tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/charlie-hebdo-attack-14299/articlesCharlie Hebdo attack – The Conversation2020-09-15T11:53:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1455272020-09-15T11:53:40Z2020-09-15T11:53:40ZCharlie Hebdo shootings served as an extreme example of the history of attacks on satirists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357713/original/file-20200911-14-akb40f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=108%2C54%2C5044%2C3383&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A painting made by French street artist Christian Guemy in tribute to the members of those killed in the attack on Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/France-Attacks-Trial/f97618364f494b49b7bdbd0996778e33/22/0">AP Photo/Michel Euler</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the trial of alleged accomplices to the attack on Charlie Hebdo recently got underway in Paris, the magazine republished <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-cartoons-trial-france.html">caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed</a>. </p>
<p>It was a defiant act. The same images were cited as the grievance that led two killers to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-paris-shooting.html?searchResultPosition=44">shoot dead 12 people</a> at the magazine’s offices in a terror attack in 2015. </p>
<p>Previously, the paper’s offices had been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-magazine-in-paris-is-firebombed.html?searchResultPosition=3">firebombed</a> when a caricature of the Prophet Muhammed was run on the cover of a November 2011 issue. Charlie Hebdo runs cartoons <a href="https://forward.com/schmooze/212244/when-charlie-hebdo-lampooned-jews-too/">satirizing other religions</a>, <a href="https://qz.com/322550/charlie-hebdo-has-had-more-legal-run-ins-with-christians-than-with-muslims/">including Christianity</a>. </p>
<p>Depictions of the founder of Islam are <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-theres-opposition-to-images-of-muhammad-36402">forbidden</a> in the Sunni branch of the faith. As a result, what was intended as satire was perceived as blasphemous by observant Muslims and as an unforgivable offense by extremists.</p>
<p>The attack on Charlie Hebdo was an extreme example of a long history of attacks on satire and those who create it. But satire can take many forms, as can its reprisals.</p>
<h2>Satire as criticism</h2>
<p>Indeed, condemnation of satirists has more commonly taken the form of censorship, public humiliation and imprisonment.</p>
<p>Aristophanes, who wrote satiric plays 2,400 years ago, was <a href="https://www.ancient-literature.com/greece_aristophanes.html">condemned during his lifetime</a> for his depictions of citizens of Athens. Plato criticized the playwright for <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2015/12/birth-comedy-socrates-aristophanes/">slandering Socrates</a> as vain and arrogant in his play “The Clouds.”</p>
<p>In 1599, the bishops of Canterbury and London <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2010.00701.x">banned the publication</a> of a variety of works, including those seen as satirical. Attacks on the privileged and powerful were seen as violating cultural norms and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/renaissance-papers-2011/reconsidering-the-1599-bishops-ban-on-satire/E032CFB6126BF6360C2BBE6E7B43B88E">corrosive to social order</a>.</p>
<p>And years before writing his best-known work, “Robinson Crusoe,” Daniel Defoe wrote satirical works that were critical of many prominent figures. Among his more popular work was “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44081/the-true-born-englishman">The True-Born Englishman</a>,” which highlighted xenophobic prejudice in England against <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44081/the-true-born-englishman">King William III</a>, a Dutchman by birth. </p>
<p>In 1703, Defoe also criticized individuals who wanted to separate from the Church of England. In “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Shortest_Way_with_the_Dissenters.html?id=m10UAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Shortest Way with the Dissenters</a>” he accused separatists of being responsible for the English Civil War, among other crimes. Since Defoe was himself a separatist, his critique is considered to be a satiric attack on the leaders of the Church.</p>
<p>Defoe’s call to “crucify the thieves,” that is, the dissenters, led to him being <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/daniel-defoe-put-pillory">accused of seditious libel</a>. He was fined, endured public humiliation in a pillory and was then thrown in prison.</p>
<p>Authors of what is known as Juvenalian satire, criticism of contemporary persons or institutions, engage in a full-throated condemnation. In appearing to be advocating for the public good, they could also end up with outlandish suggestions. Perhaps the best-known example of this is Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay, “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm">A Modest Proposal</a>,” in which he suggests that the Irish sell their babies as food for the rich. It was an attack on the attitudes of the wealthy and on British policies toward the Irish.</p>
<p>Needless to say, assaults like these can get under the skin of those being depicted as corrupt, cruel or dimwitted.</p>
<h2>Mild or hidden satire</h2>
<p>But there isn’t one form of satire. Satire can be fairly gentle as well. An example of so-called Horatian satire is Alexander Pope’s 1712 “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9800/9800-h/9800-h.htm">The Rape of the Lock</a>.” The poem describes a mundane incident – the cutting of a lock of hair without permission – in mock-heroic terms.</p>
<p>Pope’s poem is relatively good-natured. His goal was to poke fun at his own society and is therefore not particularly judgmental. </p>
<p>Then there is the use of caricature as a form of satire, which often gets away merely by exaggerating the physical characteristics of its intended targets. <a href="https://hughjnusscrapbookarnorfer7.weebly.com/caricature-humor.html">Barack Obama’s ears</a> and <a href="https://simplifythemessage.com/2014/06/ministry-caricatures/">Richard Nixon’s nose</a>, for example, were often depicted as comically large by cartoonists during their respective presidencies.</p>
<p>But then, a work intended to be satiric may cease, over time, to be recognized as such. As I describe in my book on <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/irony-and-sarcasm">irony and sarcasm,</a> an example may be the Historia Augusta, a fourth-century collection of biographies of Roman emperors.</p>
<p>Scholars <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZzWehZ4AAAAJ&hl=en">Justin Stover</a> and <a href="http://www.mike-kestemont.org/">Mike Kestemont</a> have pointed out that the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.2041-5370.2016.12043.x">manuscript is unusual</a> in its “lurid focus on emperors’ peccadilloes and personal habits to the detriment of their political accomplishments.” There has been some discussion over the intent and purpose of such a text. Scholar <a href="https://people.wright.edu/shawn.daniels">Shawn Daniels</a>, <a href="https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/uf/e0/04/59/15/00001/daniels_s.pdf">who has studied the text closely</a>, concluded that the language of “quips and bad puns” suggest that the work was intended as satire. </p>
<h2>Free speech and satire</h2>
<p>In modern times, the liberty of free speech can often protect even harsh examples of satire. </p>
<p>In the U.S., for example, criticism of public figures is protected speech, so satire <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/drawing-justice-courtroom-illustrations/about-this-exhibition/significant-and-landmark-cases/satire-is-protected-free-speech/">cannot be used</a> as a basis for libel or to seek damages for emotional distress. In countries such as Italy and Germany, satire is explicitly protected by the Constitution. And France has a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/01/why-satire-holy-french-islam-2015113124829607350.html">long tradition</a> of satirists mocking religious and political institutions.</p>
<p>With regard to Charlie Hebdo’s caricatures of the prophet, there are those who question whether religious sentiments should not be taken into consideration. Many have described the caricatures, such as one depicting a bomb hidden in a turban, to be <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/france-charlie-hebdo-reprints-prophet-mohammed-caricatures-200901103959129.html">offensive to religious feelings</a> and in poor taste. There have been <a href="https://theprint.in/world/charlie-hebdos-decision-to-republish-prophet-muhammad-cartoons-spark-widespread-protests/497447/">protests across several countries</a> condemning the republication.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357715/original/file-20200911-20-s36xkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357715/original/file-20200911-20-s36xkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357715/original/file-20200911-20-s36xkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357715/original/file-20200911-20-s36xkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357715/original/file-20200911-20-s36xkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357715/original/file-20200911-20-s36xkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357715/original/file-20200911-20-s36xkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357715/original/file-20200911-20-s36xkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Supporters of a religious group hold a rally to condemn the republication of caricatures in Lahore, Pakistan, on Sept. 10, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Pakistan-Charlie-Hebdo-Protest/f17365ebf3864f4f8403e4fe7e7739b9/9/0">AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary</a></span>
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<p>In <a href="https://m.startribune.com/french-paper-attacked-in-2015-reprints-mohammed-caricatures/572282162/">an editorial</a> that accompanied the caricatures, the magazine has defended its actions. The editors stated that the drawings “belong to history, and history cannot be rewritten nor erased.”</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Support for freedom of expression was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-35108339">evident in the slogan</a> “Je Suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie,” which was adopted by thousands soon after the attack in 2015. </p>
<p>Are there limits to such freedom of expression? The future of satire as a form of criticism may depend on a balance being struck between its practitioners and its targets.</p>
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<header>Roger J. Kreuz is the author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/irony-and-sarcasm">Irony and Sarcasm</a></p>
<footer>MIT Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.</footer>
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</section>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger J. Kreuz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The French satirical magazine republished the controversial caricatures of Prophet Muhammad. An expert says satire has often been a subject of condemnation.Roger J. Kreuz, Associate Dean and Professor of Psychology, University of MemphisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1291512020-01-06T14:43:15Z2020-01-06T14:43:15ZFive years on from the Charlie Hebdo attack, ‘Je suis Charlie’ rings hollow<p>After the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30708237">terror attack</a> on the Paris office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 7 2015 left 12 people dead, many declared “<em>Je suis Charlie</em>” (“I am Charlie”) in solidarity. But behind the understandable emotion that accompanied such declarations lay a more complicated reality. Many reactions to the attack were more conservative than first appeared, and not in keeping with the values of the publication. Five years on, “<em>Je suis Charlie</em>” has quite a hollow ring to it. </p>
<p>Before 2015, about 40,000 people read Charlie Hebdo each week. Given that many hundreds of thousands declared “je suis Charlie”, most were clearly not regular readers. “<em>Je suis Charlie</em>” primarily appears to have been a <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/51535/">statement of sympathy</a> rather than an endorsement of the brand of humour of this subversive publication. The phrase also symbolised a desire to defend freedom of expression, although not necessarily an agreement with the ways in which Charlie Hebdo has expressed itself. </p>
<p>Charlie Hebdo has traditionally taken pride in describing itself as a “<a href="https://theconversation.com/charlie-hebdo-editors-double-down-on-their-principles-in-first-issue-since-attacks-36269"><em>journal irresponsable</em></a>” (irresponsible newspaper). It has been happy to describe its humour as “<a href="https://www.lejdd.fr/Societe/charlie-hebdo-un-journal-satirique-cest-necessairement-trash-bete-et-mechant-3536828"><em>bête et méchant</em></a>” (stupid and nasty). This sometimes dark and provocative humour has attracted criticism over the years, not least from politicians. Yet many authority figures that Charlie Hebdo had ruthlessly mocked were present in the demonstrations that took place in January 2015. </p>
<p>And as was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/01/11/the-free-speech-hypocrisy-of-some-world-leaders-marching-in-paris/">observed</a> at the time, the presence of certain world leaders also pointed to a degree of hypocrisy. Where many sought to defend freedom of speech, there were several leaders who had restricted freedom of expression in their own countries. The international non-profit organisation Reporters Without Borders was <a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/rwb-condemns-presence-predators-paris-march-calls-solidarity-all-charlies">particularly critical</a> of figures such as Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. </p>
<h2>Commemorating while forgetting</h2>
<p>Charlie Hebdo has generally been keen to laugh about anything and everything, and in whatever way it pleases. But despite the focus on freedom of expression in the aftermath to the 2015 attack, there were noticeable inconsistencies. In the immediate aftermath, several topical comedy programmes on French television were not broadcast as writers and presenters struggled to find a way to engage with such horrific events in a humorous manner. </p>
<p>A rare exception was the Canal Plus show <em>Les Guignols</em>, whose brand of humour was sometimes similar to Charlie Hebdo. The daily programme, which featured latex puppets of many well known figures, included <a href="http://tvmag.lefigaro.fr/le-scan-tele/actu-tele/2015/01/08/28001-20150108ARTFIG00136-l-hommage-des-guignols-a-charlie-hebdo-en-5-images.php">several sketches</a> about the attack, broadcast only hours after it had taken place. These included jokes about increased levels of terror threats. It also involved a latex puppet of the Prophet Muhammad distancing himself from the attackers. The show, which was dedicated to the magazine, concluded with a sketch in which several of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who had been killed were allowed into heaven despite having frequently mocked religion.</p>
<p>Yet many sections of the French media, and French society in general, were reluctant to embrace such dark humour. At <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/festival/article/2017/07/26/le-rire-plus-politique-que-jamais_5165314_4415198.html">an event in September 2017</a>, comedian Jérémy Ferrari told of how several television stations cancelled planned interviews with him about his new show in early 2015. Stations may have been making time to discuss freedom of expression, but he said they seemed reluctant to discuss the way his stand-up show mocked war and terrorism.</p>
<p>People who sought to play down or joke about the Charlie Hebdo attack in France in early 2005 also risked being charged with the offence of “<em>l'apologie du terrorisme</em>” (excusing terrorism). In a school north of Paris, a pupil was reportedly disciplined for laughing at a joke about the name of a gunman who killed several people in the days after the Charlie Hebdo attack, and was made to repeatedly write the phrase “one does not laugh about serious things”. </p>
<h2>A challenge for comedians</h2>
<p>Several years on, as I explore in my <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/51535/">recent book</a> on the topic, French comedians seem torn between insisting on the importance of being able to joke about whatever topics they wish and worrying about the consequences of doing so. </p>
