Stop Blaming Terrorism on Everything But the Obvious
By: Ben Sixsmith
Tags: Europe, Terrorism, World, Islam, Religion

A new wave of terrorism is sweeping across Europe. Samuel Paty, a history teacher, was murdered by a Chechen terrorist after showing cartoons of Muhammad to his students. Three people were murdered in Nice, by a Tunisian. Now, at least one ISIS-inspired jihadist has attacked people in Vienna.

This bland data does not convey the grotesque ferocity of the attacks. Poor Mr. Paty was beheaded in the street. Worshipers were attacked in a Nice cathedral, where an old lady had her throat slit. Austrians were murdered in cold blood while enjoying their last night out before lockdown.

French President Emmanuel Macron has responded to the attacks in his country with defiance. In a speech after the death of Samuel Paty, he denounced “radical Islamism” and said:

We will defend the freedom that you taught so well, and we will strongly proclaim the concept of [secularism]. We will not disavow the cartoons, the drawings, even if others recoil.

There are valuable discussions to be had about French secularism.

Whether it is the real enemy of the jihadis is questionable when the first place they thought to attack was a church. Hard to make the case that targeting traditional houses of worship strikes a critical blow against officialized irreligiosity.

Macron’s announcement on Twitter that “secularism has never killed anyone” meanwhile, seems not just ahistorical but ignorant of what is happening in the world now given the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs. Will that happen in France? Of course not. But it is still an odd thing to say.

We can certainly talk about French secularism. But to face head on the problem of terrorist violence of this sort, we have to agree on just what the problem is. And what is that I hear in the distance? Yes! It is the rationalizers, here to give their ponderous and patronizing blame-everything-except-belief explanations for yet another outbreak of killings.

It was predictable that leftists would attempt to rationalize these attacks as being results of something other than religious fanaticism. To be clear, it is not necessarily untruthful or condemnable to claim that political grievances inspire awful deeds. It would be silly to suggest that the Iraq War, and the sectarian conflict that followed, had no effect on young Muslims’ attraction towards jihadism. In this case, though, such arguments have been pathetic — paper-thin, disingenuous pseudo-sociology under the guise of hard-nosed realism.

Farhad Khosrokhavar, writing for Politico, claimed:

France’s extreme form of secularism and its adherence to blasphemy … fueled radicalism within a marginalized minority.

Marginalized minority? The Tunisian who killed people in a cathedral in Nice had been in France for less than a month. Is Khosrokhavar claiming that a few weeks of non-specific “marginalization” turned a pleasant young man into a killer?

The murderer of Samuel Paty, meanwhile, had been granted refugee status in France after his family had fled Chechnya. Somehow, his generous host is supposed to have failed him. If he had felt “marginalized” he would have been welcome to leave. That might be a callous thing to say to someone who really wants to be included within society — but not to someone with such psychotic hatred for its values.

Elsewhere, outrage towards Macron’s defense of cartoons portraying Muhammad has been spreading across nations like Bangladesh and Kuwait. Muslims make up 90 percent of the population of Bangladesh and 99 percent of the population of Kuwait. Are they “marginalized” too? Indeed, the frequency with which alleged blasphemers are imprisoned and attacked in Muslim majority nations makes a mockery of hand-waving about “marginalization.”

Politico retracted Khosrokhavar’s article, incidentally, after it was mocked and criticized on social media. This was cowardly. Of course, such a poorly argued article should never have been published. But having made the mistake of accepting the piece they should have allowed it to stand. If nothing else, it provided a useful, illuminating glimpse into the poverty of a certain worldview.

Some, including The Associated Press, have pointed to France’s “brutal colonial past” as a source of Muslim anger. This sounds plausible. After all, French people perpetrated, in living memory, some awful crimes against Muslims in Algeria. But more context is unkind to this quasi-sophisticated point.

