January 7, 2021 will mark the sixth anniversary of the deadly terrorist attack that cost the lives of Charlie Hebdo's cartoonists. 

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On October 16, the history and geography teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded in the street by an Islamist for showing his students cartoons from the satirical newspaper depicting the Prophet Muhammad. This abominable assassination forces us soul searching. It is indeed the disastrous revelation of the fracturing of our Republican pact and casts a harsh light on the hegemonic project of radical Islamism. 

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As the black hussar of a Republic touched in the heart, Samuel Paty did not intend to govern the minds of his students but to train and educate them in freedom of thought and secularism. 

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Between these two terrible events, but to be true since 2012 and the Islamist attacks in Toulouse and Montauban, Europe is experiencing a wave of terrorist attacks fuelled by an expanding Islamist ideology, relying on an international network. 

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These heinous crimes have rightly been perceived as an attack on the fundamental values and way of life of the Old Continent. 

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They have sparked a lively debate within the Muslim world. Courageous voices raised calling for a revision of the religious thought of Islam and denying extremists a monopoly on the legitimate interpretation of Islamic theology and jurisprudence. Much is at stake. It is a matter of promoting an “Islam of the Enlightenment” and preventing this religion from being used as a justification for barbaric acts. Because Islamism is not only a danger for France and more broadly for Europe. It is also a danger for Islam that this totalitarian ideology disfigures. It is a danger for all those who intend to practice their religion in a democratic framework that is calm, pluralist and respectful of the Other. 

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It is in this context that ELNET organizes, with the support of former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, the first: "European Summit on Islamist Radicalization and the Terrorist Threat". This international summit is intended to be held annually. 

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It is designed to provide an unprecedented platform for high-level informal discussions bringing together leading politicians and experts from all over Europe and the Arab-Muslim world. 

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Through the pooling of analyses and expertise, it aims to provide a better understanding of the radical Islamist movement, its historical and geopolitical roots, its components and its nuisance power, as well as to propose an inventory of the terrorist threat that weighs on the Old Continent in order to better combat it.