<p>In 2015, the comedian Sophia Aram started performing a show in which she defended Charlie Hebdo and its values. She insists on the importance of continuing to freely mock religion and extremism.</p>
<p>Mustapha El Atrassi – a comedian who shares Aram’s French-Moroccan roots and was also brought up in a Muslim family – also insists on the need to keep embracing jokes that deal with taboos. But he argues too that not all comedians are equally free to joke about terrorism. He <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsk0Ahu7qwA&t=886s">said</a> that a French comedian called “Maxence” – a stereotypically white, European, middle class name – is likely to get a much more positive response to dark humour about terrorism than someone from his background. </p>
<p>Focusing on the depictions of the Prophet Muhammad that made Charlie Hebdo a target for fundamentalists, meanwhile, the comedian Stéphane Guillon <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2016/01/06/continuer-a-rire-de-tout-plus-que-jamais_4842605_3246.html">said</a> in 2016: “If you can die due to a drawing, you can die due to a sketch.” He again evoked his fear of the potentially dangerous consequences of mocking the Prophet Muhammad on stage in 2018. At an event to commemorate the third anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack, the normally acerbic comic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6ji-PbnC80">stated</a>: “I don’t want to miss out on seeing my children grow up due to a joke about Muhammad.” </p>
<p>Five years on, France has not continued to embrace values associated with Charlie Hebdo. Shortly after the attack, the magazine’s number of subscribers rose to 260,000 and six months on it was selling <a href="https://www.bfmtv.com/economie/quatre-ans-apres-l-attentat-charlie-hebdo-est-redevenu-deficitaire-1605646.html">120,000 copies each week</a> via newsagents. But by 2018, it had <a href="https://www.lejdd.fr/Medias/Presse-ecrite/charlie-hebdo-toujours-en-peril-trois-ans-apres-lattaque-des-kouachi-3539036">only 35,000 subscribers</a> and sold a further 35,000 copies per week to non-subscribers. After a further decline in sales, it marked the fourth anniversary of the attacks in 2019 with <a href="https://www.bfmtv.com/economie/quatre-ans-apres-l-attentat-charlie-hebdo-est-redevenu-deficitaire-1605646.html">an editorial</a> that asked its readers: “Are you still there?”</p>
<p>One thing that is certainly not still there is Canal Plus’s <em>Les Guignols</em>, the satirical show featuring latex puppets. Its four main writers were fired in summer 2015 and the show moved to a less prominent slot. In 2018, the iconic show was finally cancelled by Canal. </p>
<p>Ultimately, France seems much less keen to embrace biting satirical humour than it initially appeared back in 2015.</p>
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<header>Jonathan Ervine is the author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/51535/">Humour in Contemporary France: Controversy, Consensus and Contradictions</a></p>
<footer>Liverpool University Press provides funding as a content partner of The Conversation UK</footer>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Ervine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Charlie Hebdo’s often biting and dark humour frequently troubles people in France, and many reactions to the attack in France were not in keeping with the values of the publication.Jonathan Ervine, Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/895532018-01-05T16:01:51Z2018-01-05T16:01:51ZCharlie Hebdo changed the way the French say ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200985/original/file-20180105-26163-1bade7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/paris-france-january-10-2016-place-360990182?src=g58P-jViiBuJhbFRnf33cw-4-70">Shutterstock.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has been three years since gunmen attacked the offices of French satirical newspaper <a href="https://charliehebdo.fr/en/">Charlie Hebdo</a>, killing <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/10/world/france-paris-who-were-terror-victims/index.html">12 people</a>. In the days that followed, five more lost their lives while police hunted for the perpetrators – brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi. Eventually, they were shot dead after an eight-hour standoff involving hostages. </p>
<p>In the aftermath of these events, time stood still. Christmas decorations eerily remained well into February in streets and stores, as civilians and leaders from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/world/europe/paris-march-against-terror-charlie-hebdo.html?_r=0">across the globe</a> gathered in Paris to mourn the victims and condemn terrorism. Online, the slogan “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) went viral, as millions of individuals expressed a shared sentiment and solidarity. </p>
<p>These events, and the way they have been memorialised since, have triggered a shift in some elements of French national identity – the collection of ideas, symbols and emotions that define what it means to be French – particularly the national motto, “liberté, égalité, fraternité” (liberty, equality, fraternity).</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200987/original/file-20180105-26154-1evn6j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200987/original/file-20180105-26154-1evn6j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200987/original/file-20180105-26154-1evn6j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200987/original/file-20180105-26154-1evn6j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200987/original/file-20180105-26154-1evn6j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200987/original/file-20180105-26154-1evn6j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200987/original/file-20180105-26154-1evn6j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Set in stone?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/arianta/16175822915/sizes/l">Arianta/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>In the past, <a href="http://www.louvre.fr/en/mediaimages/le-28-juillet-la-liberte-guidant-le-peuple-28-juillet-1830">greater emphasis</a> was placed on liberty, in rebellion against the oppressive monarchy of ancient France. But in response to the recent trauma, fraternity – or solidarity – has taken centre stage, even appearing as a background to Macron’s promise for a <a href="https://www.thelocal.fr/20180101/macron-vows-french-renaissance-in-2018">“French Renaissance”</a> in 2018. Today, fraternity represents the peace and sorrow of remembering the dead, rather than the violence and anger of the French Revolution.</p>
<p>The meaning of liberty itself has shifted to focus on a specific freedom - the freedom of speech, which the terrorists sought to silence. And the French sense of equality now resonates poignantly with Charlie Hebdo’s renowned mission to mock everyone equally. In the aftermath of terror, the ideals of France’s past have subtly morphed, as its people look for ways to defend the right to free speech, while mourning the harsh reality of its cost. </p>
<h2>Death in Paris</h2>
<p>Memorialisation has always played a key role in modern cultural memory, and this is particularly clear in Paris. As a city, Paris is separate from the rest of the country, yet it also represents the French Republic. Even the name for the region of Paris, “Île de France” (Island of France), expresses isolation while proclaiming to stand for the nation as a whole. Paris has come to be accepted as a cultural hub, as the French centre for fashion, publishing, and language.</p>
<p>Death and terror have a long history in Paris. Even the word <a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/burke-select-works-of-edmund-burke-vol-3">“terrorism”</a> originates from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Reign-of-Terror">“The Terror”</a>; a period of violent purges of those opposed to the new national ideals in the wake of the French Revolution. From the subterranean, bone-lined Catacombs to the Place de la République, the display and commemoration of death has always been a feature of the French capital. </p>
<p>Yet it is perhaps fitting, in the internet age, that the most recognisable memorials for the Charlie Hebdo attack are not just static landmarks, but visual, virtual and transient. One year after the attacks, commemorative plaques were dedicated by then-President François Hollande, and a tree was planted in the Place de la République, creating a living memorial. </p>
<p>Charlie Hebdo also ran a cover commemorating the dead, while targeting religious extremism: a blood-spattered, God-like figure runs away with a Kalashnikov, under the slogan “one year on, the assassin is still out there”. Solidarity sales of the struggling publication grew following the attacks – though they lessened on the first anniversary, and dwindled again with the second – and the covers marking each anniversary have spread across social media. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"684073886628057092"}"></div></p>
<p>This year, the publication will run another cover, commenting on the enduring impact of memorialising the attack and the continued <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/culture/2018/01/02/03004-20180102ARTFIG00250-trois-ans-apres-l-attentat-charlie-hebdo-denonce-le-cout-de-la-liberte-d-expression.php">cost of free speech</a>. In some ways, the magazine itself has become a symbol, and each of its anniversaries covers a new thread woven into the new French identity. </p>
<h2>The politics of memory</h2>
<p>Whether or not Parisians agree with Charlie Hebdo’s editorial line, it is likely that they will gather in the Place de la République – as <a href="http://time.com/4175008/paris-anniversay-charlie-hebdo/">they have</a> in <a href="https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/medias/charlie-hebdo/charlie-hebdo-l-hommage-place-de-la-republique-deux-ans-apres_2006511.html">previous years</a> – to express their solidarity with the victims, and their defiance in the face of violent extremism. And so the square itself has become one of <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paris-terror-victims-memorial-clean-up_us_57a0c16ae4b0e2e15eb74597">France’s longest living memorials</a>; a place where people gather to light candles and place flowers and notes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200990/original/file-20180105-26151-1s7a59d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200990/original/file-20180105-26151-1s7a59d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200990/original/file-20180105-26151-1s7a59d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200990/original/file-20180105-26151-1s7a59d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200990/original/file-20180105-26151-1s7a59d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200990/original/file-20180105-26151-1s7a59d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200990/original/file-20180105-26151-1s7a59d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A place to remember.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/maldeno/23127114012/sizes/l">Roberto Maldeno/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Paris’s many sites of public remembrance express what it means to be French – and provide a site to contest it. The monuments of Paris have often highlighted ideological issues around memorialisation in the city. The <a href="https://en.parisinfo.com/paris-museum-monument/71195/Memorial-des-Martyrs-de-la-Deportation">Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation</a> has been criticised for presenting the Jewish experience of WWII as one shared by all in France. The <a href="http://www.pantheonparis.com/">Panthéon</a> – a prominent tourist centre for French cultural history – houses only five female members alongside its 76 men.</p>
<p>The same is true of the Charlie Hebdo memorials; in 2015, flowers and notes were not the only things left on the statue at the centre of the Place de la République. It was <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paris-terror-victims-memorial-clean-up_us_57a0c16ae4b0e2e15eb74597">also scrawled</a> with graffiti condemning terrorism and extremism in all its forms. Likewise, the mural outside the offices of Charlie Hebdo, depicting the victims of the attack, <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20180104-france-charlie-hebdo-parisians-free-speech-three-years-after-attack-terrorism">was recently defaced</a> with Hitler moustaches – a protest, perhaps, against the victims’ new-found hero status.</p>
<p>Amid all this conflict, there is some reassurance to be found: Paris’s contested sites and spaces are proof that freedom of speech is alive and well in France. Satire, after all, has a longer history than terrorism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89553/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Benjamin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Memorials to the terror attack have become visual and transient – a battleground to contest parts of French identity.Elizabeth Benjamin, Lecturer in French, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/665932016-10-06T06:49:47Z2016-10-06T06:49:47ZHow ISIS terrorists neutralise guilt to justify their atrocities<p>Torture, suicide bombings, beheadings, mass killings, sex slavery – these are among the horrors that <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-isis-and-where-did-it-come-from-27944">ISIS</a> uses to terrorise people and countries. While most people feel this is just a new <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/world/middleeast/citing-atrocities-john-kerry-calls-isis-actions-genocide.html">genocide</a> with brutal criminality practised under a fake umbrella of religion, a few extremists believe such actions are necessary to establish <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-isis-isil-islamic-state-or-daesh-40838">the religious, social and political power of the Islamic State</a>. </p>
<p>And the perpetrators of the violence? Well, they probably don’t feel guilty at all. </p>
<p>Viewing ISIS’s acts from a criminological, rather than theological, perspective offers some provocative insights into the minds of its fighters. Studies have shown that criminals commonly use five techniques to justify their acts – allowing them to effectively <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2089195?seq=1#fndtn-page_scan_tab_contents">neutralise their guilt</a>. </p>
<h2>Denial of responsibility and injury</h2>
<p>The first recourse is the “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3033965?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">denial of responsibility</a>”. In this way, terrorists might refer to forces beyond their control, relieving them of responsibility for their actions. </p>
<p>After declaring the founding of <a href="https://theconversation.com/islamic-state-versus-daish-or-daesh-the-political-battle-over-naming-50822">a new Caliphate</a> in June 2014, one of ISIS’s most senior officials, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/world/middleeast/al-adnani-islamic-state-isis-syria.html">Abu Muhammad al-Adnani</a> declared a compulsory oath for all worldwide Muslims to vow their absolute allegiance to the <a href="https://www.thecairoreview.com/essays/a-portrait-of-caliph-ibrahim/">Caliph Ibrahim</a>, leader of ISIS and since 2014 the head, or caliph, of the Islamic State. This means, in effect, that the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/books/review/isis-inside-the-army-of-terror-and-more.html">ISIS power structure is an authoritarian one</a> in which the caliph holds total, tyrannical power over his followers.</p>
<p>Second, ISIS terrorists employ “<a href="http://cjb.sagepub.com/content/12/2/221.short">denial of injury</a>” to justify violence. This technique of neutralisation centres on the injury or harm involved in the delinquent act. Any acts of cruelty hurt people, of course, and it is hard to deny the injury done by terrorists to their victims. But terrorists may believe that their actions will not have consequences to themselves since their cruelty will lead them to paradise, a better world under the Islamic rule of ISIS. </p>
<p>In 2015, for example, the ISIS online magazine <a href="https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/dacc84r-al-islacc84m-magazine-8.pdf">Dar al-Islam</a> claimed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the one that follows the path of Islam and then Jihad should know that the road is long … and could lead him, if Allah wants this, near him in his Paradise. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Just deserts and condemning the condemner</h2>
