Charlie Bulman
In the wake of the coordinated attacks that rattled Paris last month and killed 129 people, pundits and politicians have demanded a shift in focus from humanitarianism to security, proposing the U.S. block the entry of Syrian refugees and ratchet our military operations against ISIS. The House of Representatives recent vote to effectively halt the resettlement of thousands of Syrian refugees while adding additional layers of screening came amid a rebellion among Republican governors. While the legality of states rejecting refugees remains dubious, at least 27 states have vowed not to accept Syrian migrants. Almost all of them have Republican governors.
Meanwhile, xenophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment on the campaign trail have reached new heights, with Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush suggesting the U.S. prioritize the resettlement of Christian refugees and Donald Trump announcing he would be open to shuttering mosques as part of the fight against ISIS. What blustering politicians, Middle East hawks and ordinary xenophobes fail to grasp is treating migrants and ethnic and religious minorities with dignity and respect is the only way to effectively combat extremism in the long term.
A recent wave of anti-Muslim animus triggered by the attacks will only isolate Muslims living in Western countries and fuel more radicalization. Indeed, this backlash plays directly into jihadists’ hands. Abu Musab al-Suri, the architect of the 7/7 London train bombings who has been described as a “coldblooded jihadist theoretician” by The Wall Street Journal, published a 1,600-page online book describing his approach in light of Western militaries’ overwhelming dominance. Al-Suri envisioned “a proliferation of blind attacks that will provoke lynchings of Muslims, attacks on mosques, harassment of women in veils and create hotspots of war that will put fire and sword to Europe, seen as the soft underbelly of the West,” political scientist Gilles Kepel said in an interview with Le Monde, a French newspaper.
It’s eerie how closely the reaction to the Paris attacks followed this script. A bile-filled threat delivered to an Islamic center in St. Petersburg, Florida, over voicemail just hours after the attacks declared that a militia would “come down to your Islamic Society of Pinellas County and firebomb you and shoot whoever is there in the head.” A day later, Canadian police reported that an Ontario mosque was set ablaze. And the next day in Toronto, two men assaulted a Muslim woman, ripped off her hijab and called her a “terrorist,” telling her to “go back to your country.”
What lessons can we learn from France? Since 2011, the government has banned full-face veils, and mainstream politicians like former President Nicolas Sarkozy have recently called for partially-veiled women to be excluded from universities. In January, Prime Minister Manuel Valls observed that a “territorial, social, ethnic apartheid has spread across” the country, with French Muslims concentrated in poor suburbs where unemployment often runs double the national average. Muslims make up about 7-10 percent of France’s population but account for nearly half of the country’s prison population, according to Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the author of Radicalisation.
The ghettoization, alienation and eventual radicalization of scores of French Muslims explains how ISIS and other jihadist groups continue to spread their influence despite their inability to rival Western militaries. At least 1,800 French citizens and residents are a part of global jihadist networks, and at least three of the assailants involved in the Paris attacks were French nationals, according to figures from French officials.
Frances’ home-grown recruits underscore the importance of pushing back against the hate and hysteria following the Paris attacks and making good on our commitment to religious freedom and toleration. If Western countries like the United States cannot challenge the constellation of political and cultural forces creating jihadists in our own communities, our foreign policy in Syria, Iraq and the rest of the Middle East holds no hope for truly vanquishing violent extremism.