In France, 7 to 8 per cent of the total population is Muslim, the largest percentage of the total population of any state in Europe; at the same time, up to 70 per cent of the prison population is Muslim, contributing significantly to an underclass ripe for radicalisation. One 24-year-old who joined Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, described his experience in Germany:
They teach us to work hard to buy a nice car and nice clothes but that isn’t happiness. I was a third-class human because I wasn’t integrated into a corrupted system. But I didn’t want to be a street gangster. So, I and my friends decided to go around and invite people to join Islam. The other Muslim groups in the city just talk. They think a true Muslim state will just rain down from heaven on them without fighting.