Suaudeau gives his lecture in Hulsey Recital Hall on UAB's campus. (Photo by Angela Hollowell).Mark Linn - Staff Writerquiaego@uab.edu
Who are the Jihadists in Syria? And what causes them to turn to extremism? French author Julien Suaudeau spoke about these issues in a lecture at the Husley Recital Hall on Jan. 30.
“If we want to understand why they end up perpetrating this ruthless, senseless, cruel acts of violence in Syria, in Iraq or in France and in other European countries, we need to be willing to suspend our judgments of what they were to begin with before they turned into these monsters,” Suaudeau said.
The lecture was sponsored by the UAB departments of English, Sociology and Philosophy as well as the Alliance Française of Birmingham, an organization that “aims at developing cultural exchanges between the United States and France, and at promoting the study of French while fostering friendship between French and American people” according to their website.
“I'm asking readers, as a writer, to love my characters. But I want them to be able to understand them before they pass judgment on them,” Suaudeau said. “I think this empathy that fiction provides because that monster, the one in the book is not for real the empathy that we can have for a fictitious character is the way to go to try to understand the guys in the real world who become executioners.”
Suaudeau began his career as a consultant for the French Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan. In 2014 he published his first novel, “Dawa,” which tells the story of a radical Islamic terrorist plot in Paris, nine months prior to the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. In Aug. 2015, Suaudeau published “Le Français” (The Frenchman), which tells the story of a French youth who becomes an executioner for the self-described Islamic State in Syria.
One of the main themes of Suaudeau’s lecture was exploring what turns people to violent extremism. Poverty is a commonly cited factor, as well as alienation from broader society.
“And of course there is the specific history of France with its former colonies,” Suaudeau said. “Especially Algeria which the French army violated, for lack of a better word, ruthlessly during their colonial war during the 50's and 60's until the country was given its independence.”
But, according to Suaudeau, none of these factors individually explain what could cause someone to embrace violence and extremism. And without that knowledge, it becomes very difficult to “de-radicalize” someone.
“What we know – the little we know - is that most Jidahists, what they have in common is a petty criminal background,” Suaudeau said. “Small time gangsters who made the wrong turn somewhere in their lives.”
Suaudeau believes that French youth are not primarily turned to radicalism in mosques, which he said extremists know to be under heavy surveillance by French intelligence, or even online. Rather, according to Suaudeau, the majority are radicalized in prisons.
Older extremists in the prison population are mixed in with young offenders, and prisons often become the birthplace of the type of radicalism that Suaudeau described.
One of the questions Suaudeau posed was the demographic makeup of the self-described Jihadists in Syria. He cited the work of the Paris-based think tank Le Centre de Prévention contre les Dérives Sectaires (The Prevention Centre Against Sectarianism), which conducted a study in 2014 based on the information of 160 families of youth who had traveled to Syria to join Islamic extremist groups. Of those families interviewed, the largest portion, 48 percent, were secular households. The next biggest group came from Catholic households with 28 percent, while Muslim households made up only 18 percent. The majority of those who travel to Syria are young – most men under the age of 30, and women averaging even younger.
Another common trait attributed to violent extremists by Suaudeau is a feeling of emptiness and a lack of attachment to their communities. They believe that their life is meaningless.
“There is a slow, a very slow and very invisible accumulation of unremarkable defeats. The sort of defeats that everyone in this audience goes through in their own lives. But you fall and you pick yourself up and you move on,” Suaudeau said. “Except for the population that we're talking about tonight, the sum of those defeats, those challenges at one point become overwhelming and unbearable. But when does that happen? And why? We have no clue.”
“Radicalization,” the author explained, is a common buzzword, but no one can seem to explain why radicalization occurs. Without being able to explain what causes the shift, there can be no easy way to “de-radicalize” those who have turned to violence.
To Suaudeau, his literature and discussions are his means of fighting against the narrative of violent extremism.
“In my opinion, one of my definitions of terrorism is someone who imposes his reality on the rest of us,” Suaudeau said after the lecture. “I think the utility, the usefulness and the meaning of literature in that respect is to provide a different point of view so that we can keep making sense of the world around us.”
Suaudeau is currently in contact with U.S. publishers about the possibility of having his novel “Dawa” translated into English. He has also been approached by a streaming platform to translate “Le Francaise.”
