Fear alone can be a deterrent for jihadis

Fear alone can be a deterrent for jihadis

Swapan DasguptaUpdated: Thursday, May 30, 2019, 06:26 AM IST
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It may sound extremely callous, but I was overcome with a sense of déjà vu last Monday morning on hearing the news of the previous night’s suicide bomb attack at Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena. There were the initial flutter over the dead and wounded, the inevitable police appeals for calm, the suspension of the ongoing election campaign and the natural speculation over the identity and motive of the bomber. Then, once the full horror of the attack—22 people killed and 59 injured—had sunk in and the bomber was discovered to be one Salman Ramadan Abedi, a 22-year old British citizen of Libyan origin, the drill started playing out. There were the tearful candlelight vigils, the all-too-familiar invocations of the unbroken ‘spirit of Manchester’, the defiant resolve of politicians, the familiar pronouncements of Islam being ‘a religion of peace’ and the dreary talk of ‘intelligence failure’. All of this added up to one thing and one thing alone: no one has a clue what to do next.

The problem is not an easy one. Abedi, the determined suicide bomber, has once again presented British society with a set of questions that few want to either acknowledge, never mind answer—at least not in the public space. What does Britain have to say about a boy who enjoyed the hospitality of British society, owed his own life and the life of his parents to the generosity of the British state and repays the debt by organising a massacre of young people whose only fault was that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time?

There are many harsh thoughts that come to mind that centre on the old saying about leopards never changing their spots. But instead, Britain will be subject to well-meaning and concerned police and intelligence officers emphasising that the war on terror is calculated to have its ups and downs, and that for every Abedi who mounted a ‘successful’ strike, there were scores of plots that have been thwarted. The opinion columns of British newspapers are already full of weighty articles emphasising how counter-terrorism can work best when a huge deployment of resources is complemented by the alertness of the ‘community’. There will also be the likes of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who has blamed the bombing on British foreign policy. If only Britain had shed all global pretensions, he seems to be suggesting, the jihadis wouldn’t have bothered with staging attacks in the UK. And finally, there will be those who will skirt all uncomfortable issues and concentrate on building an enlightened, multicultural society defined by compassion, consideration and a multi-faith version of the Ten Commandments.

European societies are confronted by a challenge that threaten their very existence. Yet, they seem to be paralysed by a squeamishness that prevents them from doing anything to ensure their own survival. Reports suggest that the UK alone has nearly 23,000 individuals who are sympathetic to the idea of a holy war. Some of them are passive supporters of the idea. But, as the career of the suicide bomber demonstrated, it took very little to transform passive support into murderous intent. For every Abedi who became a ‘martyr’ to the cause of the Islamic State (or, for that matter, the Al Qaeda idea) there are scores of others waiting in the wings for opportunities to wage war against a country that nurtured and sustained them.

Nobody likes racial profiling. Nobody likes the idea of treating every Muslim as a potential terrorist. The question is: what are these societies doing to prevent the conflicts in North Africa and West Asia from spilling over? Vigilant policing and the creation of a network of technological intrusiveness is just one undesirable but inevitable defensive strategy. The real answer seems elsewhere.

Over the past few decades, thanks in no small measure to a crisis of self-confidence, a large chunk of Europe no longer wants to ask awkward questions. It doesn’t want to address the grim reality of a demographic change that has led to a clash of values. In the guise of multiculturalism, it has shed all belief in the need to retain a ‘core culture’ that defines civic life. It has passively acquiesced in being so guilt tripped that many actually believe that anger of the suicide bomber—if not his methods—is justified and that those who threw open the doors to the flood of refugees must further atone for historical crimes. Most important, in trying to create a generous cultural space for all newcomers, it has allowed its own inheritance to be relegated to a peripheral role. The fear of being seen to be intolerant and narrow minded has meant that neither society nor the state no longer has the will to prevent self-destruction.

Today, the Islamists are on the ascendant. They not only believe they have God and history on their side, they also sense they have the numbers deeply embedded inside the enemy camp. If Europe is to survive, native Europeans have no choice but to show zero tolerance to anything that remotely suggests an unacceptable world view. The climate of cultural and political permissiveness that has allowed jihadi cells to acquire roots in the cities of Europe must end. The need of the hour is to strike fear in the hearts and minds of every jihadi, including the fear of citizenship termination. The idea that Europe is a decadent civilisation is fast becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If that idea is robustly contested, the rest will fall in place.

The author is a senior journalist and Member of Parliament, being a Presidential Nominee to the Rajya Sabha

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