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By Jean-Marie Colombani

July 26, 2005

Original Article (French)    

We have known it since September 11, 2001 - and the attacks of London and Sharm El Sheikh, after those of Madrid, Bali and Casablanca, have confirmed it - we are living in a totally new and extremely destabilizing time. It is particularly complex and will test the resistance of our societies. It is thus necessary to evaluate the situation with the following statements.

1. ISLAMIST TERRORISM IS HERE TO STAY

It is therefore dangerous to harbor any illusions whatsoever. One illusion would be to imagine that France is safe from the terrorists who just plunged England and Egypt into mourning. The French authorities don't hold this illusion, and they are right not to do so.

There is no particular diplomatic policy that can protect a "Western" country from an attack carried out in the name of the battle against the West.

This is clearly a fight against democracies and what they represent - the freedom of custom or morality, materialism, the status of women, and a clear separation of the spiritual and the secular - that motivates small groups of Islamist terrorists. And with one aim: to kill the greatest number of Western civilians, Americans or Europeans, at home or in their most popular tourism destinations. The murder can also be carried out to punish or destabilize regimes in the Arab-Muslim world accused of impious leanings or pro-Western friendships.

An Attack On the Enlightenment

But it is always the same enemy: the West, that of the Enlightenment. It is Enlightenment ideas that threaten the society to which they aspire, and which they want to impose on the Arab-Muslim world: a controlling dictatorial regime based on the refusal to separate mosque and state. The norm vs. reform. Rule vs. life.

2. ISLAMIST TERRORISM CANNOT BE REDUCED TO A SINGLE CAUSE

Behind the actions of the generation of terrorists that is attacking us today, these autonomous cells of young Sunni Muslims, there is a curious mixture of emotion that creates an explosive cocktail. The West is seen as even more dangerous - because it seduces and attracts. It is even more detestable - since it causes jealousy. It is considered even more illegitimate and humiliating by these young people - who are influenced by the fundamentalist belief that Sunni Islam is superior to and more complete than all other versions of the monotheism.

But how can the backwardness in the Arab-Muslim world be explained if it is the trustee of the most perfect of the existing religions? The terrorism that strikes today doesn't try to justify itself by reflecting on the relationship between Islam and modernity or between the Muslim world and the West. In some places, when it runs up against other cultures, the globalization of the Western way of life brings frustration, marginalization, alienation and both seduction and rejection. They [the Islamic  fundamentalists] imagine that this globalization is, first of all, a globalization of customs designed to destabilize their belief in Islamic law. Their targets are all the places that symbolize contemporary global culture.

3. ISLAMIC TERRORISM CANNOT BE REDUCED TO ARAB-MUSLIM  REGIONAL CONFLICTS

The radical Sunni Muslims are, in effect, selectively indignant: the killing of Iraqi Shiites or Kurds by Saddam Hussein never drew a tear from them. It was only after-the-fact that they adopted the Israeli-Arab conflict as a motivating cause for the September 11 attacks. But it is true that these conflicts give rise to paranoia, conspiracy theories and a siege mentality among the populations where terrorists recruit.

Terrorism cannot be reduced to these conflicts. Hatred of the West and of democracy will outlast the withdrawal from Gaza. It will continue until it is sated. In terms of opinion, each step toward the settling of these conflicts is, in and of itself, an important step in the fight against terrorism and for those who hope for peace. But although each step is so deeply hoped for, especially in the Middle East, each is only a small part of the answer.

4. IRAQ CLEARLY WAS NOT, AND IS NOT, A RESPONSE TO TERRORISM

Anger Targets Washington

The American military intervention in this country, as the Europeans predicted, has only exacerbated the rancor of Islamist militants. It has played the role of "recruiting agent for terrorism," according to the latest report from Chatham House [a London Think Tank]. It keeps a good part of the Arab-Muslim world hating the United States and clearly serves as a pretext. Even worse: with today's instantaneous globalization of images, the responsibility for each car-bomb massacre in Baghdad is not attributed to one or another group of Sunni insurgents. It is blamed on the American occupation and considered additional proof of the "war" that the West is waging against the Muslim world. Hundreds of millions of Muslim television viewers hold the United States responsible for the daily carnage in Iraq. The validity of this reasoning can be discussed, but this dominant view cannot be ignored.

From this point of view, it is useless for Tony Blair to deny the evidence: the link between the attacks in London and the British involvement alongside George Bush is a strong probability. But it would be dangerous to come to the conclusion that retreat is the only option: if it is true that the Americans and British invaded Iraq for the wrong reasons, they now have the obligation to help with the birth of a democratic future in Iraq- a task that will require long, patient and painful effort.

