Recently, there has been a number of violent incidents which bear the hallmark of jihad, including a man with a knife attacking French police while yelling Allahu Akbar, and another man plowed his vehicle into a crowded Christmas Market yelling the same phrase, and citing the plight of “Palestinian children” as his motivation, one in a string of car attacks in recent days.. Just today, French police arrested a heavily armed man in Nice.

ISIS has released multiple French language videos imploring French Muslims to wage jihad however they can. Despite this French authorities have sought to downplay the possibility of terrorism motivations in the attacks, claiming the the Nantes Christmas Market attacker had a history of mental illness and that there was no known connection between the attacks (other than M.O and statements that seem to suggest a jihadi motive.)

Given France’s larger problems with its Muslim population, its unsurprising, they are attempting to downplay any such connection. It is estimated that France’s Muslim population (mainly North African immigrants) is about 6.5 million; about 10% of France’s population of 66 million. However, Muslims make up around 60-70% of the French prison population. Riots and crime have been a prevalent issue in many French cities in the past ten years due primarily to gangs of Muslim youths; after a spate of gun crime and gang killings in Marseille, which is estimated to be around 40% Muslim, the mayor called for the army to be sent in to restore order. It is estimated that around 40,000 cars are burned in France each year. Although car burning has its roots in the early 1990s as a New Years celebration in Strasbourg, they have become symbolic of  the gangs’ conflict with French authorities.

As shown by the ISIS videos targeting French Muslims, France is a fertile recruiting ground for the Islamic State. Though not all French Muslims support ISIS, it is estimated that 69% of French Muslims support ISIS at least in thought. Prime Minister Manuel Valls has stated that over 800 French Muslims, many of whom are teenagers, have joined ISIS.

And the jihad is coming to French shores too. On February 17th, French police in Cote d’Azur arrested a man known as “Ibrahim B” and seized nearly a kilo of acetone peroxide (TATP) explosives.  TATP is notoriously difficult to manufacture safely. Ibrahim B was a member of the now-defunct Islamist group “Cannes-Torcy” and was active with Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria before returning to France to carry out the planned bombing.

After the French deployed troops to Africa to help the Central African Republic defeat the Seleka rebels, the Islamist website al-Minbar Jihadi Media Network created posters calling for jihadist attacks on France and the assassination of President Hollande. To quote:

“To our lone-wolves in France, assassinate the president of disbelief and criminality, terrify his cursed government, and bomb them and scare them as a support to the vulnerable in the Central African Republic.”

A French convert to Islam, Romain Letellier (alias Abou Siyad al-Normandy) was tried and sentenced to a year in prison on March 4th for disseminating jihadist propaganda and promoting terrorist acts. This October, French police in Strasbourg were alerted to a a small group of men undergoing military training in the park, carrying fake machine guns and yelling “Allahu Akbar.” When confronted by police, the men threatened them, before stating that this was a “self-defense class.” Police stated that they claimed they were “training for jihad.”

Even more shockingly, an internal intelligence document leaked to the newspaper Le Figaro in April revealed that Muslim students in French schools were segregating themselves from non-Muslim students in an attempt to create a parallel society. The paper cites multiple examples of circumventing or openly flaunting bans on religious symbols in school, many Muslim students going so far as to establish “jeunes gardiens de l’orthodoxie” to enforce Islamic codes. Another scandal uncovered by Le Figaro was the selling of of violent, pro-jihadist books in French supermarkets.

Though the French government announced a plan to curb anti-radicalization of French Muslims, Europol stated this year that France was the terror capital of Europe in 2013, with a total of 63 terrorist attacks (nearly twice that of the UK and Spain, respectively) and 225 arrests (triple that of the UK and Spain, respectively) related to terrorism. Regardless, the French government has redoubled their efforts to deal with the threat of terrorism. On June 5th the French government led the planning of an EU proposal to better track movement from EU countries to Syria and back. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve revealed last week that French security agencies had foiled five terrorist attacks and arrested over a hundred jihadists over the past year. Cazeneuve also added that the toll of French Muslims fighting for ISIS had increased to over 1,200, and that around one-third of whom were recent converts.

France’s jihad problem is not one which can be easily dismissed simply by declaring attacks, “unconnected” and blaming the violent carnage on mental illness.