<p>The terrorists also use a technique called “<a href="http://cjb.sagepub.com/content/33/1/110.short">denial of the victim</a>”. For zealots, the population in the United States, France, Spain, United Kingdom or Germany deserves punishment; any injury is just retaliation for their society’s hatred of Muslims and Islam. Many jihadists even consider the civilians of Western countries as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/world/europe/isis-attacks-paris-brussels.html">enemy fighters</a>, since they support the politicians leading the war against ISIS. </p>
<p>In an adjunct attack to the January 2016 Charlie Hebdo <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30708237">attack</a>, for instance, the perpetrator who attacked a Jewish supermarket in the surburbs of Paris, Amedy Coulibaly, justified killing a police officer and his deadly hostage-taking by claiming that the French government had decided to attack jihadists in Mali. He declared in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/world/europe/amedy-coulibaly-video-islamic-state.html">video</a> that the French population was supportive of this French military action therefore, attacking French civilians was, for him, a “normal punishment”. </p>
<p>Similarly, in a recent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/world/middleeast/ramadan-isis-baghdad-attacks.html">audio message</a>, Abu Muhammed al-Adnani, the Islamic State spokesman, said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Know that in the heart of the lands of the Crusaders there is no protection for that blood, and there is no presence of so-called civilians.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The fourth tactic used by criminals to neutralise their guilt is to “<a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10611-006-9046-0">condemn the condemners</a>”. Rather than explain their actions, terrorists attack those who disapprove of their deviance. For them, the condemners – journalists, judges, police officers, and the like – are corrupted, depraved, brutal hypocrites and deviants, because they are <em>kafir</em> (non-believers). Thus the jihadists widely employ <em>takfir</em> - the branding of others as infidels who deserve death. </p>
<p>To justify such atrocities, ISIS members will call their victims infidels, crusaders, fornicators, drunkards, sodomites, and so on. This neutralisation technique allows criminals to shrug off denunciation of their actions by questioning those segments of society that critique terrorism.</p>
<h2>Appealing to higher loyalties</h2>
<p>Finally, terrorists appeal to “<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13218719.2010.482953">higher loyalties</a>” to explain their crimes. Social control may be neutralised by sacrificing the demands of larger society for the demands of smaller social groups to which the terrorists belong, such as ISIS and its sibling groups. </p>
<p>The rhetoric of Islamic State makes much of its promises of brotherhood and friendship, and assures that ISIS endows its fighters with the gift of a shared higher meaning in life. </p>
<p><a href="https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/dacc84r-al-islacc84m-magazine-8.pdf">Dar al-Islam</a> said in a 2016 article:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When they sacrifice their life for their religion, for their brothers and their sisters, we cry for them, really knowing that they are now with our Lord in his Paradise.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In such a situation, the terrorists can neutralise any sense of guilt by demonstrating the noble spirit of their criminal actions, carried out as a sacrifice at the request of their small, tight-knit group community (ISIS). Acting for the sake of your “siblings” in terrorism is portrayed as an honourable act of loyalty. </p>
<p>As these diverse neutralisation techniques show, it’s unlikely that even the most violent ISIS members suffer any feelings of guilt. Using total justification in their quest to achieve ISIS global domination, terrorists give themselves free reign to strike any supposed enemy, by any means necessary - even to kill innocents, non-Muslims and Muslims alike.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66593/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bertrand Venard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Do ISIS fighters feel guilty about the violence they perpetrate? Not likely, according to criminological research, which suggests terrorists “neutralise” their guilt, just as many other criminals do.Bertrand Venard, Professor, AudenciaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/634872016-08-31T02:15:18Z2016-08-31T02:15:18ZWant to prevent lone wolf terrorism? Promote a ‘sense of belonging’<p>This September, as they start the school year, French children aged 14 years old and upwards are going to get <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/10/french-14-year-olds-to-have-school-lessons-on-surviving-terroris/">lessons</a> on how to deal with a terrorism attack on their school. Meanwhile, the debate over the ban on wearing burkinis and whether they are, <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-08-26/vive-le-burkini-french-court-suspects-ban-swimwear">in the words</a> of France’s prime minister, “a political sign of religious proselytising” continues. </p>
<p>The big question, however is this: Why are we seeing a rash of these attacks in Europe and especially in France, and are such measures effective in countering them? </p>
<p>What have we learned from the horrors of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the murder of 130 people in and around Paris last November, the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice and the killing of an 85-year-old priest inside of a church in Normandy? </p>
<p>Examining the reactions of French authorities, we can conclude there are only limited actions that can be taken to prevent such atrocities. </p>
<p>Security can been heightened by extending <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/20/frances-national-assembly-votes-to-extend-state-of-emergency">the state of emergency</a> that it declared last November. Intelligence efforts can be redoubled. Such efforts are raising concern about <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/07/22/france-prolonged-emergency-state-threatens-rights">civil liberties being curtailed</a>. But the Nice attack is also a dire warning that these measures aren’t effective as a means of protecting citizens from continued attacks. </p>
<p>The point is that none of the above policies could have prevented Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel and Abdelmalik Petitjean from carrying out their violent actions. Thousands if not millions of people living in Europe have similar profiles. Tunisian or Algerian descent and French citizenship are not enough to tip off authorities that a person could run over 84 people with a truck or slit the throat of a priest. </p>
<p>So how can we hope to prevent future attacks? We need to change our focus, in my opinion, to examining these perpetrators’ “sense of belonging” rather than looking for reasons to detain or expel them because they don’t belong.</p>
<h2>A Canadian case study</h2>
<p>A number of years ago, while working at the <a href="http://www.inrs.ca/anglais">National Institute for Scientific Research in Montréal</a>, I was invited to join a research team studying the integration of refugees and immigrants into Québec society.</p>
<p>This led me to work on research projects that looked at a broad range of questions – from why people <a href="https://www.mrif.gouv.qc.ca/document/spdi/fonddoc/FDOC_rapp_2777_rapport_annuel_1993_1994.pdf">claim refugee status</a> to how immigrants use <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276435195_Book_Review_Arguing_and_Justifying_Assessing_the_Convention_Refugees%27_Choice_of_Moment_Motive_and_Host_Country;%20https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/IJSLL/article/view/17255/13563">storytelling</a> to talk about their displacement and assimilation into Canada. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134510/original/image-20160817-3587-17gljfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134510/original/image-20160817-3587-17gljfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134510/original/image-20160817-3587-17gljfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134510/original/image-20160817-3587-17gljfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134510/original/image-20160817-3587-17gljfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134510/original/image-20160817-3587-17gljfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134510/original/image-20160817-3587-17gljfx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scene from a play by Lebanese Canadian writer Wajdi Moawad.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendies_(play)#/media/File:Incendies_(pi%C3%A8ce_de_Mouawad)_au_th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre_Lise-Gu%C3%A8vremont.JPG">Nicolas M. Perrault</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My first project was focused upon immigrant literary works – especially novels and short stories – that were a largely untapped source of information to help officials understand the complex process of integrating into Quebec society, and in particular, as a way to understand relationships between immigrants and individuals from the host country. </p>
<p>There’s a pretty large body of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Contemporary-Canadian-Francophone-Literature/dp/073911879X">so-called immigrant literature in Québec</a>. Interestingly, many of these narratives include graphic and sometimes even pornographic descriptions of encounters between native-born and immigrant protagonists. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.sogides.com/medias/3/10/ext_9782892953206.pdf">A broad reading</a> of these stories made me realize that developing relationships with friends and lovers contributed to the migrant’s “sense of belonging.” They helped him or her to forget their country of origin and forge a new beginning in the host society.</p>
<p>In fact, I came to believe that these immigrants’ ability to adapt had something to do with the very process of exchange. Or, put another way, the many acts of giving and receiving that they committed each day helped them to feel connected to society. </p>
<h2>Measuring belonging</h2>
<p>In order to evaluate this process of adaptation, I turned to work by French biblical scholars called the <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2924040">Groupe d'Entrevernes,</a> which focuses upon how narratives “make sense”: that is, how a story creates meaning in the context of the text, but also in regards to the world to which it refers. </p>
<p>This approach focuses on looking for meaning by analyzing particular actions, notably “who does what to whom where.” So in the case of immigrant literature, a group of us looked in minute detail at the complex interactions between characters, with special focus upon how relationships begin and end, and what is gained in the process. We also assessed characters’ attitudes prior to and after each interaction, with an eye to understanding the effect of the exchange. </p>
<p>Our goal was to assess which specific actions help foster a sense of belonging, in a new country and which alienate the character from his or her society. </p>
<p>The signing of a lease, the acquisition of immigrant status (whether a work visa or a green card) or being hired for a job all foster a sense of belonging. Being kicked out of an apartment, divorced or deported are all examples of loss of belonging.</p>
<h2>Implications for policymakers</h2>
<p>The advantage of research like this for a case like Nice is that it forces the investigator to examine all of the concrete details of the perpetrators’ lives leading up to the horrific event, rather than just focusing upon the act of violence. </p>
<p>It’s not sufficient to know that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel had a violent relationship with his wife, or that Abdelmalik Petitjean visited Turkey just prior to entering a church in Normandy. </p>
<p>What’s more important is to understand what they wanted for themselves in the longer term. As difficult as it now seems in light of their murderous actions, we would gain a lot by undertaking meticulous investigations into these individuals’ sense that they didn’t belong in France, and that they had to destroy what it represents. </p>
<p>By creating concrete conditions for different communities to feel they belong, policymakers can help their diverse populations feel connected to, and thus protective of, their societies. </p>
<p>Many of <a href="http://www.vox.com/world/2016/7/15/12198266/nice-attack-lone-wolf">the analyses</a> of recent terrorist events have focused upon the “lone-wolf” quality of the perpetrators. These lone wolves are difficult to predict, because they are acting independently, and without any contact with extremist organizations or individuals. </p>
<p>The work of policymakers, then, is to figure out how to prevent these individuals from acting impulsively, on the basis of some unpredictable trigger. My sense is that the only way to do this is to build a sense of belonging that will prevent them from feeling destructive. If they feel alienated from their society and feel they don’t belong there, then they can also feel that other people deserve to suffer or die.</p>
<p>Following the logic of this approach, we can try to figure out which actions serve to reinforce belonging and which hinder it and then develop policies that build on the positive rather than the purely negative. </p>
<p>Our research in Quebec indicated that most of these actions are quite simple and achievable. They range from providing federal funds for ethnic celebrations and translations for pamphlets about available social services to encouraging local tolerance for so-called “foreign” customs such as the wearing of burkinis (something that has not happened in <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20160830-frances-burkini-bans-grave-illegal-breach-basic-freedoms-un-stupid">France</a>) or Sikh turbans. In the Quebec example, our reading of the literature also indicated that undue bureaucratic wrangling that hinders the process of procuring basic necessities, like a driver’s license, or that made access to social services such as health care or daycare difficult, can become sources of frustration and alienation. </p>
<p>At the same time, it is crucial to explain which of these customs can lead to severe punishment in the host country. Such actions as Latin Americans shooting off guns during parties or immigrants from Africa and the Middle East sending children abroad for <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/fgm-rates-have-doubled-us-2004-304773">female genital mutilation</a> can become grounds for serous punishments.</p>
<p>Most importantly, our research suggested that successful integration generally occurs through individual incentive and personal relationships, fostered, whenever possible, by the community or the government. The <a href="http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-18.7">1988 Canadian Multiculturalism Act</a> formalized a policy to encourage multicultural diversity and develop a sense of tolerance through recognition and understanding. One result of our own research was to help contribute to a higher profile for the <a href="https://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/home.html">Ministry of Immigration and Cultural Communities</a> and to support their championing of diversity and inclusion.</p>
<p>I may have traveled to Nice this summer with my family in order to celebrate Bastille Day, because it’s a beautiful setting, a city where we dream of the passion, luxury and the sultry pleasures of the French Riviera. Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel may have decided to target those same celebrations for exactly the same reasons, because while we might feel like sharing in that sense of belonging, he most certainly didn’t.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63487/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert F. Barsky receives funding from Vanderbilt University, and has undertaken immigration research funded by the governments of Canada and Québec.</span></em></p>How literary analysis led one scholar to develop a theory of how immigrants become connected to their host society – and therefore unlikely to attack it.Robert F. Barsky, Professor of English and French Literatures, and Professor of Law, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/630172016-08-01T09:56:07Z2016-08-01T09:56:07ZFrench politicians are using terrorism to score points ahead of election<p>Until recently, France’s politicians had largely presented a united front against terrorist attacks. Rarely did they use tragedy to score points off each other. But that has started to change over the past year. Now a political controversy has erupted in the wake of the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/26/europe/nice-france-attacks/">massacre in Nice on Bastille Day 2016</a>. It will no doubt be further fuelled by the killing of a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36892785">Catholic priest near Rouen</a>.</p>
