Radicalism and generational revolt

http://www.worldcrunch.com/mobile/#a:20200

What do the “second-generation” immigrants and the converts have in common? This is first and foremost the uprising of a generation: Both categories have broken with their parents, or more precisely with what their parents represent in terms of culture and religion. The “second generation” immigrants never embrace the Islam of their parents, nor would they rise up against Westernization. They are Westernized themselves. They speak French better than their parents.
Both categories grew up in the “youth” culture of their generation. They drank alcohol, smoked pot, hit on girls in night clubs. Many of them did time in jail. And one day, they converted or re-converted, choosing Salafism, a branch of Islam that rejects the very concept of culture, that enables them to reconstruct themselves on their own. Because they don’t want anything of either their parents’ culture, nor “Western culture,” the symbols of their self-hatred.
Key to their uprising is the lack of transmission of a culturally integrated religion. It’s an issue that doesn’t affect the “first generation” immigrants, who are bearers of the cultural Islam of their countries of origin, or the “third generation” immigrants, who speak French with their parents and are, thanks to them, familiar with the modes of expression of Islam in French society. This point might be controversial, but it must be addressed.