A few disagreeable realities. The dramatic developments of the fight against terrorism should not alter the few essential elements that were already acquired: a) the West in general and the EU in particular rejects any assimilation between terrorism and a civilisation or any given religion; b) the West's fight and that of those who have said they were prepared to associate themselves with it is not directed against any people, any country or civilisation or religion, but against terrorism itself, and against intolerance and fanaticism that is the root cause; c) a fairer world, and a more balanced distribution of wellbeing would contribute in reducing hate and misunderstandings; d) the United States was attacked in such a savage manner, with as exclusive targets innocent civilians, that it has the right to chase after those responsible, and Europe to be alongside the Americans, it being understood that the objectives must be precise and limited and that at the same time the West initiates a vast action of support and assistance for the Afghan people.
As you may see, this reminder adds nothing in relation to what has already been said in this section. But if you look closer, other considerations come to mind. Two elements of the previous comments were considered by some readers as excessive; the first announced the risk of negative repercussions of the events of 11 September on personal relations between the West and Muslims, in the United States as in Europe; the second foresaw a certain amount of deterioration in civil life at home. It is easy and possibly gratifying to neglect these negative aspects. That way, everyone is happy and has a quiet conscience. This is not the thrust of this section. Facts have demonstrated that my fears were not unfounded, far from it. Many enquiries have highlighted the unease felt by the Muslims living in the United States and Europe, faced with the growing distrust, hostility even, of a small minority of the local population. The European Monitoring Agency for Racism and Xenophobia, located in Venice, has just observed acts of anti-Muslim intolerance in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Belgium; not very serious acts, the report stipulates (stressing that the European population on the whole has been able to make a difference between the "globally peaceful" Islamic people and the few fanatics that support terrorism) but nevertheless very disagreeable. These, of course, need combating, and European laws reprimand them; but these few reactions exist; we would have preferred not, but for now they are there. And we know that in America, for example, passengers on an aircraft demanded that certain Arab passengers be distanced. I wrote that if other terrorist attacks of Muslim fundamentalist origin were to occur, some thousands of Europeans (it is of thousands of which I wrote, out of an EU population of 400 million) would become distrustful and at times disagreeable; I erred through optimism rather than the contrary, as the psychological reactions are already there to be seen.
Less freedom? As for the deterioration of civilian life for Europeans themselves…The precautionary measures introduced for years now following the first waves of terrorism (concerning security at airports and stations, enhanced controls, co-operation between police forces, etc.), had already made our daily lives a little awkward; now, it is the quality of civilian life that will be affected. How to do otherwise? All the information gathered confirms that the attacks were widely organised in Europe; years of undercover presence, training in crime, organisation of networks of complicity in our countries. The United Kingdom has reached, over the centuries, to a level of freedom almost unequalled in the history of civilisation: no identity cards, the police unarmed for a long time, absence of controls on the freedom of expression and association for all. Disgusting people and organisations took advantage of these British conquests to organise themselves, sow hate, prepare attacks. The UK had to ban publications inciting crime, handed over a sought-after terrorist to France and prepare the reintroduction of identity cards. Everywhere vigilance and controls need stepping-up.. Germany has announced that it was to take the fingerprints of all non-Community foreigners. Europe is to become less free, less welcoming and less carefree than the Europeans had hoped and that, thanks to the EU, it had become to be. If it back-steps, the fault will lie squarely on the shoulders of terrorism, fanaticism and hate.
Let's not fall into a naïve optimism. I feel these developments very painfully. After so much hope placed in this reconciled and open Europe, it leads to more than just hurt. The first to suffer from it risk being the immigrants; they should understand that the terrorists are their foremost enemy. And at times I have had the impression that certain Europeans, in the understandable and laudable aim of countering the danger of an unacceptable assimilation between terrorists and a whole civilisation, are sliding towards the opposed excess of naïve optimism, as if the use of aircraft full with passengers as bombs against civilian targets was not a dramatic reality, as if fundamentalism had never existed, as if terrorism against the populations of Europe itself was an invention, as if the attacks charged with the hate of certain Muslim religious authorities against our civilisation was pure invention.