<p>Within hours of the incident at a fireworks display in Nice, opposition politicians were rounding on the government. How was it that <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/15/who-is-the-nice-terror-attacker-everything-we-know-so-far/">Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel</a> was able to kill 84 people and wound hundreds by driving a truck into a festive crowd, even as the country lived under a state of emergency?</p>
<p>One was Christian Estrosi, the former mayor of Nice and a Republican right winger who supports former president Nicolas Sarkozy. Estrosi is currently leading the <a href="http://www.parismatch.com/Actu/Politique/Securite-a-Nice-Christian-Estrosi-accuse-le-gouvernement-1024606">offensive against the government</a>. “Lies are fuelling the controversy,” he said, referencing the contested number of national police and soldiers in Nice on the night of the attack. “If the state stops lying, there will no longer be a controversy.”</p>
<h2>Presidential race</h2>
<p>There are, of course, real and serious concerns about the state of the French security services. Debate had already begun on that subject before Nice. A <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/07/08/attentats-de-paris-un-rapport-parlementaire-de-298-pages-et-quelques-reponses_1465076">parliamentary investigation</a> into the Paris attacks of November 2015 put forward a series of recommendations on security and intelligence, all of which were rejected by Bernard Cazeneuve, the embattled interior minister.</p>
<p>But then there are more political concerns. At the end of November, the Republicans will hold their presidential <a href="http://www.primaire2016.org/les-regles/">primary race</a> to decide who will stand as their candidate in April 2017. The original front runner was Alain Juppé, the moderate conservative mayor of Bordeaux. His lead has recently been eaten into by the hardline former president, Nicolas Sarkozy.</p>
<p>Juppé remains the most popular candidate with the French electorate in general, but is losing ground to Sarkozy among the party faithful.</p>
<p>And coincidentally, Juppé has been uncharacteristically outspoken about the socialist government’s failure to prevent the Nice attack, <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2016/07/15/attentat-de-nice-si-tous-les-moyens-avaient-ete-pris-le-drame-n-aurait-pas-eu-lieu-selon-juppe_4970373_823448.html">arguing</a> that “if all the means available had been used, then this atrocity could have been avoided”.</p>
<p>His sudden foray into this type of politics can really only be read as an appeal to the more authoritarian right of the party, which may be slipping into Sarkozy’s hands.</p>
<p>Ironically, Sarkozy criticised Juppé for being too speculative, before himself drawing attention to failed security. As the moderate Juppé shows his teeth, so the normally robust Sarkozy shows his presidential chops.</p>
<p>He is keen to underline his understanding of the realities of his former executive domain. That said, he is also not above playing the emotion card. After Nice, he said: <a href="http://www.directmatin.fr/politique/2016-07-17/nice-tout-ce-qui-aurait-du-etre-fait-depuis-dix-huit-mois-ne-la-pas-ete-selon">“France cannot let her children be murdered”.</a></p>
<h2>Far-right threat</h2>
<p>The Republicans are all too aware that, inevitably, the most likely political beneficiaries of the attack are Marine Le Pen and her party, the Front National (FN).</p>
<p>The FN made significant headway in the most recent regional elections, which were held less than a month after the Paris attacks. The party capitalised on heightened fears over security and immigration by running on a platform of closing France’s borders and pushing the idea of an <a href="http://500signatures.net/index.php?id=49">imminent threat of Islamisation</a>. It ultimately took more than 40% of the vote in its southern and north-eastern strongholds.</p>
<p>As polls suggested, most of the FN’s electoral boost came from former Republican voters increasingly fearful of Islam and immigration. And as right-wing voters increasingly lean towards the FN’s far right strong immigration and security policies, political consensus with the left is simply not an option for the French conservatives.</p>
<p>Despite falling popularity ratings (down some 10 points from a peak of 30% approval in <a href="http://www.tns-sofres.com/dataviz?type=2&code_n_om=lepenmarine&start=53&end=70&submit=Ok">December 2015</a>) Le Pen remains very well placed to reach the presidential run-off in 2017 – at least if <a href="http://www.tns-sofres.com/dataviz?type=2&code_nom=lepenmarine&start=53&end=70&submit=Ok">voter intentions</a> are to be believed.</p>
<p>Both sides of the political mainstream need to reduce this possibility by whatever means necessary over the next few months. Neither camp can afford to let the FN steal a march by owning security and immigration issues any more than it already does.</p>
<p>But both sides are in strategic gridlock. On the left, the government’s national security agenda risks alienating part of the socialist electorate, as well as the communists and the greens. On the right, Sarkozy’s failure to win the presidency in 2012 demonstrated the limits of his hardline strategy as a weapon to use against a mainstreaming FN.</p>
<p>On a political level, there is no optimal solution. On a social and human level, a series of incidents that should have brought the country together in collective grief and outrage has become grist to the political mill.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63017/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While the French public comes to terms with a series of appalling attacks, politicians seize the opportunity to position themselves ahead of next year’s Presidential election.Jocelyn Evans, Professor of Politics, University of LeedsGilles Ivaldi, Research fellow, Université Côte d’AzurLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/631462016-07-27T15:05:16Z2016-07-27T15:05:16ZBlaming inequality for French terror attacks is facile and dangerous<p>France is experiencing one of the most horrifying and severe bouts of terrorism since World War II. Given how often French streets have been targeted by terrorists in the past year, it’s easy to see this as a unique problem. Even in a world beset by regular terror atrocities across the globe, the frequency must surely tell us something. </p>
<p>Some have even gone as far as to resurrect the spectre of French colonial history. Resentment, they argue, still lingers after the painful and bloody war of independence in Algeria that contributed to the <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/fr-fourth-republic.htm">collapse of the Fourth Republic</a>.</p>
<p>Much has also been made of France’s social problems. Concentrating minorities in situations of socio-economic marginalisation has left the suburbs of French cities to become breeding grounds for radicalisation. Periodic bouts of mass disorder in poor high rise estates, most recently across France in 2005, but as early as the 1970s in Lyon, give further credence to this view. These recent terrorist incidents are part of a longer-term, France-specific trend.</p>
<p>But this assessment is not only too simple, it’s dangerous. France is not a case apart, it is one of many countries affected by three or so decades of international jihadism. The story stretches from the Afghan war against the soviets, through Bosnia and into the anti-American <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-isis-and-where-did-it-come-from-27944">Sunni insurgencey</a> in Iraq.</p>
<p>Indeed, recent events in <a href="https://theconversation.com/germany-faces-one-of-its-greatest-political-challenges-since-world-war-ii-63005">Germany</a>, and the long-term struggle against Islamist terror in the UK show that France is far from unique. There is a tendency to assume a colonial legacy or the struggle to reconcile secular republicanism with such banal forms of religious expression as the Muslim headscarf are direct causes of today’s problems. It would be more useful to consider what links the people committing atrocities in French towns to those attacking other places.</p>
<p>In the wake of each attack, the backgrounds of the people involved are interrogated to find a common link. From Charlie Hebdo, to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/paris-attacks-2015">Bataclan</a>, to <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/nice-attack">Nice</a> and Rouen, the attackers have histories of petty crime and violence.</p>
<p>What unites a fairly recent arrival from <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36808020">Tunisia</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/18/paris-attacks-suspect-salah-abdeslam-wounded-in-brussels-terror-raid-reports">ex-drug dealers from Belgium</a> and the <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/paris-shooting-mali-refuses-burial-kosher-supermarket-killer-amedy-coulibaly-1484660">son of Malian immigrants</a> who attacked a Jewish supermarket is not a common struggle with colonial history or even a life of socioeconomic marginalisation – it is a history of psychopathic behaviour, crime and violence. </p>
<h2>Divide and be conquered</h2>
<p>This is an important point to make because relying too heavily on historical or sociological explanations for the current terror trends in France actually has the potential to be extremely counter productive. The people behind these attacks want to create division, and this explanation falls into their trap. It could serve to accelerate the marginalisation of Muslims and minorities in France.</p>
<p>Giving too much credence to socio-economic and historical processes confuses correlation and causality in some quite dangerous ways. There are hundreds of thousands of people from North and West African backgrounds living in France. Many live in conditions of severe social and economic marginalisation. But hardly any have any sympathy for terrorism at all. Many feel France is their home and regard themselves as French first and foremost, even if they have an attachment to religion and a second country on the southern shores of the Mediterranean.</p>
<p>Indeed, their primary concerns are the same as other French nationals. Be they religious or secular, they are experiencing the same pressures as everyone else, including the worst unemployment, specifically youth unemployment, for more than 30 years.</p>
<p>The people who have been attacking France are warped individuals who are intent on engaging in criminal and violent acts. They are not rebelling against prevailing social conditions.</p>
<p>It is worth noting that when Al Qaeda <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/10/how-isis-crippled-al-qaida">ordered its fighters to take a role in improving the welfare of local communities</a> in places such as Tunisia, going as far as issuing edicts to work in the community and collect litter, the jihadists didn’t exactly rally to the call. Instead they argued and defected to IS. They wanted to continue their struggle through bloodshed and violence, not build a new civilisation.</p>
<p>This point should not be taken as an attempt to diminish the serious socioeconomic issues that minorities face in France. The French government desperately needs to tackle those. But arguing that the causes of these attacks are social, economic, historical or religious risks marginalising those hundreds of thousands of individuals attempting to further their lives in France.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63146/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Downing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The people who killed a priest in Rouen were driven by a warped agenda, not their social and economic backgrounds.Joseph Downing, Guest Teacher, European Institute, London School of Economics and Political ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/625872016-07-21T18:11:54Z2016-07-21T18:11:54ZIt’s time for us to admit we’re afraid of terrorism<p>France has been hit by a third terrorist attack against soft targets in 18 months. </p>
<p>The first came in January 2015, when the <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/charlie-hebdo-attack">Charlie Hebdo attacks</a> killed 12 journalists and eight others. </p>
<p>The second was the November 13 attacks that took the lives of scores of people enjoying a Friday night out in <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/paris-attacks-2015">Paris</a>. </p>
<p>And then, on Bastille Day 2016, an attack that targeted ordinary people celebrating the French national holiday in the seaside city of Nice – at least 84 were killed and many more seriously injured. Families, children out to enjoy the fireworks display, were deliberately run over by a speeding truck. </p>
<p>In addition to these highly publicized attacks, there have been numerous individualized murders that draw less media attention outside France. A police officer and his wife were <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36530710">stabbed to death</a> in Magnanville. Mosque guards were rammed by a vehicle <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-attacks-mosque-idUSKBN0UG0ED20160102">in Valence</a>.</p>
<p>While arguably no part of Europe or the United States is free from the risk of attack, France is proving <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/07/18/france-has-had-more-than-its-share-of-terrorist-attacks-these-3-factors-explain-why/">particularly vulnerable</a> to these freelance ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks.</p>
<p>And this is having political consequences.</p>
<h2>Taking fear seriously</h2>
<p>Most observers agree that the sitting Socialist Party President Francois Hollande has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/15/francois-hollande-faces-political-backlash-nice-attack">notably inept</a> at dealing with every crisis that has afflicted France since he was elected. </p>
<p>Security is no exception. Hollande has the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/05/nearly-90-percent-of-the-french-now-disapprove-of-their-president/">lowest approval ratings</a> of any
sitting French president in recent history.</p>
<p>Looking toward the French presidential election in 2017, continued terror attacks and the failure of the French government to halt their occurrence has been a political gift to the nationalist right leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/marine-le-pen">Marine Le Pen</a>.</p>
<p>Since 2012, Le Pen has been on track to make it to the runoff round in the the French 2017 presidential election.</p>
<p>She <a href="http://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-resultats/Presidentielles/elecresult__PR2012/%28path%29/PR2012/FE.html">came in third</a> in the 2012 presidential election. She and her party, the National Front, came in first in the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10855797/Marine-Le-Pen-wins-record-victory-in-French-elections.html">2014 European Parliamentary elections</a>. The National Front made it to the runoff round in six regions in the December 2015 regional elections, although in the end it failed to capture any leadership positions. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.soprasteria.com/docs/librariesprovider29/Publications-Ipsos/enqu%C3%AAte-%C3%A9lectorale-fran%C3%A7aise-2017-vague-4-mai-2016---ipsos-cevipof-le-monde.pdf?sfvrsn=0">Recent polls</a> place Le Pen ahead of all other party candidates. </p>
<p>Unlike Hollande, Le Pen has offered hardheaded strategies for coping with the security threats in France after the various attacks. A recent poll reveals that 67 percent of the French <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/french-dont-trust-government-on-terrorism-poll/">do not trust</a> the government to handle terrorism. After the Brexit vote, Le Pen called for a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/opinion/marine-le-pen-after-brexit-the-peoples-spring-is-inevitable.html?_r=0">“people’s spring”</a> invoking the revolutions of 1848. After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/jan/08/marine-le-pen-radical-islamism-charlie-hebdo-attack-video">she claimed that</a> France was attacked by “Islamic fundamentalism” and it had to be named. </p>
