MIGRATION

A new survey of French Muslims suggests that younger respondents are both more religiously observant and more likely than their elders to favour the primacy of Islamic law over French legislation, while at the same time forming a growing electoral base for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France insoumise (LFI).

The study, carried out by the polling institute Ifop for the magazine Écran de veille, reports that 57 per cent of Muslims aged 15 to 24 consider sharia more important than the laws of the Republic in areas such as ritual slaughter, marriage and inheritance. This marks a sharp increase on figures from the late 1990s, when around 36 per cent of 18 to 24-year-old French Muslims were recorded as preferring Islamic law in similar domains.

A separate breakdown from the same research indicates that 46 per cent of all Muslim respondents in France say that Islamic law should be applied in non-Muslim countries, rising to 59 per cent among those under 25. Overall, 38 per cent of those surveyed approve all or part of positions classified by Ifop as “Islamist”, roughly double the proportion expressing such views in comparable polling at the end of the 1990s.

François Kraus, the historian who authored the study, describes what he sees as a process of “re-Islamisation” led by younger cohorts. He argues that the findings point to a Muslim population increasingly structured around strict religious norms and, for a significant minority, attracted by political projects seeking to order social life according to Islamic precepts. The survey notes, for example, that 45 per cent of young Muslims say they refuse to take part in the customary mixed-gender cheek-kiss greeting, which Mr Kraus interprets as a sign of growing gender separation rooted in religious reasoning.

The report records notable changes in religious practice over the past four decades. Regular mosque attendance among Muslims in France is reported to have risen from around 7 per cent in 1989 to about 40 per cent today. Strict observance of the Ramadan fast has increased from 51 to 83 per cent, while the proportion of young women wearing some form of veil has nearly tripled. At the same time, lifestyle indicators have moved in a more conservative direction: alcohol consumption among Muslims under 25 has fallen from close to 30 per cent in 2011 to about 12 per cent, and only 12 per cent of young Muslims now say Islam should adapt to modernity, compared with 41 per cent in 1998.

These developments take place within the framework of a secular legal order that diverges from certain provisions of classical sharia, including unequal inheritance rules between men and women, corporal punishments for specific offences and restrictions affecting freedom of expression and private life. France has the largest Muslim population in Europe; estimates place it at roughly 7 to 10 per cent of the total population, up from less than 1 per cent in the early 1980s.

The political implications of these trends have attracted growing attention. According to an Ifop survey for La Croix on voting by religious affiliation in the European elections of June 2024, 62 per cent of self-declared Muslim voters backed the LFI list, headed by Manon Aubry.  This continues a pattern observed in the 2022 presidential election, when about 69 per cent of Muslim voters supported Mr Mélenchon in the first round. Another analysis of the same data concluded that roughly one in two LFI voters in that contest was Muslim.

French media commentary has linked these electoral patterns to the religious and social shifts described in the new Ifop report. An article in Le Figaro argues that increasingly observant and socially conservative young Muslims are becoming a key electoral reservoir for LFI, which has positioned itself as a defender of minority rights and a critic of domestic and international policies seen by these voters as discriminatory towards Muslims. The same analysis notes that while Mr Mélenchon and his supporters often dispute surveys viewed as unfavourable, they have been willing to highlight polling that confirms strong backing among Muslim voters.

The state has responded to concerns about Islamist activism with a series of reports and measures. A confidential study on the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in France, presented to President Emmanuel Macron in May 2025, pointed to instances of “entryism” in local associations and institutions, though it also described the overall organisational capacity of Brotherhood-linked networks as limited. In July, the Elysée announced new “restrictive measures” against Islamist structures, including financial sanctions and expanded powers to dissolve organisations deemed to threaten public order.

Reactions within Muslim institutions have been mixed. Chems-Eddine Mohamed Hafiz, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, has suggested that the strong attachment to religious norms recorded among young Muslims needs to be viewed in the context of reported experiences of discrimination, citing earlier polling in which around two-thirds of young French Muslims said they had been victims of racism. He reports that many young congregants describe a climate of stigmatisation in everyday life.

The combination of stricter religious observance, support for elements of Islamist ideology among a minority, and a strong alignment with LFI at the ballot box indicates that young Muslims now occupy a central place in debates over secularism, integration and political representation in France.