No superiority by preferences. It is obvious that talk about the superiority of one civilisation over another makes no sense; following all the condemnations and comments that followed the statements made by (or attributed to) Silvio Berlusconi, to hark back to it would a be a waste of time. All civilisations have their noble side and grandeur. Some people we call "primitive" could and still can have a relationship with nature and other living being superior to ours. The poverty of Calcutta in no way detracts from the spiritual grandeur of India. We would have a great deal to learn from the attitude of the Mauritanian Muslims faced with ageing and death. And we could thus fill encyclopaedias. It is normal and licit, without speaking about superiority, to have preferences. I believe I'm not the only one, for example, to reject that, in our Europe, women should be treated as they are in certain Muslim countries, or that our civilisation should renounce its concept of freedom and political and civil rights. And I claim that, here, it is our laws that must be respected by all, whatever the chattering of certain sociologists who even manage to excuse the sexual mutilation of little girls; here, is what our people have fashioned over the centuries and centuries of struggle, mistakes and attempts.
The first victims. I dispute that terrorism should have any utility for poor countries and that it has its essential roots in poverty. Poverty leads to revolutions, rebellions, sometime war, whereas blind terrorism has its roots in fanaticism and hate; improving the situation of the poor of this world is the last concern of the terrorists. The most recent analyses of international economic organisations prove that the events of 11 September will have a very negative impact on the economic situation of developing countries. In the West, growth will be less than expected; but these effects are nothing in comparison to the consequences on poor countries. It is the poor who are the real victims of blind terrorism; and immigrants will find it harder to integrate in Europe and will find it more difficult to be welcomed. This is exactly the goal sought by the fanatical terrorists and those who support them; their goal is a "clash of civilisations" that Europe and true Muslims reject.
What is really essential. In the current situation, nothing is more vain or lugubrious than to spread out the wrongs or even the mutual atrocities of Islam and the Christian World over the course of history. Unfortunately, it is not difficult to find some. One accuses the other of the invasion of Spain and Sicily, the other responds with the Crusades, one recalls systematic piracy, the other the colonial conquest of the Maghreb, and so forth, with the sinister corollary of atrocities and savagery. None of this has any sense. The human race being what it is, there will always be cruel and painful events. Yesterday, it was nazism; today it is fundamental terrorism, tomorrow it will be something else. What is important it is not to prevent things going astray (they always will) but to build society in which when things do go wrong they are regarded for what they are, infamies, prosecuted and condemned in the harshest manner; a society in which we teach children, in schools, to be welcoming and fraternal and not the contrary. The EU is doing its best to build such a society. Since the fathers of Europe launched the grand dream of European integration, the path has been drawn and the institutions have remained faithful to it. Suffice at times to cross an EU border to come once more across racial hatred, intolerance, attempts at ethnic cleansing (in the former Yugoslavia, for example); within the Union, it's over, whatever the wounds of history between some of our countries and tenacious rancour that remained. And even though sporadic slides occur here or there in Europe, they are heavily reprimanded by out laws and our institutions. In relations with Islam, the aim is not to unearth former rancour but to practice tolerance and mutual respect. Don't tell me this is too obvious to be repeated. I would like all accusations levelled at Western civilisation of being the great Satan, receptacle of all vices to disappear; I no longer want to hear that terrorists who kill haphazardly in the crowd to be pointed out to the young as heroes and models, and not the vulgar assassins that they are; I would like the very idea that the Cathedral in Strasbourg could be attacked to be considered by all as a similar attack on the sacred place of another civilisation; I'd like…Useless continuing: the concept is clear. Were that the stance of all governments and all religious authorities of Muslim countries, the difficulties that remain would be overcome without major problems and the time for genuine co-operation could open up.
(F.R.)