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In addition to the corona pandemic, Islamist terrorism also terrorizes France. There have long been warnings about the infiltration of entire city districts, but politicians act powerless.
It is another horrible act of violence that is stunned. A 21-year-old man killed three people with a knife in the Notre-Dame church in central Nice. The alleged murderer shouted “Allahu akbar” (“God is great” in Arabic). A 60-year-old woman had her throat slit and French anti-terror prosecutor Jean-François Ricard spoke of a beheading. The murdered 55-year-old sacristan was also seriously wounded in the neck. A third seriously injured victim had fled, but the 44-year-old woman also died outside the church from her injuries.
Nice: People light candles on the street in front of Notre Dame church for the victims of a knife attack. (Source: dpa)
The consternation in the country is great. “Living in such a world is scary. There is a great void,” a passerby in Nice told the Welt news channel on Thursday night. “The health crisis alone makes it difficult to keep hope alive. When something like this happens, it is even more difficult.”
For the third time in two months, France has been shaken by an extremely brutal act; the government is talking about an Islamist terrorist attack. But why is this so?
One thing is certain: the country’s Islamic academics have long warned against the infiltration of radical forces into the Muslim community, but politicians act helplessly. It fails to integrate the clear majority of secular Muslims and fight a comparatively small number of Islamists.
The most important questions and answers about the act of terrorism in Nice:
Who is guilty?
The 21-year-old attacker was arrested by the police in the church and was seriously injured; he is currently in the hospital. According to the police, he was carrying an Italian Red Cross document in the name of a Tunisian citizen born in 1999. He entered the Italian island of Lampedusa in September and then went to Bari in southern Italy on October 9.
Italian authorities said Tunisia had not warned them about the perpetrator. The Interior Ministry in Rome reported that the attacker had been identified as a 21-year-old Tunisian. The man arrived illegally in Lampedusa. According to reports from the Italian agency, he disembarked there with other migrants by boat and was taken to Bari in October. There it should have gone underground.
On Friday, investigators arrested a 47-year-old man. It is said that he had contact with the attacker the night before the crime. Other antecedents are not yet clear.
Why are there more attacks in the country this fall?
The highest level of terror alert is now back in France. It was only in the middle of the month that the brutal murder of Samuel Paty caused great horror throughout the country: the teacher was beheaded on the street in Paris by a Chechen Islamist. He was killed for using Mohammed cartoons in a free speech class in front of 13-year-old students. Many Muslims consider a pictorial representation of the prophet to be blasphemous.
Nice: President Emmanuel Macron and Mayor Christian Estrosi (fourth from left) speak with police officers in the southern French coastal city. (Source: dpa)
Since then, the conflict over cartoons that has accompanied the country since the attack on the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” has intensified. French President Emmanuel Macron called for an intense fight against Islamism. He defended freedom of expression and took the side of those who want to show or publish cartoons. France will not “do without cartoons and drawings, even if others withdraw,” Macron said at a memorial service honoring the teacher who was killed.
Hate speech is not accepted and reasonable debate is upheld, he later wrote on Twitter. “We will always be on the side of human dignity and basic values.” Macron also spread the message in Arabic and English. “Our history is that of the struggle against tyranny and fanaticism. We will continue,” he wrote in French.
The new Islamic policy announced by Macron was partially misunderstood or reproduced in the Muslim world. Leaders of Muslim countries used Macron’s comments specifically to divert attention from internal political issues with a religious debate. Like Turkish President Erdogan, who accused the European states of Islamophobia. Such accusations are feeding radical Islamists in France.
Consequently, relations between parts of the Muslim world and France are deteriorating again. According to some reports, supermarkets in Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan were removing French products from their ranges. The influential Al-Azhar College in Cairo warned of a campaign against Islam. And the Pakistani prime minister accused Macron of Islamophobia. “President Macron has attacked and hurt the feelings of millions of Muslims in Europe and around the world,” he wrote.
Why is Islamist terror hitting France again and again?
An explanation for this is incredibly complex. An estimated five million Muslims live in France, which corresponds to 8.2 percent of the total population, but as in Germany, only a tiny proportion of them think they are Islamic fundamentalists.
Commotion in Nice: after the knife attack, relatives of a victim cry in front of the church. (Source: dpa)
But: in France in particular, radical Islamism has repeatedly found a breeding ground in recent decades. One reason for this is a great social division in the country, for example in the impoverished districts of the suburbs of Paris, where many Muslims also live. They have been forgotten for years, not integrated, they cannot find work and have little prospects. As a result, parallel societies developed there. Danger lurks clandestinely, but Islamists in France can mostly act covertly because politics looks the other way.
It is precisely this problem that the renowned Islamic scholar Bernard Rougier tackled in his book “Les territoires conquis de l’islamisme”. His surprising finding: 150 municipalities in France are already completely in the hands of radical Islamists. There is no more education for children there, only Islamist indoctrination. Women are banned from the public, representatives of the state are seen as enemies. There is repression against Muslims who are secular.
Islamic scholars point out that the vast majority of Muslims in no way adhere to the jihadist view of Islam. But the very active minority of militants, often outside preachers, manage to dominate religious life in the congregations.
Criminal forces ally with them. “When the criminals join the Salafists, they get a kind of carte blanche,” writes Rougier. “It is pious to sell drugs to unbelievers, because it will destroy them. Then they will be forgiven.” In exchange, the criminals would leave the veiled women alone and defend the neighborhoods from outsiders. This is how the Salafists control these neighborhoods.
In September, people demonstrated against Islamophobia in Paris: many secular Muslims in France also feel that politics is misunderstood. (Source: imago images)
Politicians had been inactive in recent years because they were afraid of being considered “Islamophobic.” According to Rougier, this is a term used by militant Islamists to avoid criticism of any interpretation of Islam. Islamists and far-right parties benefit politically from each other. “Basically, Islamists need right-wing extremists to be able to claim that French society is racist,” writes French social scientist Gilles Kepel. “And the far right needs Islamists to exaggerate the dangers of Islam.”
The situation in France is extremely charged for all these reasons and any religious conflict, national or international, is a match for a powder keg. That is why there is a constant threat of attacks in the country.
Why are terrorist organizations betting on attacks like the one in Nice?
It is still unclear to what extent the Nice author was connected. But the attack follows the strategy of the terrorist militia IS or Al Qaeda.
They try to reach the widest possible audience with maximum brutality and minimum effort. “They don’t need weapons or explosives smuggling here. All they need is a knife and a highly motivated killer,” Middle East expert Daniel Gerlach said in an interview with the Welt news channel. “The goal of such attacks is to create fear, to separate society.” In addition, distrust in the government itself must be aroused.
French politics now wants to crack down on radical Islamism and must not make the mistake of condemning Muslims across the board. Only extremists would benefit from this.