<p>French national as well as some international media describe her as far right, but the label is wearing thin as her positions are becoming <a href="http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2016/07/20/frances_twin_threat_from_within_angry_youth_cynical_politics_111962.html">more mainstream</a> in response to these dramatic events. </p>
<p>Recently, American media has been somewhat softer on her. In 2015, Time magazine named her one of its <a href="http://time.com/3823288/marine-le-pen-2015-time-100/">100 notable people</a>. The New York Times has given <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/opinion/marine-le-pen-france-was-attacked-by-islamic-fundamentalism.html?_r=0">her op-ed space</a>. </p>
<p>Ironically, Francois Hollande and his government have taken many, if not all, National Front positions on security policy, such as his failed attempt to <a href="http://nin60.com/france-drops-denationalization-idea-for-terrorists/">take citizenship away</a> from naturalized persons suspected of terrorist involvement.</p>
<p>Hollande <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/15/nice-attack-is-a-crisis-for-presidency-of-francois-hollande">used her language</a> when he addressed the French people after the Nice attacks: “All of France is under threat from Islamist terrorism.” “Islamic terrorism” was once a taboo phrase to use and only associated with the right.</p>
<p>Le Pen recognizes and acknowledges rather than denies fear. She talks tough. After the November Paris attacks, she said that <a href="http://time.com/4113706/paris-terror-syria-bombings/">“France is not safe.”</a> This resonates with ordinary people watching the attacks in multiple media. In response to the Nice attacks, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/live/truck-plows-into-crowd-in-nice-france/marine-le-pen/">Le Pen posted on her website</a>, “The war against the scourge of Islamist fundamentalism has not begun; it’s now urgent to declare it.”</p>
<p>In contrast, the emotionally tone-deaf French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told shocked French citizens after the attack that “Times have changed, and France is going to have to <a href="https://newrepublic.com/minutes/135104/france-going-learn-live-terrorism">live with terrorism</a>, and we must face this together and show our collective <em>sang-froid.</em>” </p>
<p>Social media lit up against him. He was booed when he attended the commemoration ceremony in Nice for the victims. </p>
<p>What Le Pen understands, and Hollande and others ignore at their peril, is that fear is a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/2761577/Emotions_and_the_Economy">powerful</a> emotion. In these circumstances, it’s natural. As my essays on emotion show, we experience <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11186-009-9084-6">emotions of all sorts</a> viscerally before we try to rationalize them and make sense of the events that generated them. My work on Italian fascism suggests that even in the past, right wing politicians are often <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100724770">more adept</a> than their liberal counterparts at valorizing emotion and responding viscerally to events. </p>
<p>Ironically, like Valls, politicians on the center left and right are careful of inciting anti-Muslim backlash. They preach stoicism and warn against fear as a response to these horrific events. These responses leave out something important – French Muslim citizens are also killed in these attacks. I am guessing that they are as fearful of losing their lives through random acts of violence as anyone else. </p>
<p>We also see this reaction in the United States. A favorite admonition in the U.S. after 9/11 went something to the effect that you should carry on with whatever you wanted to do or else “the terrorists win.” </p>
<p>But the terrorists win in a broad sense from the moment that the first shot is fired, the first bomb is thrown, the first life is lost. Terrorist acts are fear-generating events – that’s the point of terrorism. One never knows when something will happen. </p>
<p>By not acknowledging the fearfulness of these attacks, politicians leave a wide-open space for the right to colonize this very rational emotion. Denying fear exacerbates it and contributes to diffuse forms of backlash. </p>
<p>Fear can be paralyzing, as Franklin Roosevelt famously warned in his “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” </p>
<p>But, fear also has the potential to be positively enabling. Acknowledging fear is a first step toward neutralizing it. Liberal, left and centrist politicians and leaders should take fear seriously and not leave it to the nationalist right.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mabel Berezin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The far right isn’t afraid to admit to fear in the wake of brutal attacks like the one in Nice. More mainstream politicians would be wise to follow suit.Mabel Berezin, Professor of Sociology, Cornell UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/608342016-06-10T13:52:02Z2016-06-10T13:52:02ZHow can French authorities prevent a terrorist attack during Euro 2016?<p>As the UEFA European Championship kicks off in France, the memory of last November’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34818994">terrorist attacks</a> on the Stade de France and other venues across Paris looms large. French authorities will be examining the previous attacks – including the January 2015 shootings at <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlie-hebdo-attack-this-is-not-a-clash-of-civilisations-36030">Charlie Hebdo</a> – to secure the tournament against any terrorist threat. Even if that means disappointing fans by <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/dont-go-into-the-water-chilling-terror-warning-to-england-fans-at-euro-2016-a3267446.html">shutting down Marseilles’ famous beaches</a>. </p>
<p>To start with, authorities will be thinking carefully about what kinds of attacks are possible. Both the Paris and Hebdo attacks were made using small arms. Such attacks are popular with terrorist groups, because they are relatively easy to plan and carry out, can cause a high number of casualties and effectively spread terror throughout the population. It’s very likely that security forces will be preparing for the potential of a similar style of attack. </p>
<p>Authorities will also be wary of potential attacks by suicide bombers, like the one witnessed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2016/mar/22/brussels-airport-explosions-live-updates">in Brussels</a> earlier this year. Suicide bomb attacks are frequently used by Islamist-inspired groups, and can be carried out in different ways. Individuals may wear home-made bomb vests, or drive vehicles with explosives into places where many people have gathered. </p>
<p>Of course, bombs can also be planted in specific locations. But static bombs are easier to deal with than suicide bombers, as areas and stadiums can be swept for these devices. What’s more, entrances to stadiums will be tightly controlled, with strict security requirements, similar to the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/97983/olympic-safety-security-strategy.pdf">London 2012 Olympics</a>. </p>
<p>Authorities will also be considering how to police more accessible areas like the fan zones and host cities, as these places will attract thousands of supporters on any given day throughout the tournament. France is already on high security alert, having maintained its state of emergency <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21695368-france-realising-its-state-emergency-may-last-long-time">since November</a>, so many of the locations linked to the tournament will be hard for terrorists to penetrate. </p>
<p>Attacks like the ones we’ve witnessed in Europe recently are not easy to carry out – they require planning, and a support network. Of course, this does not stop individuals from launching rogue attacks, like the one at [Leytonstone Tube station](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35018789](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35018789) in December 2015. </p>
<p>But while such attacks can cause casualties – as seen in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/10/people-injured-knife-attack-train-station-near-munich-grafing">Munich last month</a> – they cannot have the same impact as well-planned, well-resourced attacks. And fans attending the tournament can take comfort from the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/06/ukraine-detained-french-citizen-plotting-euro-2016-attacks">recent arrest of a French man</a> who was caught transporting weapons, reportedly in order to launch an attack on the tournament.</p>
<p>France is deploying 90,000 police and security personnel to protect citizens. They are likely to be deployed at strategic locations, and no doubt briefed on what to look for. This can include potential terrorist suspects, which intelligence reports have highlighted as possible threats, or keeping an eye out <a href="https://theconversation.com/airport-security-measures-arent-good-enough-heres-a-fix-34456">for behaviour</a> that looks out of the ordinary. Security cordons will also be strategically placed to maximise safety and security. </p>
<p>Intelligence will also play a major part in the security operation. On June 7, 2016, <a href="https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/page/about-europol-17">Europol</a> – the EU’s law enforcement agency – <a href="https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsletter/europol-supports-france-throughout-euro-2016-tournament">announced that</a> it was directing 200 of its staff to assist French policing agencies and ensure the rapid exchange of any relevant information.</p>
<h2>Contingency plans</h2>
<p>The French will also be developing contingency plans, based on which responses worked – and which didn’t – during the Paris and Brussels attacks. Police and emergency services will have carefully planned a series of responses, tailored to the type of attacks that are likely to occur. This will include ensuring the tactics deployed by police firearms units are suitable to address specific threats, and identifying suitable evacuation zones where people can stay safely and the injured can be treated in the event of an attack. </p>
<p>When attending the games themselves, supporters will be encouraged to get to the stadium well ahead of time, as the security procedure will be strict and time consuming. Further security checks on public transport systems such as the Metro are also likely. People should not be overly concerned about the large police presence; officers are there to keep them safe, as well as deal with any violence from rival supporters. The French government has also <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36479720">released a mobile app</a> to alert the public in the event of a terrorist attack. </p>
<p>The threat of a terrorist attack is real. As <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-provos-9780747538189/">the Provisional IRA said</a> during the Irish Troubles: the state has to be lucky 100% of the time, the terrorist only once. But when you consider the proportion of attacks which have <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34276525">been prevented</a>, the likelihood of one occurring is still remote.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60834/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Lowe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent attacks in Paris and Brussels have taught the French some important lessons about how to deal with the threat of terrorism.David Lowe, Principal Lecturer in Law, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/568002016-03-24T04:09:31Z2016-03-24T04:09:31ZBrussels attacks: why do family members commit terrorism together?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116304/original/image-20160324-20800-1rbiozp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brothers Khalid and Brahim el-Bakraoui are suspected of carrying out suicide bomb attacks at Brussels Airport on Tuesday.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Interpol</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It appears to be increasingly common that terrorist attacks not of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/parramatta-shooting-how-much-do-we-really-know-about-lone-wolf-terrorists-46746">lone-wolf variety</a> involve members of the same family. </p>
<p>Some of them, like the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/06/us/san-bernardino-shooting-what-we-know/">San Bernardino attack</a> last December, are committed by married couples or romantic partners. </p>
<p>But quite a few recent terrorist atrocities – the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/world/europe/paris-terrorism-brothers-said-cherif-kouachi-charlie-hebdo.html?_r=0">Charlie Hebdo attack</a>, the <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dzhokhar-and-tamerlan-a-profile-of-the-tsarnaev-brothers/">Boston Marathon bombings</a> and now Tuesday’s <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35879141">Brussels attacks</a> – have been perpetrated by siblings. So is there a link between within-family radicalisation and acts of terrorism? And is terrorism different from any other crime in this respect?</p>
<h2>Family ties and the militant extremist mindset</h2>
<p>Both genetics and environment are <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-goes-on-in-the-mind-of-a-militant-extremist-30533">known to influence</a> criminal behaviour. But the exact nature of these influences and their relative importance are still being debated. </p>
<p>It can be expected, therefore, that genes contribute to terrorist behaviour. But it is wrong to conclude that just because two individuals have a common genetic make-up, one will follow the other if the other becomes a terrorist. Instances of only one family member displaying criminal behaviour are very common.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, there may be environmental factors that contribute to and interact with genetics to cause terrorist behaviour. If so, one would expect to find more terrorist acts than other kinds of criminal acts committed by members of the same family. Family members share both genetics and environment to a greater extent than people in general.</p>
<p>Studies of the <a href="http://pages.uoregon.edu/gsaucier/Saucier_et_al__militant_extremist_mindset_October08.pdf">militant extremist mindset</a> provide clues to why we can expect to find more siblings among terrorist cells. From the three components of this mindset, only one – “nastiness” – is directly linked to other varieties of criminal behaviour. </p>
<p>Violent criminals of any kind tend to strongly advocate harsh punishment of their enemies. For example, they are more likely than most people to approve of physical punishment for insulting one’s honour. </p>
<p>While both genetics and environment may be implicated in “nastiness”, the other two components of the militant mindset – “grudge” and “excuse” – represent environmental influences to a greater extent. These are usually the focus of recruiters. </p>
<p>An important component of radicalisation is a strong feeling that the group one belongs to is under threat from some other group – that is, the person feels a “grudge” of some kind. A common example is the feeling that the West has exploited and hurt “my” people, and this needs to be avenged.</p>
<p>Sometimes grudge is more general and not oriented towards a particular group. The person simply feels that this world is unfair and full of injustices.</p>
<p>“Excuse” is a dressing-up part of extremism. It relies on religious and ideological “higher moral principles” to justify the feelings of nastiness and grudge.</p>
<p>It follows from the nature of the militant extremist mindset that we can expect to find more siblings among terrorists. This is because such attacks tend to be carried out by people who are more ready for action and are prepared to be vicious in dealing with their enemies. This tends to be a shared characteristic of criminal family members. </p>
<p>Being raised together – and therefore being exposed to the same set of stories about the enemies and the same set of moral, ideological and religious reasons justifying their feeling of hate – is likely to contribute significantly to the same tendency.</p>
<p>And then there is a feeling of trust, due to a common upbringing and feelings stronger than typical camaraderie when you are doing something together with somebody who is close to you. Overall, it is likely that there will be more instances of siblings committing terrorist attacks. </p>
