i'm stephen sackur. there is a grim familiarity to the fallout from the manchester suicide bombing. mourning for the innocent lives lost and an intense focus on the identity and motivation of the alleged jihadist mass murderer. in this case salman abedi, 22 years old, born in manchester to parents from libya. the list of europe's so called home—grownjihadists is now depressingly long. my guest is gilles kepel, a french expert on islamist terrorism, whose work has attracted worldwide attention. is the west any closer to an effective counter—terror strategy? gilles kepel, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. we are getting more information by the hour and the day about exactly what happened in manchester. much of the focus on salman abedi, this young man who appears to have been the suicide bomber. the more we learn, the more you learn, does it seem to you this fits a familiar template or does this in any way seem different from europe's other mass murders of recent times? i think it fits a familiar template but it is changing. you know, terrorism is not always the same. and within that sort of third generationjihadism that we have witnessed over the years, of course. for a frenchman, what happened in manchester reminds us of the bataclan music hall attack on 13th november 2015. but there it was a whole group of people who were largely organised, who had come back from syria through belgium, and you know, there were a number of people, the attacks took place in many places, they were coordinated, the stadium of france, in the sidewalk cafes. this is a loner. he acted alone. maybe there are people who helped him but he acted alone. and this reminds us more of what happened in nice with the guy who drove his truck in the crowds, celebrating bastille day, or in berlin at the breitscheidplatz. so you know it's a blend of both. that's a very interesting context. it might lead one to assume that in recent times, you referred to the bataclan which was of course in november 2015, of course in recent times there has been more focus on this concept of the lone wolf jihadist. do you think we are, in broad terms seeing a trend from highly organised cross—border operations to more of this lone wolf concept? well i would not call it lone wolf because you know, lone wolf is something that comes from the american sort of columbine thing, and those guys are sort of brainwashed. they live in the universe which is full ofjihadi worldviews, they spend their time on social networks and so on. so they are not lonely, they are cyber wolves, if you want. but what has become difficult now is to coordinate out of the so—called caliphate territory, because there is military pressure on raqqa and mosul. the borders with turkey are sealed now it's almost impossible to go into the isis or so—called caliphate territory, and to go out of it. and people there are more busy saving their neck or fighting on the battle ground than plotting to coordinate attacks in europe. if i may interrupt, what about libya ? because clearly here with salman abedi, his origins, and the fact that we understand he had been in libya very recently, there is this question about whether libya must be seen, alongside iraq and syria, as a breeding ground, potentially, forjihadists to come back to europe with know—how, with networks, and with the ability to murder. well, definitely libya was perceived as a sort of surrogate caliphate territory. for some time, they had tried to send people there because it's closer to europe. there is all this illegal immigration on boats that leave the libyan coast and get into sicily or lampedusa. and there is an enormous amount of weaponry there, the old arsenal of colonel gaddafi which was stolen and so on and so forth. so if the libyan breeding ground had given to mr abedi the possibility to sort of train, that would be definitely new. because this, to my knowledge, has not yet happened. there were battles in libya but until recently they remained in libya. libya was not in the capacity to exportjihadists as such. but it does seem in the uk, maybe in france, these networks still are present. 0h, definitely. the problem is to what extent these networks function, together with a centre, whatever, that would be in the caliphate. this is in the book, i tried to show that there are three generations ofjihadism. the first one was from 1979 to 1997. afghanistan, algeria, egypt. the focus against what they called the nearby enemy, the so—called apostate of the west regime. it did not work out because they could not mobilise the masses, right. and this is what osama bin laden and the like, these are lessons that they learned and they sort of designed a new second—generation jihad that focused against what they call the far—away enemy. america. so they thought that, you know, if they struck at america than they would expose the west as a colossus with feet of clay. this was 9/11. and they had hoped that the masses, the muslim masses, would mobilise under their banner. but this did not really work either. in iraq for instance, the americans and the west were not defeated, maybe thanks to iran which was another ironical story. so explain the third generation. third generation starts in 2005. there is someone, an engineer, a syrian engineer by the nom de guerre of abu musab al—suri. trained partially in france, married in spain and a resident in london, what we at the time called londonistan, when they had all thejihadists here, about the late 1990s. who posts a text, 1600 pages long on the internet. january 2005, called the global islamic resistance call. what does he say? he says that europe is the soft underbelly of the west. neither america, too far away, neither libya or syria per se because when muslims fight muslims the rest of the world is not interested. and then as opposed to the sort of top—down model of osama bin laden, which is pyramidal, it has to be a bottom—up model, using