Gilles Kepel | |
|---|---|
 Gilles Kepel atChatham House in 2012 | |
| Born | (1955-06-30)30 June 1955 (age 70) |
| Known for | Political Islam andArab World |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Political science, Sociology |
| Institutions | Paris Institute of Political Studies, Institut Universitaire de France, London School of Economics, New York University, Columbia University, CNRS |
| Thesis | Le Prophète et le Pharaon (1984) |
| Website | gilleskepel |
Gilles Kepel (born June 30, 1955) is a Frenchpolitical scientist andArabist, specialized in the contemporaryMiddle East and Muslims in the West.[1][2] He was a professor atSciences Po Paris, andParis Sciences et Lettres (PSL) university, where he was the director of the Middle East and Mediterranean Program.[3] His bookAway from Chaos: The Middle East and the Challenge to the West (Columbia University Press, 2020) was reviewed byThe New York Times as "an excellent primer for anyone wanting to get up to speed on the region."[4] His essayLe Prophète et la Pandémie / du Moyen-Orient au jihadisme d'atmosphère topped the best-seller lists, and was translated into English as well as several other languages.
Originally trained as a classicist, he started to studyArabic after a journey to theLevant in 1974. He first graduated inPhilosophy andEnglish,[5] then completed his Arabic language studies at the French Institute in Damascus (1977–78), and received his degree in political science from Sciences Po in Paris in 1980.[5] He specialized in contemporaryIslamist movements, and spent three years at theCentre d'études et de documentation économiques, juridiques et sociales (CEDEJ) where he did the fieldwork for his PhD[2] (defended in 1983) on “Islamist movements in Egypt”,[6] which would be translated and published in the UK in 1985 in English asThe Prophet and Pharaoh (US title:Muslim Extremism in Egypt, 1986). This was the first book in any language to analyze contemporary Islamist militants, and it often is featured on reading lists to this day in universities worldwide.[7]
After his return to France, where he became a researcher atCNRS (France National Research Faculty) he investigated the developments ofIslam as a social and political phenomenon there, which led to his Banlieues de l’Islam[8] (not translated, lit.Islam's Suburbs) book (1987), a primer on studies of Islam in the West. He then turned to the compared study of political-religious movements in Islam,Judaism andChristianity, and published in 1991The Revenge of God,[9] a best-selling book which was translated into 19 languages.[10]
As a visiting professor atNew York University in 1993, he also did fieldwork among black Muslims in theU.S., which would be compared with phenomena pertaining to theRushdie affair in the UK and theHijab affairs in France, and lead to hisAllah in the West (1996).[11]
He received hishabilitation à diriger des recherches (habilitation to be a PhD supervisor) in 1993 – from a committee presided byRené Rémond, president of Sciences Po, and includingErnest Gellner, Rémy Leveau,Alain Touraine, andAndré Miquel. He was promoted to research director atCNRS in 1995, and spent academic year 1995–1996 in the US as New York Consortium Professor (a joint position atColumbia andNew York Universities and the New School for Social Research). He used the library facilities at NYU and Columbia to explore the scholarly sources for his best-selling bookJihad: The Trail of Political Islam based on two years of fieldwork in the Muslim World from Indonesia to Africa, which came out in English in 2001, and was translated into a dozen languages.[12] Though the book was hailed due to its scope and perspective, it was criticized after9/11 because it documented the failure of political Islamist mobilization in the late 1990s. Kepel answered his critics with his travelogue Bad Moon Rising in 2002.[13] He then analyzed in retrospect that failure as the end of a first phase of what he would later designate as the “dialectics of Jihadism”. It epitomized the struggle against the “nearby enemy”, followed by a second phase (Al Qaeda) that learned the lessons of such failure and focused on the “faraway enemy”,[14] which in turn failed to mobilize Muslim masses under the banner ofJihadists. It was ultimately followed by a third phase consisting of network-based Jihadi cells in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, that ofISIS. That Jihad trilogy was further developed inThe War for Muslim Minds (2006) andBeyond Terror and Martyrdom (2008). With his students, Kepel also co-editedAl Qaeda in its Own Words[15] (2006) – a translation and analysis of chosen texts by Jihadi ideologuesAbdallah Azzam,Osama bin Laden,Ayman al-Zawahiri andAbu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In 2001, he was appointed as a tenured professor ofpolitical science atSciences Po, where he created the Middle East and Mediterranean Program, and the EuroGolfe Forum.[16] He supervised more than 40 PhD dissertations, and created the “Proche Orient” series,[17] of which he was the general editor, atPresses Universitaires de France, for his PhD graduates to publish their first book after their dissertation. The series comprised 23 volumes from 2004 to 2017 – many of them finding their way into English translations.[17]
In 2008, accused of assaulting Pascal Menoret at theMiddle East Studies Association in Washington, after the latter had circulated online slanderous material, Gilles Kepel was expelled from the association.[18][19]
In December 2010, the month ofMohammad Bouazizi's self immolation atSidi Bouzid, inTunisia, that sparked theArab Spring,Sciences Po closed the Middle East and Mediterranean Program. Kepel was elected a senior fellow atInstitut Universitaire de France for five years (2010–2015),[20] which allowed him to refocus on fieldwork. He was also offered the visiting “Philippe Roman Professorship in History and International Relations” at theLondon School of Economics” in 2009–2010.
