One in six French citizens sympathises with ISIS

(FPM) France does host one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe so the results are not especially surprising. Also France draws more Middle Eastern and North African Muslims than the UK does. If you asked about support for the Taliban, you might get better numbers in the UK.

One in six French citizens sympathises with the Islamist militant group ISIS, also known as Islamic State, a poll released this week found.

The poll of European attitudes towards the group, carried out by ICM for Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya, revealed that 16% of French citizens have a positive opinion of ISIS. This percentage increases among younger respondents, spiking at 27% for those aged 18-24.

Again not surprising, as Muslims and other Third World immigrants represent a larger share of the under 30 population.

Newsweek’s France Correspondent, Anne-Elizabeth Moutet, was unsurprised by the news. “This is the ideology of young French Muslims from immigrant backgrounds,” she said, “unemployed to the tune of 40%, who’ve been deluged by satellite TV and internet propaganda.” She pointed to a correlation between support for ISIS and rising anti-Semitism in France, adding that “these are the same people who torch synagogues”.

France is home to an estimated 5 million Muslims, largely of North African descent, who arrived from the 1950s onwards in the wake of France’s decolonisation and the 1970s ‘regroupement familiale’ policy, which welcomed the families of migrant workers from ex-colonies.

Some have questioned the survey results because Muslims don’t make up even 1 in 6 people in France. It’s possible that the poll oversampled Muslims. The lack of demographic data from the pollster makes it hard to tell.

There have been suggestions that these numbers represent approval from the domestic European far right and far left. That’s possible, but they more likely represent general support from Third Worlders in France.

The true number of Muslims in France is under debate. France isn’t supposed to legally count ethnicity or race. So when your estimates are 5 to 10 percent of the population, there’s obviously a lot of room for error.

Considering how many Muslim settlers have had children on French soil, counting immigrants alone is not enough.

And there are a whole lot of Third Worlders who aren’t Muslim, but who are anti-France and would instinctively and stupidly identify with ISIS even though it would kill them.