shocking poll released in August found that sixteen percent, or almost one in six French citizens, viewed the Islamic State terror group favorably. At 18 percent, French President Francois Hollande only slightly edges out the terror group in popular opinion. Newsweek’s Anne-Elisabeth Moutet said of the poll: “This is the ideology of young French Muslims from immigrant backgrounds, unemployed to the tune of 40% who’ve been deluged by satellite TV and internet propaganda… these are the same people who torch synagogues.”
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