In 2012, he published Banlieue de la République,[21] a survey of the2005 French Banlieues riots in theClichy-Montfermeil area, north ofParis, whence the events sparked. The study was based on one-year participant observation on the premises with a team of students, in cooperation withInstitut Montaigne think-tank. A sequel, Quatre-vingt treize[22] (or “93” from thepostal code of theSeine Saint Denis district north ofParis) designed a more general perspective onIslam in France, 25 years after Kepel's seminal Les banlieues de l’Islam.
In 2013, he documented the Arab upheavals with the traveloguePassion Arabe,[23] a best-selling book that was awarded the “Pétrarque Prize” byFrance Culture radio andLe Monde daily as best book of the year.
In 2014, Passion Française,[24] a survey cum travelogue that documented the first generation of candidates to theParliamentary elections of June 2012 who were from Muslim descent, and focused onMarseille andRoubaix, was the third book in a tetralogy that would culminate withTerror in France: The Rise of Jihad in the West (Princeton UP, 2017; original French 2015) that dealt with the terror attacks by Jihadists in France and put them in perspective.
In 2016, La Fracture, based on radio chronicles onFrance Culture in 2015–16, analyzed the impact ofJihadi terror in the wake ofattacks on French and European soil. It puts them in perspective with therise of extreme-right parties in Europe and questions the very fracture of politics inthe Old Continent.[25]
Kepel serves on several advisory boards such as the High Council of theInstitut du Monde Arabe in Paris and, since 2016, Kepel is a member of the advisory board of the Berlin-based Middle East think tankCandid Foundation.[26][27]
In February 2016 he was appointed chairman of the newly founded Program of Excellence on the Mediterranean and the Middle East at Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) University, based atEcole Normale Supérieure. He is in charge of the monthly seminar on “Violence and Dogma: Territories and representations of contemporary Islam”.[citation needed]
In 2017, Kepel was one of the seven public figures mentioned byLarossi Abballa [fr], the jihadi terrorist who murdered a policeman and his wife in front of their son in2016 Magnanville terrorist attack.[28]
Since January 2018, Gilles Kepel is professor at the Paris Sciences & Lettres University.[citation needed]
He is also director of the Middle Eastern Mediterranean Freethinking Platform at theUniversità della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland where, since September 2018, he is anadjunct professor. The MEM Summer Summit is held every August, gathering young change-makers from the Middle East Mediterranean region.
In October 2018, he publishedSortir du Chaos, Les crises en Méditerranée et au Moyen Orient. The book was translated into English by Henry Randolph and published in the US in 2020 byColumbia University Press as :Away from Chaos. The Middle East and the Challenge to the West. It is a sweeping political history of four decades of Middle East conflict and its worldwide ramifications. In the months following the publication, Gilles Kepel participated in webinars organized on both sides of the Atlantic and the English Channel, such as theWashington Institute for Near East Policy,[29]Al Monitor,[30] the Center on National Security atFordham University,[31]Cambridge University...The New York Times recommended the book in its 12 new books weekly selection.[32]
His 2021 essay, "The Prophet and the Pandemic / From the Middle East to Atmospheric Jihadism", released in French in February 2021, topped best-seller lists and is currently being translated into English and a half-dozen languages. An excerpt, "The Murder of Samuel Paty", was printed in theIssue#3 ofLiberties JournalArchived 2021-04-07 at theWayback Machine (April 27, 2021). In 2024,Plon published Kepel'sHolocaustes: Israël, Gaza et la guerre contre l'Occident.
According to Kepel, jihadi terrorism is caused by "the entrenchment ofSalafism", afundamentalist ideology in which most radical elements clash with the values of Western democracies and "are aiming for the destruction of Europe through civil war".[33][34]
In 2017, Kepel criticizedOlivier Roy's assertion that jihadi terrorism is only loosely connected to Islamic fundamentalism as Roy neither speaks Arabic nor looks into the Salafi doctrine behind the jihadism.[citation needed] Kepel also referred to London as "Londonistan": "[the United Kingdom] gave shelter to radical Islamist leaders from around the world as a sort of insurance policy against jihadi terrorism. But you know, when you go for dinner with the devil...".[33] Roy has said "I have been accused of disregarding the link between terrorist violence and the religious radicalisation of Islam through Salafism, the ultra-conservative interpretation of the faith. I am fully aware of all of these dimensions; I am simply saying that they are inadequate to account for the phenomena we study, because no causal link can be found on the basis of the empirical data we have available."[35] This debate can be summarized as opposition between Kepel's theory of "radicalisation of Islam" and Roy's one of "Islamicisation of radicalism".[36]
ToRobert F. Worth, Kepel believes that prominent figures and leaders among the left-leaning intelligentsia do not understand the threats against France, which according to him encompasses both terrorists arriving from abroad and Islamists in the French ghettos (French:banlieues). According to Kepel, Islamists are eroding societal cohesion in order to start a civil war while being unwittingly supported by the many leftists. This position makes him a target in many circles.[28]
Kepel claims he belongs to the left in France and according toThe New York Times he has "always been careful to distinguish mainstream Islam from the hard-line Islamist ideologues" and has "no sympathy for the xenophobia of the right-wingNational Front". He has "repeatedly dismissed claims of widespreadIslamophobia in French society as fraudulent, saying the word has become little more than a rhetorical club used by Islamists to rally their base".[28]
Books translated into English
[...] Kepel parle de la « radicalisation de l'islam », Roy insiste sur « l'islamisation de la radicalité », pour reprendre la formulation maintenant fameuse qui les distingue.
