Paris Tragedy, Clichés and Cycle of Backlash

Two weeks ago Paris was hit by the massacre of its inhabitants who were enjoying the start of weekend. A total of 130 people lost their lives and hundreds were injured. The loss of innocent life said to be the highest since the world war. Most of us were in a shock and were trying to get our heads round the extent of the tragedy and feeling sorry for the friends and families of the victims. A group of people, however, could not wait for the blood of the victims to dry and started to exploit the tragedy for their twisted agendas. They were firing up tweets, blogs and rants on the media, generally spouting hate. Their behaviour was against all human values of sympathy and respect for the dead. Following is a sample of their tweets:

Barefoot Syrian refugees with
her 3 young children in Europe

 The target of these tweets, refugees fleeing war zone of Syria and other conflict zones. These people have been criticising European Governments for allowing Brown Muslim Refugees into the white Judeo- Christian West. These hate preachers and fear mongers have been opposing the policies of the European Union, in particular the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Threy cheered countries like Hungry for putting obstacles in the miserably hard journey of refugees, which has taken lives of thousands. This exploitation of Paris tragedy shows the depravity of these people. Despite their hateful views, they are the respectable face of the racism/ Islamophbia. In fact some of them are part of a network of Islamophobic industry including the Gatestone Institute and their subsidiaries like the Henry Jackson society and supporters of sub-subsidiaries such as the Quilliam foundation. These are the respectable faces of the hate mongering fraternity. Together they inspire, incite and radicalise ordinary people who don’t just tweet vile abusive and threatening tweets but put that in practice. The inflammatory language used by our media and Politicians doesn't help. The use of words like hoards, swarms and swamping doesn’t help.

When something like Paris tragedy happens clichés such as “they hate the West“ are banded about. However, no one explains that why the large parts of the West like, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, etc are spared of such attacks. Why only countries involved in the conflicts have been targeted by these people? Of course there are other clichés like “they hate our values”, “they hate our lifestyle” and “they love death while we love life”. This message is reinforced with “they are barbarians and savages”. This language stems from the feelings of superiority and racist attitudes that are prevalent on both sides of the Atlantic. The attitudes which have been responsible for deaths of unarmed black people in the US and gave rise to the black lives matter movement. This kind of language is also designed to cover up the failures to integrate generations of descendants of migrants who are the main culprits in Paris like tragedies. Furthermore, it is easier to blame people far away for the atrocities than accept the circumstances leading to the enfranchisement of own citizens.

Denial seems to be the name of the game when comes to wars and its consequences. It has been used by the Pentagon after bombing weddings and hospitals etc. Denial of the motives of attacks on the westerners and on the western soil is also part of the same strategy. Recently, Ken Livingston made remarks about 7/7 bombers on a tv programme, saying that they (bombers) gave their life because of a political cause and our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blair supporter Matt Forde, who was also a panelist on the same programme, tried to shut Ken Livingston by claiming that it was offenssive to the victims of 7/7 bombing. It is this kind of bullying which is keeping us from discussing the real issues, which are keeping us in a cycle of unending violence. The reality is that only one of the mass murderers of Paris was known for his IS supporting activities. The rest were not known to be religious or known for any extremist tendencies. Some of them ran a bar which was closed for illegal activities, couple of months before the atrocity. It seems that they had become radicalised within that short period of time. Furthermore, at the time of their murderous activity they were high on drugs, not on any kind of religious fervour.      

It is the people like Maajid Nawaz and the sponsors of Quilliam Foundation with their rhetoric of ideology, who have been spreading fear of Islam and Muslims. Then they turn around and claim that there is no such thing as Islamophobia. Over the years, they have been casting increasingly wider net to label all Muslims as Islamists, non violent extremists, etc. The reality is that apart from a cultish group of approx. 200 to 300, which doesn’t believe in the democratic society, the vast majority of Muslims have always taken part in the democratic processes. There have been Muslim councillors and lord mayors going as far back as 1970s and 1980s. There are number of Muslim MPs and ministers in the cabinet and shadow cabinets. The reality is that Quilliam, their sponsors and so called prevent programme is doing real damage to the active participation of Muslims in Politics, Education, Employment, Media, etc. Maybe that is the goal of their sponsors; to undermine, disenfranchise, and suppress the voice of the Muslim community.  

