Paris Perspective

A man places a candle in front of the Carillon cafe in Paris Saturday, November 14, 2015, a day after over 120 people were killed in a series of shooting and explosions. AP Photo/Jerome Delay

France is under its first state of emergency in a decade after the worst terrorist attacks in Europe in 11 years killed at least 129 and injured 300-plus Friday. The Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the coordinated shootings and bombings in several different locations around Paris.

The attacks, which follow last January’s murders of a dozen people at Paris’ Charlie Hebdo magazine by al-Qaeda in retaliation for caricatures it published of the Prophet Muhammad, have raised questions about why France has become a seeming magnet for extremist violence and how life might change now for the French. These are more than academic concerns for James Johnson, who is in Paris on a five-week research trip. The College of Arts & Sciences professor of history has a Guggenheim Fellowship to research a book on disguise and identity in European history.

Johnson says he was “thankfully far from the violence” during Friday’s tragedy. “Shock, outrage, anger, loss,” he says of the mood in Paris following the attacks. “Also: determination, defiance, and solidarity.” A scholar of European cultural history and winner of a 1996 Metcalf Award, the University’s highest teaching honor, Johnson analyzed the tragedy for BU Today.

BU Today: Why has France seemingly become a prime target for terrorist assaults in Europe?

Johnson: If the attack was indeed planned by ISIS, as all indications suggest, the immediate reasons include France’s decision to join the American-led coalition against the group in the summer of 2014 and its increased role since September in the ongoing air campaign in Iraq and Syria.

More generally, France proudly defends values anathema to the so-called Islamic State: boisterous freedom of expression, a broadly tolerant—some would say permissive—populace in the private realm, and unquestioned secularism that puts strict limits on religious expression in the public sphere.

That over three million marched to show their solidarity with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, many in explicit defense of the right to publish images that shock and offend, is one expression of those values. Another is the course of French law over the last decade concerning the veil in France, which was banned from classrooms in 2004. In 2010, it became a crime to wear the burka in public.

What are the living conditions of Muslims in France as compared with other nations?

Demographic facts point to entrenched and unsettled features. France has the largest proportion of Muslim residents of any Western European country, at close to 8 percent. (In the United States, Muslims account for .8 percent of the population.) In Paris and Lyon, 10 to 15 percent of the population is Muslim; in Marseilles, the figure is 25 percent.

Despite good-faith efforts by religious and government representatives to bring mutual understanding, vast numbers of French Muslims believe that there is no real path to social or economic integration. Many live in difficult to desperate conditions, with few jobs and little opportunity. Among the young, anger and alienation run deep. While the path to radicalization isn’t always clear, the sources are plentiful on the internet and on the street, and for some, the message is convincing.

Roughly 1,700 French Muslims are now fighting with ISIS in Syria, the most from any European country and twice the number from England, Germany, or Belgium. The thwarted terrorist on the high-speed train in August had spent time in Syria. The gunman who killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Belgium had spent more than a year in Syria. Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a policewoman the day after the Charlie Hebdo massacre and then led the assault on a kosher food market, had close friends who trained in Syria. All were French, as were Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, the Charlie Hebdo killers.

How has France responded to terrorism in the past, and how is it likely to respond now? Will the response alter policing at home or France’s military posture abroad, in, say, the Middle East?

Even before Friday’s attacks, the police and military were a visible and slightly unnerving presence in daily life, with officials checking bags at the door of many public buildings and soldiers with automatic weapons on sidewalks outside schools and synagogues. There will certainly be a heavier presence of patrols throughout the city. Presumably, electronic surveillance of particular groups and individuals will increase, too, if that’s possible.

As for France’s posture abroad, President François Hollande said over the weekend that the attacks constitute a declaration of war and vowed to be “merciless” with the enemy. French sorties over ISIS-held territory in Iraq and Syria, until now important symbolically, but not particularly numerous, will likely increase.

Will this attack likely alter daily life in Paris and France? Might there be curbs on civil liberties in the name of security, and if so, what might those curbs entail?

While the streets in Paris were quiet and the traffic light over the weekend, many shops and restaurants were open. People sat in outdoor cafes, strolled along the Seine, and despite official warnings against any public assembly, hundreds gathered where the attacks took place in solidarity with the victims. The French are admirably stubborn about their freedoms, which can be large and abstract or concrete and everyday. I see no evidence of a cowed or fearful population, and I don’t expect to see much difference at all in their habits, pleasures, and pursuits.

That said, I expect security cameras will begin to sprout up across this and other French cities, just as we’ve seen in the United States. Under the state of emergency declared Friday night, authorities will have wide latitude to search and seize property and individuals, which is likely to occur as well.

President Obama has said the United States stands ready to help; what form might that take?

We’re not likely to know about the many specific ways the United States is assisting France, most of which will have to do with intelligence. But the expressions of solidarity—reaching from President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to buildings in American cities lit in the French tricolor to local vigils and memorials across our country—have received wide coverage in the French press. The French care deeply about how they are viewed by Americans, and the clips and quotes from the Iraq War to more recent times haven’t always been positive. One can sense relief and comfort in the many expressions of support coming from the States. It’s a good reminder.