Yes, but more importantly I'm sure he felt very culturally enriched as his head left his shoulders.
Well if you want to go down that route - basically yes, French culture is so unimaginitive and conservative that if it hadn't been for imimgration from West and North Africa it would basically be a sad pastiche of what it was in the 1950s. Basically everything interesting and creative that happens in France these days is the product of people with Arab or West African roots.
As for the attack, there's no point in rehashing the same old argument about what has happened - obviously there is some factor about the emergence of violent Islamism as an ideology, online radicalistion; but also social exclusion, teenagers feeling rejected by mainstream society who react by playing up their "muslim" identity and whatever. And by all means, France has done an irreproachable job of basically telling 10% of its population that being a Muslim is incompatible with participating in mainstream society. It is also a well attested truth that for whatever combination of reasons, young Muslims in France are generally more religious, more radical and more likely to reject mainstream society than their parents were. So something has changed, it is not an essential part of being a Muslim or whatever as some people in this thread seem to be implying.
In that respect, the tedious clash of civilisations war that is being trotted out in this thread is as depressing as it is predictable - the idea that the millions of non-violent and well integrated Muslims should be rejected and blamed is the same as saying "well, right-wing Americans have a terrorist problem at the moment, why don't we throw all them out of Europe too".
While I agree overall, there are many things where I disagree on this.
You make it seem as that, without any immigration, France would be some sort of European backwater, if not economically at the very least culturally? This is 100% wrong? Let us not forget stuff like the events of 1968, or really the fact that France has a long and very vibrant culture?
And even if it
was true, would it actually be bad? Switzerland is (stereotypically at least) a rather small c conservative country, yet it seems to be doing pretty good to me?
The ship for that scenario has long sailed of course; the "mistake" was done in the 1950s and not now; and hindsight is 20/20, especially 60-70 years from the future; so this is just a thought experiment and an irrelevant question in 2020.
As for the rest, being a muslim, even a relatively religious one is not disqualifying from mainstream (French) society. But unfortunately being religiously muslim does tend to be heavily correlated to other beliefs that
are disqualifying from mainstream society. Most muslims do not have said attitudes; but it is a percentage that is a lot larger than it should. Plus of course there is the huge issue of segregation where there are communities where you could easily live while speaking just broken French. There is a reason that media often puts fear about "no-go zones". Even when they are relatively safe, they are still a parallel society with little mixing with the rest of France.
I am actually not sure if France has this kind of area and France does not collect ethnic statatistics anyways, but think of a place like Rinkeby in Sweden, where 90% of the population is of immigrant descent. Though from what I've heard Seine-Sant Denis seems to be the equivalent to a place like that?
