FRENCH MINISTER declares “radical Sunni Islam, NOT white supremacism is biggest terrorist threat facing Europe”

Gérald Darmanin, France’s Minister of the Interior, made the claim that radical Sunni Islam and the resurgence of Islamic terror attacks is the single biggest threat facing Europe, during his recent visit to the U.S. to discuss plans for the Paris Olympics next year, emphasizing that the games posed a significant security challenge for his nation.

Breitbart (h/t Nita) During an interview with the AFP, Darmanin said that he urged authorities in the U.S. to tighten their security relationship with France, with the minister saying that collaboration between French and American intelligence would be an essential part of keeping people safe. He also added that the U.S. needed to understand that it was radical Islam, not some sort of far-right ideology, that posed the largest terror risk to the games.

“We have come to remind them that for Europeans and for France, the primary risk is Sunni Islamic terrorism and that anti-terrorist collaboration between intelligence services is absolutely essential,” Darmanin explained.

“At a time when the Americans perhaps have a more national view of disputes — white supremacism, repeated shootings, conspiracy — they must not forget what appears to us in Europe as the first threat: Sunni terrorism,” he went on to say.

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The minister went on to explain that he was concerned about a re-emergence of a significant Islamic terror threat in Europe in the coming months and years, citing Western withdrawals from Afghanistan and the Sahel region of Africa as giving radical Muslims in the region space to breathe.

Likely contributing to Darmanin’s fears is the sudden surge of mass Muslim migration into Europe, with many Western nations seeing near-record numbers of boat migrants arrive on their shores in recent months. The number of migrants seeking asylum in Germany, NOT including Ukrainians, hit a post-2016 record last year, according to data released by the left-liberal government. Over 200,000 Muslim migrants sought asylum status in Germany in 2022.

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Over 26,000 migrants from Africa arrived on the shores of Italy in the first three months of this year, alone, eclipsing even the number of arrivals seen at the height of the previous migrant crisis in 2015 and 2016. This previous crisis coincided with a spate of deadly terror attacks in France, the most infamous of which being the Bataclan attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people.

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Day.fr.Euro Darmanin completed a two-day visit to Washington, New York and the UN, in order to boost police and judicial cooperation, provided for by a 2016 bilateral agreement, against terrorism and serious crime. He spoke with Deputy Justice Minister Lisa Monaco and Homeland Security Minister Alejandro Mayorkas, then visited the FBI Federal Police Training Center in Quantico, Virginia (east).

In New York, he met the chief of the police of the megalopolis (NYPD), Keechant Sewell, to speak about maintaining order and security of major international events, citing the Olympics-2024 in Paris (July 26-11 August 2024), the Rugby World Cup (September 8 to October 28, 2023) and the visit of Pope Francis to Marseille on September 23.

In this context, but without mentioning specific threats, Mr. Darmanin asserted: ” The risk resumes, in terms of Islamic terrorism, again targeting France and its European neighbors. He pointed out an endogenous threat of people without networks but who, becoming radicalized, take action in a few hours, in a few days… Someone who takes a knife, enters a bakery and goes to kill people. And there is the ever-present  risk of organized terrorists from outside who come to France to carry out an attack of the Bataclan type in Paris.

Darmanin condemned the departure of Americans from Afghanistan which aided and abetted the reconstitution of cells of ISIS (Islamic State group) in the Levant, which mean that these exogenous threats, in the perspective of the major events that France will organize, are moments of significant risk of terrorist attacks.