<p>From a security point of view, it may be reasonable to ask whether this tendency calls for a different approach to detection. There is currently an emphasis on internet-based radicalisation, rather than on person-to-person contacts. Family interactions diminish the role of the former and point to the need to maintain traditional policing methods.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56800/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lazar Stankov does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Family members share both genetics and environment to a greater extent than people in general. And this has implications for counterterrorism approaches.Lazar Stankov, Professor, Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/527262016-01-07T10:00:32Z2016-01-07T10:00:32ZA year after Charlie Hebdo, France is still searching for answers<p>France has had a tumultuous time in the year since two brothers opened fire in the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 11, before going on to murder another five people in Paris. Just ten months later, the <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/hope-and-clarity-in-paris/article7880802.ece">November 13 attacks</a> showed that the threat of terrorism had not receded.</p>
<p>And just weeks after the second major attack, the <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-warnings-from-frances-farright/article7992809.ece">far-right’s onward march in regional elections</a> suggested that a significant proportion of the electorate had sought refuge in a language of fear and revenge after everything they had seen in 2015.</p>
<p>These growing anxieties were reflected at the highest level of the political system.</p>
<p>France’s leaders had been cautious in their response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Then, the focus during the aftermath was on freedom of speech and long-standing problems of social exclusion. The same caution was not applied in November. President François Hollande immediately implemented a state of emergency, which led to arbitrary arrests and vigorous counter-terrorism activities. He even endorsed a military response in the Middle East more reminiscent of America’s war on terror than the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30766758">spirit of January 11</a>.</p>
<p>In January 2015, the prime minister, Manuel Valls, had called for an end to <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-france-shooting-apartheid-idUKKBN0KT1G620150120">France’s “social apartheid”</a>. By November, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/17/france-launches-fresh-strikes-on-isis-as-pentagon-chief-calls-for-global-coalition">bombs were raining down on Syria</a>. The contrast could not be starker.</p>
<h2>Stumped</h2>
<p>Yet, despite the vigorous response to the November attacks, it is the inability to come up with any solutions that has characterised the past 12 months in France. </p>
<p>Since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January, the leader of the centre-right party, Nicolas Sarkozy, has found little better to do than argue that his party should be <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20150526-sarkozy-court-rename-ump-republicains">renamed “Les Républicains”</a>. None of this has had any impact on the party’s composition or its ideas.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Socialist Party has become increasingly torn between those committed to the tolerant, “republican” values of the French left and those who believe in the need for a more muscular response to the terrorist threat.</p>
<p>Only the far-right has stayed true to its message: that a decadent France needs to expel foreigners, withdraw from the euro and secure its borders in order to protect itself.</p>
<p>Not for the first time in recent years, the desperate inability of centrist parties to formulate positive platforms for change has been laid bare. And the most depressing thing is that the same questions are being asked now as ten years ago.</p>
<p>How can France retain its powerful attachment to a republican language of unity and acknowledge the realities of multi-culturalism? What is France’s global role now that its empire has gone and it is little more than a second-tier regional power? How should the French political system reform itself in order to be more representative and less corrupt?</p>
<p>It would be wrong to say that there has been no progress on these issues. <a href="http://www.cee.sciences-po.fr/fr/actualites/1113--rapport-2014-de-la-cncdh.html">In-depth statistical work</a> has shown that France has become more tolerant of multi-culturalism in the past decade. It is also now a crucial player in Europe, having abandoned a past tendency to act unilaterally.</p>
<p>But symbolism matters and here the results are far less edifying. Social exclusion and unemployment continue to be endemic problems. Ideas that are central to the republican tradition – such as “laïcité” (secularism) – have been twisted out of all recognition by a far-right determined to stigmatise Muslims. And neo-colonial escapades in Libya, Mali and now Syria do not help either. </p>
<h2>A rightward drift</h2>
<p>The lack of progress on these issues has fuelled the rightward drift, as French politics has become dominated by issues of security and immigration.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, this has benefited the far right. Party leader Marine Le Pen may have failed in her bid to become president of a French region in the local elections but her party secured <a href="https://theconversation.com/has-france-really-seen-the-back-of-the-front-national-52228">27.73%</a> of the overall popular vote and she was assured media coverage commensurate with these strong results. </p>
<p>But the shift is visible elsewhere, too. Most recently, it has been encapsulated in the prickly debate over “déchéance de nationalité” – a proposal to <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20151223-france-constitutional-reform-dual-nationals-citizenship-terrorism-paris-attacks">strip dual nationals of their French citizenship</a> if they commit acts of terrorism.</p>
<p>This has long been a signature policy of the far right but had always been resisted by the centre-left socialists on the grounds that it violates the <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/hollande-risks-french-lefts-ire-on-citizenship-stripping/">fundamental constitutional right to citizenship by birth</a>. The fact that a socialist president now backs déchéance de nationalité is both a cruel irony and a sign of how far political discourse has converged on issues that are the stock-in-trade of the far right.</p>
<p>As in 2002, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/22/thefarright.france">when Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round of the presidential elections</a>, and in 2005, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4413964.stm">when France was torn apart by riots</a>, 2015 shook French politics to the core. We are likely to see a recomposition of the political landscape in the coming year – and potentially a change of president in 2017 – but few of the fundamental problems of earlier years have been addressed.</p>
<p>The outpouring of genuine concern after the November attacks and the huge increase in turnout in the second round of the regional elections were reminders that the French know a crisis when they see one. They do not need to be told that things are not right. But they badly need leadership and new ideas – and there is precious little evidence that either of these things are on offer today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52726/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emile Chabal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>France was left reeling by the attacks of January 2015 and things only got worse as the year unfolded – so why the political inertia?Emile Chabal, Chancellor's Fellow in History, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/507092015-11-14T20:02:06Z2015-11-14T20:02:06ZParis: the war with IS enters a new stage<p>When in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo attacks last January, I wrote <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-the-french-teach-us-a-basic-civics-lesson-about-handling-terrorism-36580">a column</a> suggesting that we all had to demonstrate a new toughness.</p>
<p>At that time, I thought the scale of ISIS’ attacks on Western targets was contained by its avowed doctrine of territorial legitimacy. I assumed any attacks in the West would be carried out by lone wolves or with one or two partners. </p>
<p>I was wrong. </p>
<p>Ever since it first declared a caliphate, ISIS’ leadership consistently expressed the intent of fighting a more or less conventional war in a well-defined piece of territory spreading across Iraq and Syria. </p>
<p>Their surprising initial victories reinforced that strategy. And it allowed them to pursue a war against the Yazidis, which the <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/12/u-s-holocaust-museum-the-islamic-states-war-on-yazidis-is-genocide/">American Holocaust Museum</a> has declared a genocide.</p>
<p>But then the Americans arrived, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ash-carter-fight-against-isis-is-intensifying/">eager to engage</a> a Jihadist army in direct combat. </p>
<p>And the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kurdish-peshmerga-isis-on-the-run-us-backed-battle-sinjar-iraq/">began to make inroads</a>. </p>
<p>So ISIS responded, by shifting its strategy towards new tactics: fighting a more common, irregular, guerrilla war, as the Taliban had often done successfully in Afghanistan and militants had done in Iraq before them. </p>
<h2>New tactics</h2>
<p>Then the Russians arrived to support Syrian President Al Assad. </p>
<p>Although their initial targets have not been ISIS strongholds, it has changed the dynamic once again. </p>
<p>ISIS leaders understand that with the US on one side and the characteristically merciless Russians on the other, time is running out. </p>
<p>It is one thing to take on one of them. It is quite another to take on both.</p>
<p>They can replenish their forces with raw new recruits. But they probably can’t do it fast enough to hold off all sides. And the apparent execution by drone of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-life-of-jihadi-john-how-one-man-became-the-symbol-of-islamic-state-50676">Jihadi John</a>, their poster child, threatens a further dent in their recruitment campaign. </p>
<p>So, the ever flexible ISIS leadership has moved to a new stage in their tactics - war by terror. </p>
<h2>New goals</h2>
<p>The goals are predictable. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>First, killing civilians at home in Europe in highly symbolic settings. Their intent here is to provoke a debate about these countries’ involvement in Syria and Iraq and thus break the political will of the western countries. There is, in other words, a cost to be paid for military intervention.</p></li>
<li><p>Second, to convince potential new recruits that with limited training they can still play a crucial role as a martyr. After all, if you are going to die as a martyr, you don’t want to do so by the side of the road in the middle of the desert. You want to do so on the streets of Paris where everyone will know who you were and what you did. </p></li>
<li><p>Third, to convince the west that you are still a formidable force - everywhere.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The new tactic involves soft civilian targets. They involve country nationals and foreign recruits. The enemy is everywhere and nowhere. It is a classic terrorist response.</p>
<p>First came the Russian plane crash in the Sinai – <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/10/high-probability-russian-flight-was-bombed-says-uk-defence-minister">most probably caused by an ISIS bomb.</a> Then these horrific attacks in Paris – claimed by ISIS and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/world/europe/paris-terrorist-attacks.html">blamed on ISIS</a> – in neighborhoods that I, and many American tourists, frequent when we visit. </p>
<p>I spent the evening of the attacks frantically trying to reach my family and friends. My sister-in-law, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlf3mJ58Rjw&app=desktop">Lorene Aldabra</a>, is a professional singer and musician who often visits the Bataclan concert hall, scene of so much carnage. When you have to spend time tracking down loved ones, you really understand what this new war means. </p>
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<p>The declarations of support are encouraging and touching. President Obama was as eloquent as ever. London’s mayor <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/london/update/2015-11-14/boris-johnson-london-in-shock-and-grief-over-paris-attacks/">Boris Johnson</a> sounded mildly Churchillian. <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Netanyahu-responds-to-Paris-attack-An-attack-on-one-of-us-is-an-attack-on-all-of-us-433056">Benjamin Netanyahu</a> from Israel was blunt and forthright. But we can assume these attacks won’t be the last ones. </p>
<p>France is in a state of emergency. The security services in Europe and North America are on a state of alert. My spouse traveled on the Washington, DC-to-New York train Friday night and it was full of sniffer dogs and police. We risk a return to the national fear that gripped us after 9/11. </p>
<p>Parisians got it right when they assembled in large numbers and unfurled a sign saying “<a href="http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/International/ap_paris_shooting_12_kb_150107_1_16x9_992.jpg">not afraid</a>” in the hours after these attacks. </p>
<p>But not afraid of what? </p>
<p>The terrorists for sure. But also let’s not be afraid to distinguish between terrorists and Syrian asylum seekers. Between those who invoke the forces of evil and <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/in-middle-east-paris-attacks-harden-views-on-foreign-intervention/3058184.html">those imams who decry it</a>. Between our Muslim friends and neighbors and our fanatical enemies. </p>
<p>The lives of Parisians will not be the same after November 13. But, knowing the city and its inhabitants well, I believe that they will not be deprived of oxygen and disappear into the vortex of hate preached by jihadists – or Europe’s extreme nationalists. Civility, albeit wrapped in an iron fist, will be their response.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50709/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Under pressure in the Middle East, ISIS is turning to terrorism in Europe with a new set of predictable goals.Simon Reich, Professor in The Division of Global Affairs and The Department of Political Science, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/474722015-10-01T08:23:40Z2015-10-01T08:23:40ZFree speech is no excuse for Muslim-baiting<p>Over the last decade, the world has witnessed a number of significant clashes between the rights of free of speech and respect for religion. </p>
<p>On a Sunday evening in May this year, two men in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/us/gunmen-killed-after-firing-on-anti-islam-groups-event.html">Garland, Texas</a> shot an unarmed security guard at a Muhammad-focused art exhibit and cartoon contest sponsored by an <a href="http://freedomdefense.typepad.com/">anti-Islamic organization</a>. The gunmen were killed by a police officer hired to provide security at the event. </p>
<p>This incident marked the most recent in a string of violent acts highlighting an uneasy imbalance between freedom of speech and respect for religious beliefs. It followed the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30708237">attack</a> earlier this year on the satirical French newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and subsequent <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/15/copenhagen-shootings-how-the-attacks-unfolded">shootings in Copenhagen</a>. It also evoked memories of the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4677976.stm">Danish cartoon controversy</a> 10 years ago, which resulted in violent protests around the world. </p>
<p>In 2005, Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of a Danish newspaper, invited cartoonists to draw the face of Muhammad as they saw him. Concerned that Danish artists were self-censoring their criticism of Islam due to fear of reprisals, Rose wanted the cartoons “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702499.html">to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter</a>.” </p>
<p>The resulting 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad included one by Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. Other images were less provocative, but they were offensive to many Muslims. Some cited <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4674864.stm">general Islamic restrictions</a> on drawing images of the prophet. Others felt the representation of Muhammad reflected <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2006/02/depicting_mohammed.html">negative stereotypes</a> of Muslims and Islam. </p>