5. WESTERNERS DO NOT HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS

Clearly, Western democracies can and must get more involved in resolving regional conflicts, better integrate Muslim minorities, and distance themselves from regimes long-considered friends but which are obstacles to reform in the Arab-Muslim world.

But the West lacks the key answers. The battle against Islamist extremism is unfolding within the Arab-Muslim arena, so it is partly out of the hands of the United States and Europe. It is the battle of progressives against autocrats and dictatorial regimes, that of reformist imams versus fundamentalist ones, of those who want compromise against those who want purity. These changes are slow precisely because they are so decisive.

6. THE FIGHT AGAINST ISLAMIST TERRORISM IS NOT A WAR

"War on Terror" is a fashionable expression: it is no longer a question of the "Third" or even "Fourth World War." This is as sad as it is dangerous. A war ends with the surrender of one side or by negotiation. This will not be the case in the fight against Islamist terrorism. It requires a multiple, multifaceted response that involves diplomacy (regional conflicts), police action (infiltration and surveillance of networks) and, above all, ideology (helping the cause of reformers in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan). Because those laying the bombs under the banner of al-Qaeda are operating in autonomous cells without really answering to any "center," al-Qaeda is less an organization, and even less a state, than it is a "brand." And this brand designates a fight that they are leading against democracy and all forms of freedom.

7. THIS CONCERNS EUROPE EVEN MORE THAN THE U.S.

Europe's Homegrown Terrorists

This is true because the hate we now face has germinated in Europe. This has been a reality since September 11, even though certain sections of [European] opinion have had, and still have, much difficulty showing solidarity with the Americans in this fight. From the first al-Qaeda militants that arose in the early 1980s during the guerilla war against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan has come a new generation. The researcher Olivier Roy calls them the "deterritorialized: nomads produced by globalization," and they come from the ranks of European immigrants. It is in Europe, not elsewhere, in the Maghreb or Pakistan, that they discover or rediscover Islam, that they forge a simplistic and ultra-radical version of Islam and become, in their absurd language, "good Muslims," that is to say "good fighters." It is in Europe that they deepen the fault lines that isolate Muslim minorities. Islamophobia is the goal of the terrorists if it develops, they will realize their ambition: to create a conflict of civilizations, and to accredit it to the Old  Continent.

8. OUR ‘MODELS' ARE BEING CHALLENGED, HERE AND NOW

In so many ways we are facing terrorism from within. Born in our cities, there is much evidence that these young fundamentalists go, imperceptibly, sometimes from the most complete integration and  sometimes from almost complete alienation, to the point of no return.

We must be more aware that this internal fight within the Muslim world - between modernity that brings reform and tradition as sought by the radicals - is occurring in our cities of Europe and is recruiting our young people. Whether it is the British "model" that is respectful of Muslim communities, or the French "model" that is more interventionist, both seek integration. The issue is that the lessons of modernity are clearly insufficient or unsatisfactory. What can be done to fight the influence of those who profess that integration is nothing but a waste of time compared to a "truth" that is, in their eyes, elsewhere, and when our school systems produce so many forgotten people?

Whatever the answer, in the end we must ensure that each person believe that is no salvation outside of modernization and the invigoration of republican ideals.

Daniel Pearl

9. THE EPICENTER IS IN PAKISTAN

As was shown by the investigation of Bernard-Henry Levy into the assassination of American journalist Daniel Pearl, and as our reports show every day, Pakistan is a cauldron, as well as a kind of huge factory producing fighters for the "holy war." Despite the efforts of President Musharraf, Pakistan is home to the most radical ideology, where nuclear arms are manufactured and the worst Salafists [Salafist is a broad term to describe Sunni extremists] are well-established. It is one of the many contradictions of the Bush government to have targeted Iraq instead of taking care of Pakistan.

10. RESIST THE URGE TO RENOUNCE OUR OWN VALUES

Nothing would be worse for the battle against terrorism than renouncing our values. That is to say, restraining our freedoms, renouncing habeas corpus, or practicing torture or imprisonment without a trial.

In an article in the magazine Commentaire (summer 2005), Pierre Hassner wrote: "The dialectic of global terrorism and of counter-terrorism, starting with the September 11 attacks and President Bush's ‘War on Terrorism,' is liable to fall into a catastrophic version of what we have called … the ‘dialectic of the civilized and the barbarian' … Though modernity was a huge effort to civilize the barbarian, it can also have the inverse effect of barbarizing the civilized" in reaction to terrorism.

Let us take care never to give in to this temptation.