Criminals, not clashing civilisations
They have a point: there may well be a connection between Paris and foreign jihad. Part of it is ideological: in their minds, at least, terrorists in the West are often waging a worldwide battle for their faith, powered by ideas they pick up on the internet. There is a practical link, too. Some of those involved in recent European plots—and one of the suspects in theCharlie Hebdo attack—have been radicalised and trained in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nearby and accessible, Syria is the main destination. This reflux is a worry for security services in France (home of the European Union’s largest Muslim population) and across the continent, precisely because, newly expert and inflamed, the returnees can perpetrate commando-style attacks like that on Charlie Hebdo. Involving small numbers of assailants and “soft” targets, these are much harder to detect and prevent than elaborate plans to blow up airliners.
But preventing them is not impossible—indeed European security services frequently do. Slow though some were to spot the danger, the French and other governments have introduced measures to stop their citizens travelling abroad to fight, and to intercept them if they come back. Still, more pressure could be applied to Turkey, notionally an ally, to help stop the flow into Syria. “Deradicalisation” programmes for returnees, which might turn some of them into reverse missionaries for the awful truth about IS, are still in their infancy.
For all that, thinking of Islamist terrorism as a single, coherent adversary is misleading and dangerous. The various groups have different backgrounds and goals, just as Muslim diasporas in the West originate in different countries and cultures. Many French Muslims, for example, have roots in north Africa; some are angered by the ban on wearing burqas in public places. Neither factor applies in, say, Britain. Thinking of Muslims overall as a homogenous group is still more foolhardy—however much some of the West’s demagogues encourage voters to. Most are not extremists; fewer still support violence, as mainstream French imams swiftly pointed out.
The terrorists themselves, of course, are often keen to prove that the West does indeed anathematise all Muslims. To see such killers as representatives of a religion, and to reduce a complex picture to their preferred caricature, would be to reward their crimes—just as circumscribing the principle of free speech would be to bow to their medieval fantasies.
Criminals, not clashing civilisationsThey have a point: there may well be a connection between Paris and foreign jihad. Part of it is ideological: in their minds, at least, terrorists in the West are often waging a worldwide battle for their faith, powered by ideas they pick up on the internet. There is a practical link, too. Some of those involved in recent European plots—and one of the suspects in theCharlie Hebdo attack—have been radicalised and trained in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nearby and accessible, Syria is the main destination. This reflux is a worry for security services in France (home of the European Union’s largest Muslim population) and across the continent, precisely because, newly expert and inflamed, the returnees can perpetrate commando-style attacks like that on Charlie Hebdo. Involving small numbers of assailants and “soft” targets, these are much harder to detect and prevent than elaborate plans to blow up airliners.But preventing them is not impossible—indeed European security services frequently do. Slow though some were to spot the danger, the French and other governments have introduced measures to stop their citizens travelling abroad to fight, and to intercept them if they come back. Still, more pressure could be applied to Turkey, notionally an ally, to help stop the flow into Syria. “Deradicalisation” programmes for returnees, which might turn some of them into reverse missionaries for the awful truth about IS, are still in their infancy. For all that, thinking of Islamist terrorism as a single, coherent adversary is misleading and dangerous. The various groups have different backgrounds and goals, just as Muslim diasporas in the West originate in different countries and cultures. Many French Muslims, for example, have roots in north Africa; some are angered by the ban on wearing burqas in public places. Neither factor applies in, say, Britain. Thinking of Muslims overall as a homogenous group is still more foolhardy—however much some of the West’s demagogues encourage voters to. Most are not extremists; fewer still support violence, as mainstream French imams swiftly pointed out.The terrorists themselves, of course, are often keen to prove that the West does indeed anathematise all Muslims. To see such killers as representatives of a religion, and to reduce a complex picture to their preferred caricature, would be to reward their crimes—just as circumscribing the principle of free speech would be to bow to their medieval fantasies.
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