<h2>Diversity and values</h2>
<p>Each of these episodes took place in communities struggling to make sense of increasing religious and cultural diversity. This is perhaps more clearly the case in <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/15/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/">France and Denmark</a>, where the number of Muslims has grown rapidly in recent years due to immigration. Muslims have been in the US for <a href="http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/islam-in-america/">much longer</a>, but particularly since 9/11, Americans have grappled with an undercurrent of conflict between so-called “Western” and “Islamic” values. </p>
<p>While there are historical and cultural differences between Denmark, the US and France, all three countries have seen a rise of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/steve-rose/911-racism-islamophobia_b_3908411.html">Islamophobia</a> from some segments of their populations over the past three decades. This is often accompanied by a desire to defend the nation against a perceived threat to free speech. </p>
<p>In all three instances, these sentiments led to the creation of images of the Prophet Muhammad, which in turn provoked violent extremism. </p>
<p>During the coverage of these violent incidents by the media, more often than not, commentators focused on a single issue, arguing that <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/5494602">free speech</a> and respect for religious and cultural differences are mutually exclusive. We must, they argued, support not simply freedom of speech but also the <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/nicole-hemmer/2015/05/05/muhammad-cartoon-contest-charlie-hebdo-right-to-offend-must-be-defended">right to offend</a>. This right, sometimes articulated as a duty, was discussed as a necessary aspect of democracy.</p>
<p>But as I have maintained in my <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/secularism-theology-and-islam-9781474257619/">book</a> on the Danish cartoon crisis, this is a dangerously dualistic interpretation of free speech and religious respect. While I believe that free speech is a crucial part of democracy, as a theologian and scholar of religion, I argue that this freedom necessitates respect and responsibility. Simply because we can say something doesn’t necessarily mean that we should. </p>
<p>In the article that accompanied the cartoons in 2005, editor Flemming Rose argued that in a democracy with freedom of expression, one must tolerate scorn, mockery and ridicule. In my work, I maintain that religious and cultural pluralism are core values that democracies should aspire toward. Pluralism, according to scholars like Harvard University’s <a href="http://www.pluralism.org/pluralism/what_is_pluralism">Diana Eck</a>, goes beyond tolerating diversity to actively seeking to engage difference through mutual dialogue. This kind of pluralism is impossible if we deliberately use free speech to provoke, demean or injure others. </p>
<p>We should consider more carefully what “freedom of speech” actually means in context. Despite popular belief, free speech is not absolute, even in the United States. The Supreme Court has made this clear through a <a href="https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/95-815.pdf">number of cases</a>. The government can regulate speech in certain instances, with exceptions for circumstances like “fighting words,” or incitement to imminent violent action. The media and individuals self-censor in multiple ways in accord with a sense of shared taste or a tacit agreement of certain boundaries. </p>
<h2>Violence not legitimate</h2>
<p>Condemning the inexcusable violence committed by the shooters in Garland, France and Denmark doesn’t stop us from questioning the justification for the cartoon contest and subsequent exhibit. Are they not simply provocations of a minority by the majority? </p>
<p>Violence isn’t a legitimate response to a religious offense, but the intentional disrespect of a neighbor’s religious sensibilities is also inexcusable in a pluralistic society. There are, of course, legitimate reasons for fearing the beliefs and threats of extremist groups like IS and al-Qaeda. But portraying all Muslims as violent and sponsoring events like the “contest” in Garland will not help prevent religious extremism. These actions encourage violence by extremists, and alienate American Muslims, the vast majority of whom simply want to live their lives peacefully.</p>
<p>In a world that continues to become more diverse, engaging in civil dialogue in an effort to better understand our differences is paramount. We can condemn violent extremism and simultaneously reject the idea that freedom of speech and respect are mutually exclusive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47472/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Elisa Veninga does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ten years after the Danish cartoon crisis, it’s time to discuss how freedom of religion and freedom of speech can coexist.Jennifer Elisa Veninga, Assistant Professor of Religious and Theological Studies , St. Edward's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/469192015-09-02T17:44:28Z2015-09-02T17:44:28ZThis is a hellish time to be a journalist<p>The news that two British journalists and their unnamed Iraqi colleague were arrested and charged by the Turkish authorities [though released following publication of this article] for <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/vice-news-journalists-detained-in-turkey-accused-of-aiding-a-terrorist-organisation-10480343.html%20">“engaging in terror activity” </a> serves to illustrate once again that these are the most perilous of times for those seeking to report conflict and civil unrest.</p>
<p>The three are employees of <a href="https://news.vice.com/about">Vice News</a>. Correspondent Jake Hanrahan, photographer Philip Pendlebury and their unnamed “fixer” were arrested while <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-34109186">covering clashes</a> between Turkish security forces and the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement – the youth wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).</p>
<p>The charges of engaging in terror activities have been utterly rejected by those representing the three. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/world/europe/turkey-arrests-3-vice-news-journalists-on-terrorism-charges.html?_r=0%20%C2%A0">Tahir Elci</a> the head of the Diyarbakir Bar Association in south-east Turkey said: “I don’t believe the group carried out any activity outside of journalism.” The charges were actions, he said, “aimed at intimidating journalists covering the conflict in the region”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"638747559096401920"}"></div></p>
<p>This repressive behaviour is nothing new in Turkey. The country’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-joining-islamic-state-offensive-so-why-is-it-targeting-the-kurds-45199">wide ranging anti-terrorism</a> measures have effectively led to an increasingly hostile environment for journalists. For several years, as the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/03/06/world/europe/ap-eu-turkey-insulting-the-president.html?_r=0">New York Times</a> reported, Turkey has jailed more journalists than any other country, and this year, it ranked 149th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders <a href="https://index.rsf.org/#!/">news media freedom index</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, on September 1, two days after the Vice reporters were held, Turkish police <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/02/turkey-arrests-more-journalists-alleging-terrorist-links-to-erdogan-opponent%20%C2%A0">raided</a> the Ankara-based offices of a media group critical of president <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/recep-tayyip-erdogan">Recep Tayyip Erdoğan</a> and in December last year upwards of 23 people from media organisations, including the editor in chief of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/14/turkish-police-raid-opposition-media%20">Zaman</a>, Turkey’s largest daily newspaper, were detained.</p>
<h2>Global threat</h2>
<p>And of course Turkey is not alone in seeking to suppress journalistic freedoms. According to the <a href="https://cpj.org/mideast/egypt/">Committee to Protect Journalists </a>(CPJ) the Egyptian authorities are holding the highest number of journalists behind bars since the organisation began keeping records. As of August 12 this year, 23 correspondents were in prison. On August 29, three <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/31/amal-clooney-calls-on-egypt-to-pardon-peter-greste-and-al-jazeera-colleagues">Al Jazeera journalists</a> – Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, Baher Mohamed, and Peter Greste – were convicted of “aiding a terrorist organisation”, spreading false news, and working without a license.</p>
<p>International condemnation is always forthcoming in these cases but it appears to do nothing to dampen the zeal with which, to <a href="http://cpj.org/2015/08/egypts-new-anti-terrorism-law-deepens-crackdown-on.php">quote the CPJ</a>, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi “criminalises basic reporting and gives a broad definition of terrorist crimes that can be used to threaten and imprison journalists”.</p>
<p>So what’s happening here? Richard Sambrook, director of the Centre for Journalism at Cardiff University and president of the International News Safety Institute <a href="http://newssafety.org/home/">(INSI)</a>, perceives a development where independent journalism is simply not tolerated. He told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The jail sentences for Al Jazeera journalists in Egypt and the arrest of the Vice team in Turkey show that in some countries journalism is no longer recognised as neutral. There is increasing confusion between journalism and activism with authorities assuming if you are critical in any way you are aligned with their enemies. This is a growing threat to free speech.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This failure to recognise a journalist’s neutrality is something that deeply concerns <a href="http://www.newssafety.org/news/insi-news/insi-news/detail/blog-journalists-neutral-no-more-1617/%20">Salim Aman</a> a reporter who has covered the conflicts in Somalia, Kenya and Rwanda. For him the days of journalists being treated with respect, as independent observers, as messengers of the truth, are over. Echoing Sambrook’s point, Amin has written: “We are now seen as part of one side or the other, rather than as independent and impartial observers.”</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.amnesty.org.au/features/comments/37108/%C2%A0">Amnesty International</a> merely being affiliated with the media and possessing a press card is highly dangerous in countries such as Mexico, Columbia or Pakistan. The organisation has <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/world-press-freedom-day-charlie-hebdo-attack-just-one-chapter-global-tale-murder-intimidation-1499195">warned</a> that governments all over the world appear to be growing less tolerant of reporting on controversial issues. </p>
<p>Indeed, the figures suggest it is right – as a quick look at the <a href="http://newssafety.org/home/%20">journalists under attack</a> section of INSI website will prove. This grim catalogue of deaths around the world shows that in past month alone, <a href="http://newssafety.org/news/newsletter-signup/detail/radio-journalist-shot-dead-in-the-philippines-1619/">a radio journalist</a> was shot dead in the Philippines, a <a href="http://newssafety.org/news/newsletter-signup/detail/ssudan-journalist-slain-after-president-threatened-to-kill-reporters-1614/">South Sudanese reporter</a> (the seventh killed there this year) was murdered after the president threatened to “kill reporters” and <a href="http://newssafety.org/news/newsletter-signup/detail/radio-journalist-critical-of-government-killed-during-live-broadcast-in-brazil-1609/">a radio broadcaster</a> who regularly criticised the Brazilian government was shot dead on air.</p>
<p>These tragic deaths show that in some parts of the world the execution of journalists for doing their job is now an almost daily reality. I implore you to visit INSI and see for yourself. Go to the <a href="http://newssafety.org/casualties/2015/%20">casualty data base</a> or visit the CPJ and find out the statistical details concerning the <a href="https://www.cpj.org/killed/2014/">61 journalists killed in 2014</a>.</p>
<p>And already, according to INSI’s biannual report, <a href="http://www.newssafety.org/news/insi-news/insi-news/detail/killing-the-messenger-2015-1597/">Killing the Messenger</a>, a total of 60 media workers have been killed in the first half of 2015. The report reveals that South Sudan and Yemen were the second bloodiest countries for journalists in the first half of 2015, with six members of the news media killed in each place. Iraq and Libya are close behind in joint fourth place with five journalists losing their lives in each.</p>
<p>And the first most deadly country for journalists to work in the first half of 2015? Well, for the first time a “peaceful western democracy” was listed. Who could forget the eight people murdered at satirical magazine <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/charlie-hebdo-attack">Charlie Hebdo</a>, in their offices, in central Paris, in January?</p>
<p>The bleak reality is journalists are continually under threat. As the <a href="http://gijn.org/2013/05/03/world-press-freedom-day-the-dangers-of-being-a-journalist/">Global Investigative Journalism Network</a> has highlighted, over the past decade or so only one in ten cases of crimes against journalists, media workers, and online producers has led to a conviction. In days like these, when we need independent journalism more than ever, there is clearly the pressing need to find ways in which to adequately protect those who risk their lives on a regular basis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The news that two British journalists and their unnamed Iraqi colleague were arrested and charged by the Turkish authorities [though released following publication of this article] for “engaging in terror…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/435572015-06-19T12:32:54Z2015-06-19T12:32:54ZVandals attack Anish Kapoor’s vagina – but is it a sphincter?<p>As the yellow paint is hosed off an Anish Kapoor sculpture at his new Versailles installation, the art world reels from another example of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jun/18/anish-kapoor-condemns-french-intolerance-after-sculpture-vandalised">high-profile art vandalism</a> in France. The republic’s paradoxical relationship with provocative artworks has, again, come to the fore.</p>
<p>France has a reputation for cultural liberalism. It nurtured the revolutionary styles and techniques of Picasso, Van Gogh and Modigliani, all provocateurs par excellence. </p>
<p>But groundbreaking works that shock, surprise or unsettle have often been unwelcome, at least initially: Manet’s Olympia was widely mocked on its hanging in the 1863 Paris Salon des Refusés. More recently, South African performance artist Steven Cohen was led away by police following a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10808967/Artist-who-tied-rooster-to-penis-in-Paris-guilty-of-sexual-exhibitionism.html">much-discussed stunt</a> at the Trocadéro. And who can forget last year’s “pluggate”, where Californian art icon Paul McCarthy saw his <a href="https://theconversation.com/mccarthy-sex-toy-sculpture-tree-piques-prickly-french-right-33219">Christmas “tree”/sex toy</a> unceremoniously deflated by an outraged passer-by? Andres Serrano’s notorious “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/18/andres-serrano-piss-christ-destroyed-christian-protesters">Piss Christ</a>” photograph was also severely damaged when displayed in Avignon in 2011. Even the Mona Lisa, relatively harmless despite her smirk, permanently dwells behind toughened safety glass after a number of attacks over the years.</p>
<h2>Embracing the offensive</h2>
<p>On the whole though, it seems that France is more than happy to embrace and even champion artistic risk-takers – even those who risk offending public sensibilities. In 2010, the literary establishment crowned <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlie-hebdo-houellebecq-novel-feeds-fantasies-of-frances-angry-right-35980">Michel Houellebecq</a> – who has variously been called everything from a pornographer and a misogynist to a eugenicist and an Islamophobe – with its <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/nov/08/michel-houellebecq-prix-goncourt">biggest literary prize</a>. </p>
