59.1% of young French Muslims want Sharia law and 24.1% sympathise with the Muslim Brotherhood.
A new survey indicates that young Muslims in France are more religious, more conservative and stricter than previous generations and the rest of society.
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A survey by the Ifop diffused by The Figaro and other media show the evolution of the religious and political attitudes of young French Muslims. The data paint a youth with stances moving towards stricter positions and more oriented towards Islamic normative models. The result It is a generation that, far from undergoing secularisation, shows a more intense religious identity than its parents and grandparents..
More Muslims and fewer Christians
Parallel to the internal evolution of Muslim youth, a demographic and religious shift of a magnitude that until recently was unthinkable has taken place in France. What forty years ago was a country with an overwhelming Catholic majority It has moved to a society where the weight of Islam is continuously growing.. At the same time, Catholicism is retreating at a historically unprecedented pace.
In the mid-1980s, only 0.51 per cent of the French population identified as Muslim. By 2025, this percentage reaches 71 per cent., multiplying by fourteen in four decades. In the same period, Catholicism has fallen from accounting for 83% of the French to 43% today, a drop of forty percentage points. This is how Islam has become the second religion in France. At the same time, the number of people who do not identify with any religion continues to grow, reaching 37.5%.
This quantitative evolution also entails a qualitative change: while Catholicism fades as a practised and socially central religion, Islam presents itself as a faith with a high level of regular practice and a remarkable capacity to sustain generational transmission.. The Ifop data confirm this: 80.1% of Muslims in France describe themselves as religious, compared with 48% of those belonging to other religions.
Young Muslims question the republican model: 58% prefer Sharia
For a significant part of French Muslim youth,Islamic law is not just a spiritual reference, but a normative framework preferable to French legislation., especially in family, moral and social matters. This shift in values puts the fundamental principle of French laïcité, based on the strict separation between religion and public authority, under strain. The data on rejection of Western political culture are clear:
- The 59% of young Muslims want that Sharia is applied (versus 38% for those over 50 years of age).
- The young people's 67% believes that Islamic law prevails over French law.. In the overall Muslim population it stands at 441 per cent.
- The 57% Young people under 35 would prioritise religious rules over French legislation on family matters.
Younger Muslims are more religious and stricter
The Ifop survey detects a sudden generational shift among Muslims. For young French Muslims, religion shapes their behaviour, morals and worldview. as it has never been among French Muslims. Researchers emphasise that this is a generational leap, not a gradual evolution. The figures are compelling and describe a religious identity that structures the daily lives of young people aged 15 to 24:
- 87% of young people declare themselves religious, in front of the 48% of the other religions
- EThe 30% of the young declare themselves “very or extremely religious”, versus 12% of those over 50.
- The 67% of the young pray daily, against 53% of the +50. In 1989 only 26.1 per cent of young people prayed every day.
- The 40% of the young people They go to the mosque. every Friday, whereas in 1989 only 71% did so.
- The 83% of the young people They observe Ramadan (vs 51% in 1989).
- The girls' 45% are wearing veils., against 16% of those over 50 years old.
- The 57% Young women reject interacting with boys. Among boys, 45 per cent do not want contact with girls. Only 27 per cent of men and women over 50 think the same.
- The 81% of young people believe that Religion is right over science..
- Only 12% of young people want a modernisation of Islam., versus 39% for those over 50 years of age.
- Only 12% of young people want a modernisation of Islam., versus 39% for those over 50 years of age.
Although the Ifop study does not indicate what percentage of all French youth are Muslim, it does make clear that this group's demographic weight is much higher among young people than among those over 50. We know that Muslims represent 71% of the French adult population, the same proportion as in Catalonia. If in the Catalan case l‘Islam is the religion of 15.1% of young people; one might think that the figure in France will be similar..
The combination of this growing demographic weight and the intensity of the religious practices described by Ifop indicates that in both France and Catalonia, Future generations will be influenced by a much more significant Muslim presence than in previous decades..
The Muslim Brotherhood seduces 32.1% of French Muslim youth
The Ifop survey shows to what extent the Muslim Brotherhood's strategy has penetrated the new generation of French Muslims. The Muslim Brotherhood's Islamism is not based on violence, but in a project of progressive ’social Islamisation“a strategy that aims to to transform society from the bottom up, influencing first the local communities, then the institutions and, finally, the public sphere
This current It promotes the training of young, educated elites capable of holding positions of responsibility., from associations and municipal councils to trade unions and universities. This social embedding strategy It offers young people a framework of meaning, a reason to strive and a path to social advancement that few other community spaces provide.. For many of them, the brotherhood functions as a structure that provides direction, legitimises personal effort and promises the possibility of becoming useful leaders in their community. The Ifop study indicates that this influence is neither marginal nor residual, but generational:
- The 32% of the Muslims under 25 years old They are close to the Muslim Brotherhood., compared with 13% for those over 50 years of age
- Among the Muslim population as a whole, 24% Declares sympathy for the infiltration movement.
This disproportionate weight of «bro-ism» among young people It is not a statistical detail, but a warning sign.. The French State had already warned of this. in a recently declassified report which described the creation of ’ecosystems“ linked to the Muslim Brothers in various neighbourhoods. The same report warned of the risk of their ideas being normalised among the younger generations. There are also internal voices within the left that They have left LFI, denouncing the Freerist infiltration into the organisation.. The Ifop data confirm that this influence exists and that it is particularly strong among younger Muslims.
More support for Salafism, Wahhabism, Tablighi and Jihadism
The Muslim Brotherhood is, by far, the most supported Islamist movement among young French Muslims. It is the movement with the greatest generational reach and the main gateway to a political, rigorist vision of Islam. But the survey shows that it is not the only movement taking root among young people.
A section of the new Muslim generation is also gravitating towards other stricter or more doctrinal movements and even towards minority but worrying currents such as jihadism. Although none of these movements is majority, all present juvenile percentages higher than those of adults, and this reinforces the idea that the Islamist ideological space is broader than was previously perceived. The Islamist movements preferred by young people are:
- The 9% show sympathy for Salafism.
- The 8% feel close to Wahhabism.
- The 8% have sympathy for Preaching.
- The 6% identify with the Excommunication.
- The 3% express sympathy for Jihadism.
Despite these figures, it should be borne in mind that the survey's overall data paint a more nuanced reality than a uniform drift. The majority of French Muslims, whether young or adult, do not express sympathy for extremist movements., and many maintain a relationship with religion marked above all by daily practice and cultural identity.
A future marked by a more conservative youth
The data from Ifop confirm a pattern that other studies in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Catalonia have also detected: European Muslim youth is much more conservative than its non-Muslim counterparts., and much more rigorist than older Muslim generations.
This generational gradient indicates that Young French Muslims are not absorbing the majority secular culture., but rather it operates within its own regulatory frameworks, which are stricter and more cohesive. Its growing demographic weight, as is already the case in Catalonia, where the proportion of young Muslims is more than double the average., points out that This generation will play a central role in the France and Europe of the future.. And, as the survey shows, it will do so with certain values, codes and referents that do not coincide with those of republican secularism or with the social patterns of other French young people.
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