An assessment from French intelligence has warned that the upcoming generation of teenagers represents an increased threat of Islamic terrorism compared to their predecessors.
A report from the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI), France’s primary domestic intelligence agency, said that there is a growing terror threat from the “new hyperconnected generation” of young people, mostly aged 13 to 17.
The assessment, obtained by French daily Le Figaro, described a twin track of a youth group “in search of identity, fascinated by ultra-violence and with a weak ideological imprint” and the increased ability of jihadists to craft messages through social media and elsewhere designed to exploit the “codes of this new generation radicalising essentially online”.
It found that younger people are often more subject to “vulnerabilities, particularly mental, family and school, generating unease about their identity and a feeling of isolation and social uselessness, making them all the more permeable to extremist discourse.”
However, the intel agency noted that the adherence to Islamist ideologies are often shallow, and that they merely serve to provide an “outlet for violent impulses or personal frustrations, an appetite for violence and weapons” rather “than the culmination of a real ideological journey.”
In a bid to reach the younger generation, Islamist recruiters have expanded their propaganda networks beyond social media, including the chat functions in games like Roblox and Grand Theft Auto.
Other examples have included sites geared towards the re-selling of used clothing, through which jihadist groups have been found to have reached potential inductees through the selling of ISIS-style flags.
Their efforts appear to have been paying off, with a separate report from the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office finding that 22 minors were indicted on terror charges last year, or around one in five of all indictments.
It also represented a significant increase over past years, with 19 minors arrested in 2024, 15 in 2023, two in 2022, four in 2021, and five in 2019.
The report further found that 90 per cent of minors indicted were associated with radical Islam, compared to five per cent Corsican nationalists, and far-right terror groups.
The increasing radicalism of the upcoming generation of Muslims serves to undercut the idealistic narrative of the officially “colour blind” French system and its ability to integrate vastly disparate cultural, ethnic, and religious groups under the banner of Parisian republicanism.
Indeed, a survey from November found that rather than assimilating, second and third generation Muslim migrants in France appear to be far more radical than their parents or grandparents. For example, 42 per cent of Muslims under 25 said they had sympathies with an Islamist group, compared to 33 per cent of all Muslims in France and compared to 19 per cent of Muslims three decades ago.
French intelligence has previously pointed to the Muslim Brotherhood as being a primary force behind the rising radicalism of the younger generations, who the group is said to specifically target through the takeover of migrant community institutions such as employment recruiters and dating services as they conduct a broader “conquest strategy” of undermining the West.
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