First, this controversy is essentially a re-run of the Danish cartoons furor of 2005. What were people angry about then? The Danish West India Company? Now, Austria has been attacked. Were jihadists seething with anger towards the Habsburgs? Frankly, they might be annoyed about their forefathers being repulsed at the Battle of Vienna. Thwarted aspirations of their religious heritage could be more inspiring than bitter sacrifices of obscure nationalisms — though it is worth saying that in that case the Ottomans were invading.

To be sure, there is no doubt that many Algerians nurse grievances against the French, and not without just cause, but it is not a helpful explanation for these events. A Chechen terrorist was not boiling with outrage over the Sétif and Guelma massacre.

Pankaj Mishra, the Indian essayist, is shrewd enough to make the valid point that Macron’s loud resistance to “Islamism” could be aimed towards peeling votes off his right-wing rivals in Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in time for next year’s elections. Perhaps so.

Mishra’s typical condescension, though, thick as day-old gravy, coats the piece. Accusing Macron of arrogance about his nation’s place in the world, he sneers, “Most people … do not much care what the French think of them.” Perhaps literally true but less so than usual when the Islamic world is in uproar about a French humorous magazine.

French President Emmanuel Macron. (Kenzo Tribouillard/Getty)

Mishra claims that Macron “has staked France’s global reputation on crude mockery of a figure revered by more than a billion Muslims.” Actually, Macron has supported the freedom to mock Muhammad and not endorsed the mockery itself. One can still oppose this, to be sure, but I still wonder if Mishra has erased the distinction to make Macron appear more rude and confrontational than he is.

Yet one comment Mishra makes should be taken seriously. “The old French model,” he insists:

which claimed to be universal and superior to all social systems, is disastrously unsuited to an increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-racial society.

Mishra does not really spell out why this is plausible but in this instance I believe I can unpack the observation. Muslims, in general, are far more emotionally affected by irreverence towards their beliefs than followers of other faiths. Indeed, for all the infamous Charlie Hebdo cartoons are undeniably crass, Muslims tend to believe Muhammad should never be portrayed, however dignifiedly and respectfully it might be done.

Granted, many Muslims can coexist with things they find obnoxious. Some of the highest Islamic authorities in France, including the leaders of the Great Mosques of Paris and Lyon, have signed a letter condemning terrorism and stating, “As the media in France are free, no politician … can force a press organ to publish or not to publish a cartoon.” Still, it would be foolish to assume that millions of Muslims can exist in a society where criticism and mockery of their faith is tolerated without a significant minority of them — significant less in numerical terms than in the damage which can be caused — pursuing violence. A more significant number of people will indeed be marginalized by the knowledge that such things are tolerated. (I am sympathetic to the latter, by the way, inasmuch as insulting what we hold sacred insults our very sense of meaning — though I would modestly suggest that when it comes to insulting the sacred, rude cartoons are less serious than spree killings.)

To think these trends can be overcome is optimistic and presumptuous at best — and demands a very cautious approach to immigration policy in the knowledge that laïcité has yet to succeed and the least that can be done is not to make things trickier.

Mishra’s argument is defensible, then. Yet he cannot have it both ways. He is always scorning people who think Islamic beliefs are incompatible with their values, and that migration leads to the transforming of cultures, and here he is scorning people who fail to appreciate that Islamic beliefs can be incompatible with their values, and that immigration must transform their culture. If you say it, you are bad. If he says it, it is common sense. The difference is that you might think it is lamentable.

So, we must be honest about terrorism. One cannot reduce it to sociological characteristics. Are sociological characteristics relevant? Of course. But the same is true of far right terrorism and no one denies the impact of ideology there. It is similarly wrong to do so here.

Still, there is no pretending that attacks like these are shocking and unpredictable, rather than being likely consequences of irreverent secular Europe having a head-on collision with an honor based, often totalizing faith. Such consequences will not be dealt with by our choice of words, though of course that is no excuse for choosing the wrong ones.