France’s Unrest is a Warning to the West
About 12 years ago, a Muslim couple came to see me in my New York office. Both were professionals and had lived legally in the United States for more than 25 years. They had left a relatively moderate Muslim-majority country in search of what they described as a safer, more stable life. They wanted their four children to grow up as members of Western society.
Now they were frightened.
Their 16-year-old son, they believed, was becoming radicalized. He was a good student at a public school, played on the soccer team, and belonged to the chess club. From the outside, he seemed well-adjusted. At home, though, his parents saw something else: a teenager withdrawing into an online culture they barely recognized, adopting increasingly extreme beliefs, and rejecting values they thought he had absorbed.
His father called it “a certain madness.”
They came to me hoping I could tell them how to stop it. I couldn’t offer a simple answer, because there wasn’t one. I suggested that they place strict limits on his social media use, strengthen their relationships with other families, and give their son more opportunities to spend time with peers who shared democratic and pluralistic values. I also advised them to seek support from moderate Muslim clerics who could challenge extremist claims from within the family’s own religious tradition.
I met them only once. I don’t know what happened to their son, or whether anything I suggested helped. Still, that conversation has stayed with me. It returned to my mind as I watched reports of unrest in France.
Much of the media coverage has presented the disorder as student anger over problems in education. Perhaps that explains part of it. France has real social and economic tensions, and young people have legitimate reasons to feel ignored. But some of the images raise uncomfortable questions. Why do Palestinian flags and Middle Eastern political slogans appear so prominently at demonstrations supposedly centered on French schools? Why has unrest spread beyond campuses into surrounding streets? Why have public buildings, businesses, and private property become targets?
Millions of European Muslims live peaceful, ordinary lives. Many are just as alarmed by radicalization as anyone else, sometimes more so, because they see their children being targeted by extremists and know their entire community may be blamed for the actions of a minority. The parents who visited my office weren’t enemies of the West. They were defending it inside their own home.
That distinction matters. So does the need for media to investigate what is happening rather than forcing every incident into a convenient story.
Anger over discrimination, policing, unemployment, housing, or education shouldn’t be dismissed as evidence of a religious conspiracy. Yet it would be equally reckless to pretend that extremist movements never exploit those grievances.
They do.
Social media has made that exploitation easier. A teenager no longer needs to enter a secretive meeting or find a radical preacher in person. The recruiter now lives inside the phone. Extremist content arrives disguised as political commentary, religious education, footage of injustice, or a community offering purpose and belonging. Recommendation systems can take someone from outrage to dehumanization one video at a time.
Foreign influence operations and automated accounts make fringe ideas appear popular. They flood discussions with inflammatory claims, reward the most extreme voices, and convince users that violence is widespread, justified, or inevitable. By the time parents notice, their child may already inhabit a separate moral universe.
The mistake Western societies keep making is treating radicalization as either purely ideological or purely socioeconomic. It is often both. Alienation creates an opening. Propaganda supplies the explanation. A movement offers identity, certainty, and an enemy to blame.
Groups linked to political Islam, including networks influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, deserve close lawful scrutiny. Governments must examine funding, organizational ties, and messaging rather than relying on slogans or collective suspicion.
France’s deeper problem is therefore not simply immigration, religion, or student unrest. It is the breakdown of a shared civic identity. A country cannot remain cohesive if young citizens believe they have no meaningful place in it. Nor can it survive if leaders are too nervous to insist that citizenship carries obligations: respect for democratic law, rejection of sectarian violence, and acceptance that no religious or political cause grants permission to terrorize neighbors.
Other Western countries must pay attention. Britain, Canada, and the United States face many of the same pressures: online radicalization, weakened community institutions, foreign propaganda, polarized politics, and parents struggling to understand what their children are seeing on their screens.
The answer is stronger media literacy, transparent enforcement against incitement and violence, careful oversight of extremist financing, and support for families and credible community leaders. Schools also need to teach civic belonging as something more substantial than a slogan.
Twelve years ago, two parents came to me because they feared they were losing their son. Their story remains the most useful warning I can offer. Radicalization is not an abstract debate. It enters homes quietly, often through a screen, and it can reach children who seem successful, social, and secure.
If France’s unrest teaches us anything, it is that democratic societies must confront extremism without becoming extremist themselves. They must defend open debate without excusing intimidation, protect religious freedom without ignoring political radicalization, and welcome minorities without abandoning the expectation of a shared civic life.
That balance is difficult. Refusing to seek it is far more dangerous. It may though be too late for some.