Coming back to the Paris tragedy, there was an immediate backlash from the French in the form of bombing of the alleged capital of Daesh, Raqqa. Bearing in mind that France is already bombing in Syria, why didn't they bomb Raqqa before? Is it because the risk to the civilian population is greater in Raqqa than in other places? If that is the case then how bombing Raqqa civilians will improve their security? Now France has asked UK to join them in the bombing campaign over Syria, where risk of killing civilian population is greater. Although our Government has made an unconvincing case to join France in the bombing campaign in Syria, they may still get approval from the parliament. There is however a concern about the alleged remarks attributed to the PM David Cameron, that people opposing the proposed action in Syria are terrorist sympthisers. This unfortunately confirms that debate is suppressed at the highest level.

After the Paris attacks media talked about backlash against the Muslim citizens of the West. It was an odd prediction as they had nothing to do with what had happened in Paris. However, the backlash has happened, mainly due to the media rhetoric and headlines like in the Sun below. We must not forget the wide spread incitement and abuse on the social media.

The results are painfully clear to the victims of Islamophobic/ racist attacks. Although victims of such abuse are people of all ages, often it is the women who bear the brunt of this hate crime. Most victims are targeted because of their obvious visibility as Arabic/ Asian appearance and this sometimes results in attacks on other brown coloured non Muslim communities too. Women are targeted for such abuse as they are doubly visible as Muslims because of their colour and dress/ hijab and because, like the terrorists, they are probably considered a soft target.

Politicians are no better in addressing the problem. Only the Labour MPs have raised the issue in the Parliament. Shadow equalities minister Kate Green MP raised her concerns about the staggering 300% increase in, already high, Islamophobic attacks. As far as the Government is concerned, they have been busy enacting/ introducing annual instalments of counter terrorism/ extremism legislation / regulations. The Prime Minister has been making major speeches on the prevention strategy. PM and his minister's strong statements and so called prevent programme, has created an atmosphere of suspicion affecting whole of the Muslim community. The role of this approach in the increasing number of Islamophobic attacks and discrimination, affecting daily life from education, employment, public service to charitable activities, can not be denied. Government's reliance on selected individuals and organisations for advice and consultation and not the mainstream communities is responsible for some of its ill thought policies. Unfortunately some of the advisors are motivated by their own agendas. This became clear in the saga of the Cage UK, an organisation named by the Prime Minister in one of his speeches. As it happens the courts disagreed with the assessments made by the people advising him and attacking the charitable status of the organisation.

During the debate on Syria, conservative MP Rahman Chishti raised his concerns about the use of the words Islamic State, which have been abandoned by the UN, US, EU, France and many more, in favour of the Arabic name Daesh.  He said to the PM that the using Islamic State instead of Daesh was giving rise to Islamophobia. PM David Cameron’s response was that dropping Islamic State in favour of Daesh would risk losing the public. Obviously what he was more concerned about losing public support to extend bombing strikes in Syria. Furthermore, he was probably worried about the loss of support from the right wing press and organisations. This supports the idea that such terms are often used for political purposes which is a reckless attitude as it has devastating consequences.

 PM has at many times said that the UK government operates strong anti extremism policies, which he says are the toughest in the world (even Gatestone Institute calls it draconian). However, it seems the government has failed to conduct a thorough impact assessment. Apart from paying lip service, the government has shown no enthusiasm to tackle the scourge of Islamophbia. During the attack on Gaza in 2014, criticism of Israel was described as anti-semitic, by people like Douglas Murray. This is not to say that their weren’t anti-Semitic incidents, there were. This resulted in a robust response by the government to reassure the Jewish community and a parliamentary report on the issue was published.

Now that the parliament has voted to extend the bombing campaign into Syria, there is a risk that any negative implications will undoubtedly result in backlash against the Muslims. Therefore, it is imparitive that the Government reassures the community by acknowledging the existence of the problem of Islamophobia and take steps to reassure the community. Furthermore, it should consult mainstream Muslims to develop strategy to counter and safeguard Muslim citizens. This is important as anti-Muslim hate crime can only lead to disenfranchisement, which is believed to be a major factor in so called radicalisation.