networks. network—based, right. and this is exactly what we have now. those networks that were thought, designed so they would go under the police. i remember at the time i discussed those things here at the foreign office and someone told me, "no, this will will never work because there can be no terrorism if it's not pyramidal." but theyjust missed the cultural revolution of 2005, because on february 1a 2005, on valentine's day, youtube got its licence from california. and then the two merged. ie you had this network thing that could function. and if i may, you placed these networks very firmly within muslim communities, whether it be in the banlieue of paris or whether it be in the suburbs of english cities. yeah, in small heath, wherever. but the point that some people looking at your academic research make is that you don't allow for the importance of individuals. if we are to think of salman abedi, he's a 22—year—old man who did something remarkable, he was prepared to go out and kill, knowingly murder, children. now many, including yourferocious academic critic 0livier roy, would say that simply using the sort of mechanistic device of analysing the alienation of muslim communities does not get to the heart of why an individual like that would be prepared to do what he did. oh there is definitely an individual dimension. which we do not know very well, like for instance the guy in nice was diagnosed as a psycho before he left tunisia. maybe that was more important than the fact that he was a fundamentalist believer of some sort of islamic sect. he probably had some sort of life crisis. he was a violent person. he dated men and women. he had a strange life. he had some crisis of which we are not knowledgeable really. but then he sort of cured his crisis by getting immersed into thisjihadi literature, which he consulted like crazy, we know that from his facebook account and so on and so forth. and what is important is to understand to what extent someone who has a sort of psychotic structure or many of them have an absentee father, and the father is replaced by the peers, who sort of produce another law. you know, there is no law which is edicted by the father because the father disappeared, and then that peers give a much more cogent legal system, sharia, which fights against the enemy of those guys. this is the kind of blend which is the problem for social scientists. because on the one hand you have the social dimension, you know, deprivation, disenfranchisement, which is understandable. 0n the other hand you have the ideological pattern, but what makes the chemistry between the deprivation and the ideological pattern is definitely the individual purpose. and this is something that we are unable to understand. so we have to walk, if i may say so, on two feet with our head on the individual issue. all right. you advise governments, you talked about advising the foreign office here in britain at one point. you have also given advice very recently to now—president emmanuel macron. what do state security services in western europe, because that is where we are focusing this conversation, what do they need to do to develop a really effective counterterror strategy? well, i'm not really an adviser to them because you know, i talk, but usually academics are not listened to by governments. so whatever i say is not always taken into consideration. but i engage in conversation which i think is my job. i think what they need to do first and foremost is to have a better diagnosis. i was in america last week. and there's a sort of battle between what they call cve and ct. i.e., those who consider that countering violent extremism, cve, is of essence. so this is what you have to do, you have to do social deprivation, you have to check that pupils and children havejobs. and others who consider that the issue is security, that you should only deal with getting into the internet, eavesdropping, arresting people pre—emptively, putting them injail and so on and so forth. both have to be taken into consideration simultaneously. and this is a big difficulty for our state agencies because they are not used to gather those different approaches and whoever is more powerful, for instance under president 0bama, ct was not important, this cve thing was primordial, because they thought the issue was mainly social, economic, and they did not want to talk about ideology. i remember president 0bama never mentioned that, for instance, in orlando it was a jihadist guy. he did not, he was not interested. this new america, on the contrary,... so argues saying that you like the fact that donald trump repeatedly refers to, quote, islamic terrorism? do you like that? no, because when he says islamic terrorism, he lumps together everybody muslim. and this is not the issue. the issue is to understand because most muslims just hate the guts of those jihadists, because they give them a terrible image. and they allow other people to lump everybody together and this issue. the real problem is to understand what is at stake in the producing of the discourse of islam today. who is in charge? how do you get hegemony over the discourse? is it because you have funding? is that this or that? what is the difference between the salafis, the jihadists, the muslim brethren, and so on and so forth? this is absolutely crucial because it's not only an issue of speaking for the sake of academics, it's an issue that... this isn't about academics in the end, it's about public safety and security. and survival. and so here's the question for you. i believe in france there are deemed to be more than 10,000, some say 15,000 "people of interest" in terms of this jihadists extremism... on a watchlist, yes. is it realistic for the security services to monitor, to surveil more than 10,000 people? no they can't. and those people on the watchlist are not surveilled, they have been noticed. so if they happen for instance to be spotted somewhere, and