Medill National Security Journalism Initiative Digital Fellow Nolan Peterson spoke on Fox News over the weekend following the Paris shootings, highlighting the cultural conditions inside France that have left its Muslim minority vulnerable to the recruitment efforts of Islamist groups like the Islamic State and al Qaida.
Peterson spoke on four programs, beginning with a spot on “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on Friday afternoon, “Hannity” on Friday night, and then again on “Fox and Friends” and “Justice with Judge Jeanine” on Saturday.
The interviews focused on Peterson’s firsthand experiences visiting the Muslim ghettos that have formed on the outskirts of most of France’s major cities, called the “banlieues.”
Sections of these neighborhoods have been marked as off-limits by French authorities, restricting access by police and other emergency services. Critics of these “no-go zones” say they allow safe havens for recruiters looking to fill the ranks of extremist groups such as ISIS and al Qaida with disenfranchised Muslim youth.
Peterson’s interviews came after a violent three-day stretch in Paris, during which terrorists who claimed to be operating under the orders of al Qaida and the Islamic State killed 17 civilians. The attacks began Wednesday, when two brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, stormed the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, killing 12. The attackers chanted Islamist slogans in Arabic, and later claimed the attack was in retaliation for cartoons published by the paper that were offensive to Islam.
On Friday, a separate attack killed four French civilians at Jewish grocery store, and the Kouachi brothers were killed by French police in a shootout at a printing shop outside Paris.
All of the attackers were radicalized French citizens, highlighting concerns that the existance of the “no-go zones” might have left disenfranchised French Muslims vulnerable to the recruitment efforts of Islamist groups.
According to French government data, more than 1,000 French citizens, including about 100 women, have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight with the Islamic State.
Peterson, a former Air Force special operations pilot and a 2012 graduate of Medill’s master’s program, lived in Paris for more than two years while studying for a master’s degree at the Sorbonne. He wrote his master’s thesis on the radicalization of French Muslims.
