The research that enabled me to write this book was made possible by the support of the Institut Montaigne, which had already provided assistance for the investigations preparatory to Banlieue de la République (2012) and Passion française (2014). Here I would like to express my special gratitude to Claude Bébéar, who served as president until autumn 2015, and Henri de Castries, his successor, for their confidence, without which the trilogy that these three books form would not have appeared. Its director, Laurent Bigorgne, followed its stages with a fidelity that has never slacked and that has always been an element of intellectual stimulation.
Since Passion française, Hugo Micheron has been an indispensable and very valuable research assistant. Now that he is undertaking his own projects, it is a pleasure to wish him the full success that his merits deserve. It was with him that Antoine Jardin and I worked out the plan and the subject matter of this book. The association of a young doctor of political science, a research engineer at the CNRS specializing in electoral behaviors in working-class neighborhoods, and an Arabist in the autumn of his career was conceived as a dialogue between disciplines and generations. This is now, more than ever, necessary to meet the challenges of analyzing a phenomenon as exceptional as the killings of 2015 and beyond, putting it into perspective and context. Antoine Jardin wrote chapter 2 and part of chapter 5. I wrote the rest.
By conducting with me a seminar on violence and dogma at the École Normale Supérieure on the rue d’Ulm, my colleagues Mohamed-Ali Amir Moezzi and Bernard Rougier, along with Alexandre Kazeroumi, a brilliant postdoctoral fellow, restored my hopes for the university system after the termination of studies on the Arab world at Sciences Po in 2010.
Finally, I would like to thank all those who have agreed to talk with me, during my travels around France, about events that they have witnessed, sometimes in terrible ways. I think first of all of the families of the victims of terrorism and those whose children have gone to Syria, where some of them have died. They have shared their emotion with me and answered my questions about it. If this book helps them in their struggle, it will not have been in vain.