Born in Algeria, he had to flee the repression in his country and come to France. For the past ten years he has been constantly studying Islamist movements, doing his research all over Europe, and as far away as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mohamed Sifaoui does not like the term “radical Islam”, and considers rather that there are “radical Muslims” who follow the tenets of “salafism”. They need to be confronted ideologically, otherwise “they will have a wide open avenue in front of them”. He also considers that their numbers in France should not be overestimated, because the 1 900 mosques in France “cannot contain more than 500 000 people for Friday prayers”, and the majority of our country’s Muslims are therefore non practising. Why is it then that we have the impression that it is this (radical) current which is the majority in our country, and why do we so rarely hear about democratic Muslims? For Mohamed Sifaoui, intellectuals who are “too well integrated”, like himself, aren’t interesting “because they are outside their box”. To be heard, they have to publish, whereas the others attract television reports simply by loudly defending the chador or similar archaic phenomena.
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