DAR AL HARB - FRANCE: FRENCH CITIZENS 'STUDYING' IN ISLAMIC UNIVERSITIES

French 'missionaries' of radical islam
By Georges Malbrunot

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several hundred French citizens "study" at Islamic universities in the Middle East. From religious indoctrination to armed action, their slide into the "holy war" in Iraq often follows the same thread.

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Belgian kamikaze as a model

Following his conversion to Islam, the victim was learning Arabic at this well-known college, which has several foreign students. Whether of French or Maghrebi origins, whether rejects from poor neighbourhoods or sons breaking away from their middle-class families, these "missionaries" of radical Islam apparently total several hundred, scattered across the world (including 150 in Saudi Arabia and some 50 in Yemen.) Before setting off some of them reassure their families by swearing that it is in order to "improve" their Arabic. Others, on the contrary, reveal their real thoughts. Such as the young jurist, a convert to Islam, who told her mother before leaving Paris last year: "my idol is Murielle Degauque," the Belgian kamikaze who died while perpetrating a suicide attack on a US convoy north of Baghdad in 2005.

The poorest of them go to Pakistan or Egypt, the rest to Saudi Arabia, Syria, or Yemen.

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Egypt, favourite destination

Each year some 3o French volunteers enroll at universities in Riyadh, Medina, or Mecca. There they join Pakistanis, Palestinians from refugee camps in Lebanon, Filipinos, and Syrians. On their return to their own country, some of them establish madrasas or attack their "infidel government," while others propagate the fundamentalism of the "first ancestors." In order to stabilize them socially, single men marry, generally girls of another nationality. Most new converts have already changed their names. It is therefore difficult to track them.

Even more than the hold land of Saudi Arabia, Egypt now seems to be favourite destination. Experts in the antiterrorist struggle are worried about their transit via several Islamic centres in Cairo. These are Qortoba, the Aziz Nbila mosque, and the Al-Fajr centre. The testimony given by 11 French citizens, who spent time there before being expelled from Egypt in December 2006, have enabled investigators of the Antiterrorist Subdirectorate (SDAT) to discover more about these "hives" of indoctrination.

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1) French 'missionaries' of radical islam