their name is checked against a list, this list, so therefore the police usually makes the connection, but it's impossible of course to monitor on a daily basis. you would need, if you need something like ten cops to monitor one person 2a hours a day, it's impossible. but if politicians are honest about that, the public, both in france, in the uk too, where it's deemed that hundreds of fighters have returned from syria and iraq and we don't know where half of them are, the public is going to be deeply alarmed. yes, and is going to be interested in voting for the extreme right, who lump together, that lumps together all muslims. and this is the big issue. this is one of the major challenges that we are facing. you know, jihadists want to take the electoral process of the west hostage. why do they make all those attacks? because these are provocations. these provocations, and this is very clear in abu musab al—suri's global resistance call, what he wants is that people retaliate, then they separate mosques and there are pogroms and so forth. and they also want that the vote for the extreme right raises tremendously. so that they can tell their coreligionists, look, the europeans are racist, they are xenophobes, they don't like you. there is no future foryou in melting in, in being integrated in european societies. you have to cling to your atavistic, your ascribed identity which we are going to define. so this is the major challenge. and look at what happened in france. because to some extent the french intelligence agencies were able to foil most of the attacks that took place, that were planned sincejuly 2016. surely that is to the credit of francois hollande, who declared a state of emergency, said france is now at war with islamist terror, put thousands of security forces on the streets. you criticised him. you said talking of war is wrong. but surely it's what the public wants and, as you've just said, it's been effective. no. two things. the first thing i wanted to say is, that, we will say whether it is war or not, so the french presidential election was not taken hostage of that. had it been the case, marine le pen would have made a landslide. that is the point. the national state of emergency, this concept of war that the french state must fight appears to have been effective. indeed emmanuel macron, whom you have praised, has just said in the last few days that he wants to see the state of emergency extended through to november. this morning. but no, the war issue was that there is war against the caliphate. and in what you use military means. the french and others have sent planes, drones, aircraft carriers, whatever. but then i believe that if you say that you make war in france or in britain, domestic war, then you get into a very dangerous issue, like the war on terror by george w bush. why is that? because then if you have a war it means that you have an enemy, which has a territory, which has a country, you know. and, you know, then, there again there is this danger of lumping everybody together. i believe that in britain, in france, wherever, in germany, on our territory it is an issue of police. it is not a military issue. against isis, on the caliphate, or in libya or in mali, where the french are there to sort of man the borders against thejihadists, then it is war. because you are using military means. but in britain, you don't have to use military means. you havejust presented it as an either or between the military approach and a policing approach, maybe there is another approach which is a community outreach approach which actually says to muslim communities, you know, we, the state, are not able to deliver security to this country without your help, and you must find ways to step up and work with us, whether it be through the mosques, community groups, the monitoring of children and their attitudes at school. but the muslim communities themselves surely need to be integrated as part of the approach and the solution? definitely. and this is why you should not tell that you are at war against them! you should not make them believe or make them fear that when you say war, they are targeted as a potential enemy. and this is why language so important. but don't you often appear to characterise muslim communities as hotbeds of radicalism, where the enemy is in the midst... no, the enemy is trying to hijack them. but they don't let themselves be hijacked, definitely. 0n the contrary. this is why this issue of so important. this is why it is important to know what is taking place there. it is important as far as the french are concerned, for instance, to know arabic. to understand is the background of this, or to know urdu, or to know turkish, or whatever. to have access to the culture and to understand which are the strategies of the jihadists, so as to control the hearts and minds of the people they want to recruit. because this issue of recruitment, this issue of proselytism, is very important. if we don't understand that then we have people who fall prey to them. if you want muslim communities to understand that they are part of the solution and there is a cooperative approach, is it really helpful for people like you to support the ban on the in public places and in schools in france? is it helpful for someone like you to support the politicians who spoke out against the "burkini"? even though that has now been dropped but for a while it was a very hot topic. you appear to be a supporter of an approach which to many muslims smacks of islamophobia. no. this issue of headscarves in public places, headscarves are not banned in public places in france. if you go to paris you will see thousands and thousands of women wearing the hijab. and no one objects to that. this is their choice. what is forbidden is that you conceal your face. because it is an issue of public security. now that's a different thing. then headscarves in schools were banned because the french