There is no insulation from terror

French President Francois Hollande effectively hit the nail on the head when he recently said that Muslims were “the first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance”. In one of his latest speeches following the recent Paris massacre, he clearly tried to boost unity and inclusivity of the French people. Addressing the audience of the prestigious Paris-based centre of the Arab World Institute, the French president vowed to protect (French) Muslims who were “the main victims of fanaticism along with people of other religions”. He went further to explain that anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic attacks are acts of terrorism and “should be punished and condemned”.

In similar sentiment, the German chancellor and the British prime minister have also made their stand on the murderous attacks in Paris amply clear. Both Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, have expressed their determination to forcibly face up to extremism and stop anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic attacks in their countries. Western leaders are right to consider these attacks as a war against all their countries and against all their citizens regardless of their ethnic and religious backgrounds. But the most important question after the Paris murders remains unanswered: How to counter this terror?

What the three European leaders have said has been received extremely well by the vast majority of the local Muslim community representatives in the three countries, but unfortunately voices of revenge and retaliatory terrorism attacks are abundant in some European media and even among some officials. This gives rise to fears that some of these voices, such as that of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, may alarmingly slip through into government policies and tragically lead to more bloodshed. Sarkozy, who is rumoured to be considering standing for the forthcoming presidential election, has blindly, and I dare say, stupidly, called the cowardly killings in Paris a “war of civilisations” and “attacks against our freedom”.

Horrific attacks

Sarkozy’s declaration almost echoes what former American president George W. Bush had said when he considered the horrific attacks of 9/11 as a war against civilisation. Encircled by a group of modern Right-wing advisers who shaped America’s foreign policy and based their thoughts on the infamous work of Professor Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations and Remaking of World Order, Bush incredibly saw the world in black and white only.

In an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people on September 20, 2001, the president had clearly divided the world into two: The US on the one hand and the rest on the other. Unhesitatingly calling world leaders, he remarkably said: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” A few days prior to Bush’s address, Hilary Clinton made a similar statement when she called on the world to choose between two options, “either with us or against us”. The series of terrorist attacks and counter-terrorism measures ever since are well documented and many agree they were the direct result of the open war in Afghanistan, with the aim of freeing it from the then Soviet presence. The war led by the US and supported by many Muslim countries clearly led in the long run to the establishment of the notorious Taliban.

‘Deformed child’

Commenting on the current rise of terror, particularly the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the Jewish supermarket crimes in Paris, former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin said that he considered western policy, particularly that of the US, in the Middle East responsible for the birth of Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). De Villepin, who was against the Iraq war, described Daesh as the “deformed child” of western policy. He warned that the West’s wars in the Muslim world “always nourish new wars ...” and “terrorism among us”.

Therefore, former president Sarkozy’s attitude will neither be helpful under the present circumstances nor will it point to the right path to end this kind of insane terror. It will simply encourage European leaders to apply Bush administration methods in dealing with terror, which have brought more destruction to the Middle East, unleashed wider terror in both numbers and kind in the region and Europe as well as increased the unprecedented economic crisis in the West. However, the spread of terror in Europe is still relatively limited in comparison to the situation in the Middle East or Africa.

But despite the rarity of terrorist attacks in the West, particularly Europe, there is much evidence that suggests that in a world such as ours, nobody is immune from backlashes and disasters. With every terrorist attack the West seems, unfortunately, to be heading towards more anti-Semitism and wider Islamophobia as well as less freedom.

Credit: Mustapha Karkouti is a former president of the Foreign Press Association, London.