France is caught between boosting its security and easing religious tensions

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's statement that Muslims have a right to "kill millions of French people" has been widely condemned.

President Macron has raised the French terrorist alert to its highest "emergency" level and ordered 4000 additional military personnel deployed to boost security at schools, churches and other places of worship.

France has lived under a heightened level of security since 2015. In that time, it has suffered a series of Islamist militant attacks that have resulted in 277 deaths.

This is the ninth terrorist attack in France this year. The attacks have resulted in 10 deaths (there was a hiatus between April and September during the first wave of COVID-19). The cause of the attacks is ostensibly the clash between French freedom of speech and Muslim intolerance of French "disrespect" for Islam - but there is much more to it than that.

Most of the attackers have been inspired by the terrorist group Islamic State, which is still very actively trying to radicalise young French Muslims. Its aim is to polarise French society and destabilise western Europe.

Islamic State has referred to its attacks in France as a ghazwa (religious raid) whose function is to weaken and demoralise an enemy. Other alleged motives included an objection to Paris as a capital of "abomination and perversion" and a reaction to blasphemous activities denigrating Islam and the prophet Mohammed.

The facilitating factors for Islamist terrorist attacks in France are numerous.

They include: negative Muslim perceptions of France's treatment of Muslims; France's involvement in the US-led military coalition against Islamic State; employment discrimination against Muslims in France; the ease with which extremists can cross France's borders; the number of young French Muslims inspired by IS's extremist ideology, and the French security services' difficulty in keeping on top of the inflow and more than 15,000 persons of security interest.

Most French Muslims are economic migrants from the Maghreb, West Africa, and Middle Eastern countries. The French Muslim population is the largest in the Western world, at an estimated 6 million out of a total French population of 67 million.(France does not officially record population numbers by religion). Meanwhile, the French prison population is estimated to be around 70 per cent Muslim.

A Stanford study in 2010 showed that a Christian French citizen is two-and-a-half times more likely to get a job interview than an equally qualified Muslim candidate. Discrimination has reportedly become worse since the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015.

The perpetrator of the latest Nice attack was named as Brahim Aouissaoui 21, a Tunisian national who entered Europe in September through the southern Italian island of Lampedusa and then travelled on his own to France. Aouissaoui was shot by police and is in critical condition in hospital.

Under the 1985 Schengen Agreement, national border controls were removed, to be replaced by controls at the EU's external borders. Many French citizens question a situation where extremists are able to move freely between countries within the Schengen area.

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One of the French far right's election priorities is to re-establish tight national border controls.

Because of the number of disaffected young Muslim men in France, it is relatively easy for IS to promote attacks in France, particularly simple attacks involving knifings or the vehicle ramming of pedestrians.

Some of those involved in the French attacks have returned from fighting in Syria and Iraq, while others have come in with the flow of economic migrants. Most, however, are young Muslim men who have been brought up in France. Many were not known to French intelligence services before their attacks.

The main French security intelligence agency is the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), founded in 2008 and tasked with counterespionage, counterterrorism and the surveillance of potential threats on French territory. It has an estimated 3300 employees. This compares to ASIO's 1960 employees last financial year, for an Australian population of 24 million. This means that France is allocating around half of the human resources that Australia allocates to security intelligence in terms of the total population, and far less in terms of the potential threat population.

The General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) is France's external intelligence agency. It also engages in counterterrorism activities, but in its case outside France.

The problem for France is that measures being taken to enhance security in France are likely to worsen its religious divisions and lead to more disaffected young Muslims. Fortunately, Australia's security problems are well managed by comparison.