state being secular... and you are an arch advocate of that. and i'm just asking you whether that sort of approach fits with your belief that one has to work with muslim communities, win their confidence... of course, this was not something that was against muslims in general. and you know, this measure has been in place since 2004 and muslim pupils would come to school, wear a headscarf in the street, take the headscarf off when they get in school and put it back when they go back on the street. so this has not raised any significant attack. it did put you on the same side of the argument as marine le pen, a woman who you have accused many times of fostering division and making the situation worse. not at all. it did put you on her side of the argument, you can't deny that. it's not because, you know, someone breathes air and you breathe air in the same place that you must decide that you have the same ideas! and marine le pen is hostile to muslims in general. and this is not at all the case as far as i'm concerned. no, i believe that our muslim compatriots are part and parcel of france. and you know, i've been living with muslims for all my life, so how would i have survived if i was so hostile? i'm not at all hostile to muslims, neither to islam in general. ijust wonder, let me end on a personal note. i am aware that you have faced death threats from some french exiles, muslim exiles have gone to fight in syria, and i know one in particular who is now dead but he has declared that you should be killed because of your views onjihadi terror and its origins. it's not really for my views, i think. it'sjust because, you know, i'm trying to expose what is at stake. the guys who wanted to kill me, as far as i see, i don't think that they speak in the name of islam. theyjust speak in the name of their own objectives, which is to see terror in france and everywhere, and to kill me, among other things. in your view, of where we are in the west, in the battle againstjihadist terror, where are we? well, we understand how they function better and better, we accumulate a lot of material, and i'm quite optimistic, you know. this thing is not going to lead anywhere. because they are going to be, thejihadists are going to be unable to mobilise their fellow muslims. and they are going to reject them. this is the great issue. and i believe that, there is a sort of, if i may say so, jihadi fatigue. gilles kepel, we have to end there but thank you for being on hardtalk. my pleasure. think you very much indeed, gilles. good morning. wednesday was a dry, settled, sunny day for most of us and we have some weather watchers pictures which help to illustrate that point, as you can see in worcester, with blue skies and sunshine, and also in the london area. these two places were the hotspots through the day, with 26 celsius. it's worth just pointing out though, in wednesday's satellite picture we had some cloud up into the far north—west and by the end of the day we also had some sea fog through the irish sea. now that is going to be a bit of a nuisance over the next few hours and linger during the early morning. it is going to be a pretty muggy start to the day as well, temperatures widely into the mid—high teens. so there's only one place for those temparatures to go, when we get that sunshine coming through. the fog will take its time to clear but it will do so and as we go through the morning, it will be a beautiful picture. a little bit of fairweather cloud developing into the afternoon, which may well be welcome news as those temperatures continue to climb. it is going to be a hot day in the south—east. one or two spots generally into the mid 20s, maybe as high as 28 degrees and not much of a breeze either. a noticeable breeze down towards the south—west and into south wales, but head further north ans west, again, we could see temperatures into the high 20s not out of the question. northern ireland and western of scotland, a better day in comparison to yesterday and there'll be more sunshine and more warmth as well. 25 for glasgow. we do it all again on friday. that south—easterly breeze driving that heat further north. by the end of the day though, signs of a few showers gathering into the western part of northern ireland but it looks as though in sheltered areas of scotland, in the north—west, we could see temperatures into the high 20s. somewhere like inverness could see 29, maybe 30 degrees. widely a very warm if not hot day across england and wales as well. that's worth bearing in mind as well if you have any time outside, the uv level are going to be pretty high across the country, very high in the south—east, and certainly worth bearing in mind. as we move out of friday, into saturday, we still keep the heat but there is a potential for these showers that i pointed out in northern ireland to become fairly widespread into the far north—west. some of these heavy and thundery as well. so the potential for some sharpish showers, a fresher feel here, but we still keep the heat. 28—30 degrees not out off the question into the south—east corner. it is bank holiday weekend this weekend so it is going to be a hot and humid start but it looks as though that thundery breakdown will arrive and then behind it somewhat fresher conditions look likely to follow on. take care. hello, i'm tom donkin, welcome to bbc news broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the world. our top stories — more raids and arrests in the uk as police confirm their belief — a network of accomplices helped the manchester bomber. salman abedi's father and brother have been detained in libya — they deny allegations of any connection to extremist groups. leaked photos from the scene of the bombing are published in the new york times. british investigators have expressed "fury" and "astonishment. more tributes for the victims: 16 have been named so far — police say they know the identities of everyone who was killed