Editorial The Guardian, Thursday 8 January 2015

Editorial

The Guardian, Thursday 8 January 2015 / http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/08/guardian-view-response-terror-attack-charlie-hebdo-crime-act-war

If the world learned one thing from George W Bush, it was that it is a terrible mistake to confuse a crime, however monstrous, for war. After 9/11, the belligerent rhetoric of the war on terror fostered deluded ideas of a “victory”, legitimised the torture that still stains America’s moral standing and licensed ruinous misadventures overseas. In this difficult hour for France, and Europe more widely, a calmer fury must prevail.

In the wake of the devastating assault on Charlie Hebdo, some voices, not only on the right, are claiming that France is in a state of “war”. Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, said that faced with barbarity, civilisation must defend itself. These are difficult and dangerous times. Extremists of all strands may be tempted to resort to violence in a logic of revenge against Muslims at large: within 24 hours of the attack, there had been reports of at least five anti-Muslim attacks in France. Populist far-right sentiment may channel anger against the country’s 6-million-strong Muslim population, the largest in Europe, in an attempt at collective scapegoating. They will only be further provoked by some fanatical voices that are using social media to express satisfaction that the prophet Muhammad has been “avenged”, the very word used by the terrorists themselves as they unleashed their attack. These are worrying trends, to be condemned as much as the attack itself.

But this is not the tenor of the overall reaction in France. That has been characterised by an admirable calm. The language is of national unity and resilience in the face of an act of hatred and intolerance aimed at one of the pillars of democracy and the Republic: freedom of speech. Thursday was a day of national mourning and across the country, tens of thousands of French citizens came out on to the streets and squares to express their outrage and pay homage to the victims. They have held up pencils and banners saying “Je suis Charlie”, in a massive movement of solidarity. A campaign is growing to help Charlie Hebdo survive and hold high its message of free speech, free satire and provocative journalism. All political parties have joined in to say that French democracy will not succumb to terror. Religious leaders, and representatives of all faiths, have called for tolerance, insisting that Islam could never be the banner under which such a terrible act could be committed.

But France is also a country whose domestic stability will now be tested in many ways. Its social model has weaknesses that it would be a mistake to minimise and that risk feeding further turmoil. Many young French Muslims feel disenfranchised in the context of high unemployment and racism that has been growing in recent years. Islamic radicalisation has grown in this fertile ground, especially in the desolate suburbs of French cities where immigrant populations are often concentrated. That in turn has put France’s secular model under strain. In a Republic that considers the separation of state and religion an essential pillar of democratic life, it will take greater efforts to ensure that this core value is widely understood by the thousands of young Muslims who feel rejected by a society that offers them neither jobs nor hope. Some have come to resent the staples of France’s stark secularism and turned to radical Islam as a way of protesting a state of affairs – joblessness, discrimination – that leaves them left on the side of the road. Sometimes such radicalism becomes a perverse refuge in a quest for identity and self-affirmation. The rallies of solidarity that will take place on Sunday, backed by all the main parties – the participation of the Front National is still in question – could be a decisive moment in the healing of France.

But Wednesday’s attack was not something that happened only to France. Solidarity towards Charlie Hebdo has been flowing in from all parts of Europe, and beyond. But alongside this welcome and necessary – even indispensable – reaction is a darker side. It will fuel the dangerous rightwing populism that echoes in the neonazi Golden Dawn in Greece and in the angry mobs on the streets of Dresden. It’s not only France that must remain steady under pressure.