<p>To pick a handful of examples from the world of visual art: Parisian gallery <a href="http://www.lamaisonrouge.org/">La Maison Rouge</a> regularly hosts controversial and deeply provocative shows, such as a recent retrospective from <a href="http://www.timeout.fr/paris/art/jerome-zonder-fatum">Jérôme Zonder</a> whose pencil drawings evoke dark and often deeply disturbing fantasies colliding images of childhood, violence and hardcore porn. The <a href="http://www.mam.paris.fr/">Musée d’Art Moderne</a> is currently hosting a similarly nightmarish show from the American outsider artist <a href="http://www.mam.paris.fr/fr/expositions/exposition-henry-darger">Henry Darger</a> as well as Elaine Sturtevant’s <a href="http://www.mam.paris.fr/fr/expositions/exposition-house-horrors-le-train-fantome-sturtevant">House of Horror</a> ghost train, a subversive funfair attraction that co-opts and champions images from some of the 20th century’s most transgressive artists, including Duchamp, McCarthy and John Waters. All of these, without anyone really batting an eyelid.</p>
<p>That said, there are some topics that France – or some groups within the French community – that the art world can’t help offending. The attack on McCarthy’s inflatable in the historically resonant Place Vendôme was conducted against a toxic political backdrop: the right-wing Printemps Français pressure group had emerged in opposition to François Hollande’s (ultimately successful) plans to allow the right of marriage to same-sex couples in France. </p>
<p>One of the most vocal factions of this group has been the Catholic fundamentalists, some of whom were outspoken in their derision of Serrano’s “Piss Christ” before the work was attacked with hammers. Civitas, a far-right, “traditionalist” group had also petitioned and protested against Serrano’s work – it too had called upon the people of Versailles to take action against Kapoor’s installation at the Château. </p>
<h2>Chinese whispers</h2>
<p>So what is it about Kapoor’s work that these so-called traditionalists find offensive? At first sight, there is nothing obviously shocking about his installations, interspersed amongst the tasteful topiary, aside from their contemporary incongruity within such 17th-century elegance. In fact Kapoor’s work – six huge pieces in and around the grounds – has been almost unanimously praised by the art press. </p>
<p>But a Chinese whisper effect seems to have afflicted his centrepiece work, “Dirty Corner”. The French Sunday newspaper Le Journal de Dimanche <a href="http://www.lejdd.fr/Culture/Anish-Kapoor-invite-le-chaos-a-Versailles-735120">reported</a> Kapoor describing it as “<em>le vagin de la reine</em>” (The queen’s vagina). Kapoor has since distanced himself from the epithet, but, just like McCarthy’s Vendôme inflatable, which will now only ever be affectionately known as his “butt plug”, the name has caught on fast in the media.</p>
<p>It is possibly this description, rather than just the work itself, that the vocal minority have found so problematic. No faction has yet to take the dubious credit for “Dirty Corner” being defaced with paint although Fabien Bouglé, a Versailles politician close to the anti-same sex marriage movement, has come near, <a href="http://www.franceinfo.fr/actu/faits-divers/article/oeuvre-vandalisee-versailles-une-certaine-intolerance-anish-kapoor-693942">calling</a> the vandalism “poetic justice” and an “artistic achievement”.</p>
<h2>Long-departed royalty</h2>
<p>That the work sits within the expansive, graceful and deeply conservative gardens of the Château, once strolled through by Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI, is also deeply significant. There is an apparent school of thought within the traditionalist right that understands any signs of dissent or non-conformism within the grounds of the former palace as an affront to French cultural memory. This despite the end of the French monarchy in 1793.</p>
<p>Previous installations at the Château by the likes of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2010/sep/10/takashi-murakami-palace-versailles">Takashi Murakami</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/09/11/arts/design/20080911_KOONS_SLIDESHOW_index.html?_r=0">Jeff Koons</a> have also provoked criticism, petitions and protests from the right. But, until now, there’s been no direct action. Just like the deflation of McCarthy’s piece, it seems that any calling into question or critical interrogation of French cultural heritage risks the response of vandalism.</p>
<p>There is, of course, an uncomfortable irony at work here. Paris became the focus of global attention at the start of the year for its display of solidarity and tolerance of dissent in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders as millions took to the streets. <a href="https://twitter.com/fleurpellerin/status/611279304878653441">Tweeting her defence</a> of Kapoor, French culture secretary, Fleur Pellerin, said the vandalism was an affront to artistic freedom, the same crucial value that was defended on the streets of Paris and around France back in January. Of course there is a huge difference in magnitude between the terrorist act and any form of vandalism. But they both share a disquieting and fundamental desire to restrict creative expression in the name of deeply questionable values.</p>
<p>For what its worth, I think the description of Kapoor’s work as a vagina is a bit of a red herring. The name “Dirty Corner” and the funnel-like entrance point towards more anal connotations for me. The surrounding detritus is somehow expelled from the bowels of the earth. Kapoor will probably never reveal his true intent, but with its disparate and disjointed parts in a state of awkward tension, the queen’s – or, indeed, king’s – sphincter provides a significant metaphor for the social and political contradictions at work in contemporary France.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43557/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Russell Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>France’s paradoxical relationship with provocative artworks has, again, come to the fore.Russell Williams, Researcher in French Studies and Comparative Literature, University of London Institute in ParisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/425162015-05-29T05:41:59Z2015-05-29T05:41:59ZHonouring Resistance heroes won’t salvage Hollande’s legacy<p>Four prominent members of the French Resistance have been <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/27/french-president-hollande-honours-female-resistance-heroes-in-pantheon">interred in the Panthéon</a> in Paris, home to the heroes of the French Republic. President François Hollande selected these two men and two women himself in February 2014 for the honour of being laid to rest alongside French writers, politicians and leaders. </p>
<p>The date of the ceremony, May 27, was chosen to coincide with France’s day of memory for the Resistance to Nazi Occupation and the Vichy regime in World War II.</p>
<p>The ceremony was designed to demonstrate the importance of the Republic, and its traditions of liberty, equality and fraternity, with Hollande repeatedly stressing the need to stand up to oppression. </p>
<p>Coming just five months after the attack on a Jewish supermarket in the east of Paris in January in the wake of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/charlie-hebdo-attack">Charlie Hebdo shootings</a>, the interment of <a href="http://www.cairn-int.info/abstract-E_ESPRI_1505_0070--jean-zay-head-held-high.htm">Jean Zay</a>, the Jewish education minister in the inter-war <a href="http://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-276/lecture-17">Popular Front</a> government and architect of the Cannes film festival, was particularly significant. </p>
<p>Joining Zay in the Panthéon are the mortal remains of Pierre Brossolette, former head of the intelligence wing of the Gaullist Resistance movement. There’s also soil taken from the graves of two women: <a href="http://www.atd-fourthworld.org/Genvieve-de-Gaulle-Anthonioz.html">Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz</a>, niece of Charles de Gaulle, and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/germaine-tillion-resistance-fighter-and-ethnologist-815382.html">Germaine Tillion</a>, one of the founding members of the first Resistance network in France – the Réseau du Musée de l’homme. Their interment takes the total number of women laid to rest in the Panthéon to just four.</p>
<h2>Heroes all</h2>
<p>These were undoubtedly remarkable individuals – and yet Hollande’s decision to honour them has not escaped controversy. Why, for example, <a href="http://www.lepoint.fr/histoire/jean-zay-l-eternel-proces-27-05-2015-1931382_1615.php">choose Zay</a>, but not one of the many other members of the pre-Vichy government who elected to flee to North Africa on board the steamship Massilia? Why de Gaulle-Anthonioz, whose uncle, the leader of Resistance and the founder of the current Fifth Republic, forbade any posthumous memorials or symbolism in his will?</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Hollande’s speech at Wednesday’s ceremony made a stark case for the celebration of these lives. Not only was Jean Zay a Jewish politician opposed to fascism; he was, Hollande said, a hero of the modern Republican principle of laïcité (secularism), placing his service to the state above his religious beliefs.</p>
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<p>Likewise, Brossolette was singled out for his defence of freedom, while de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Tillion were praised for their attacks on poverty and on oppression across the world. Tillion’s defence of the rights of Algerian citizens during and after the Algerian War put her in opposition to the views of successive governments of the Fourth and Fifth Republics, yet on Wednesday her actions were hailed as a successful defence of the equality so dear to the Republic.</p>
<p>The same applies to de Gaulle-Anthonioz, whose experiences alongside Tillion in the Ravensbrück concentration camp led her to campaign for the rights of former internees to justice, notably testifying at the 1987 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/28/klaus-barbie-nazi-trial-lyons-1987">trial</a> of Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, the so-called “Butcher of Lyon”. </p>
<h2>Ambivalence</h2>
<p>When he chose these members of the Resistance for interment in February 2014, Hollande could not have anticipated the horrific events of January 2015, or how the interment of these remarkable citizens would resonate with them – but he clearly grasps their resonance now. </p>
<p>He duly used these remarkable Resistance stories to reflect on the importance of freedom, rights, and secularism in the modern-day Republic. His message to France and the rest of the world was that the lessons of the Occupation, when both the Vichy authorities and the Nazis discriminated against and murdered civilians on racial and religious grounds, must continue to be learnt. </p>
<p>And yet, many French people were uneasy about the politicisation of the interment. Indeed, the families of de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Tillion politely declined to allow the government to exhume the remains of the two women, hence the use of soil from their graves. That’s a measure of the deep ambivalence that greeted Hollande’s attempt to associate his presidency with the legacy of the Resistance. </p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether France will witness further anti-Semitic and religiously motivated terror attacks – and until it does, there’s no knowing whether this move to put the anti-racist Resistance back at the centre of French political culture will stick.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42516/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Lees does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When he interred four anti-racist and secularist icons in Paris’s Panthéon, François Hollande perhaps hoped some of their legacy would rub off on him.David Lees, Teaching Fellow in French Studies, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/417812015-05-13T14:23:54Z2015-05-13T14:23:54ZUK government bids to ban free speech in counter-terrorism plan<p>Plans for new counter-extremism laws to tackle terrorism have been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32714802">announced</a> by UK prime minister David Cameron and are due to be introduced in parliament when it re-opens at the end of May. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02r8z20">Theresa May</a>, the home secretary, says the aim is to “bring people together to ensure we are living together as one society”, she omitted to say that this is to be made mandatory, with severe penalties for those who will not comply or live up to the assumed British values now asserted by the authorities.</p>
<p>Genuine free speech is now firmly off the menu, just a few months after world leaders – including Cameron – marched in supposed <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/13/david-cameron-cover-charlie-hebdo-muhammad-prophet-freedom-offensive">solidarity</a> for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/charlie-hebdo-attack">cartoonists</a> murdered in France for the very same.</p>
<p>A little more than 200 years ago, observing the spirit of liberty first unleashed by the French revolution, the very British poet William Wordsworth exclaimed: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!”</p>
<p>Today, the twilight of freedom is upon us and <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9376232/free-speech-is-so-last-century-todays-students-want-the-right-to-be-comfortable/">to be young is to be cowed and scrutinised</a>, as the government implicitly reveals that it has given up on trying to understand the reasons why growing numbers of youths are disengaged from society (leading at the margins to the vexatious violence of a small minority). Interception and incarceration are to be the bold new vision of the future for Britain.</p>
<p>Most strikingly of all, the government will also empower institutions to “challenge bigotry and ignorance” – whatever that means.</p>
<p>Cameron states that for too long “we have been a passively tolerant society” and is presumably <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX419Bvvs0U">pumped up</a> at the possibility of changing this image. But, in truth, Britain has strayed a long way from any Enlightenment conceptualisation of tolerance, which advocated robust engagement with others over matters of principle while recognising the need to live side-by-side.</p>
<p>In recent years British society has become not tolerant, but indifferent, to the others, preferring to turn a blind eye to outlooks and activities deemed not too threatening. You can believe anything you like, so long as you don’t believe in it too much, has been the unstated outlook of the authorities. Now Cameron seeks to shift gear from passive indifference to active authoritarianism.</p>
<p>Of course, deep down, neither Cameron nor May truly believes that this approach can work. At best it is a form of containment and, as the security services know full well, there can be no security solutions to social problems. They are already at full capacity monitoring the active few who could pose a real threat (though possibly over-stretched too from their own <a href="https://www.rusi.org/events/past/ref:E539EC3CF6F5A4/">lack of sense of proportionality</a>).</p>
<p>The government legislates, not from conviction, but to be seen to be doing something. Institutions and individuals will act and speak accordingly, wishing to be seen to be in compliance. After all, to say what you really think no longer appears to be a constituent of British values today.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a generation of young people in search of purpose and meaning in their lives, looking for something to really believe in, will find it in all manner of bizarre, and sadly, occasionally twisted avenues.</p>
<p>It is not ideas on the internet that radicalise. To presume so is to view people as mindless sponges. Rather, it is the gaping hole at the heart of where real values ought to be that they seek to fill – a hole best exemplified by the recent election, in which no party sought to provide any strategic or principled vision for the society they sought to represent.</p>
<p>Sadly, it really is through the prism of an authoritarian form of child protection that the government now views the populace, and especially the young. Successive heads of the security service MI5 have alluded to how these young people are <a href="https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/about-us/who-we-are/staff-and-management/director-general/speeches-by-the-director-general/intelligence-counter-terrorism-and-trust.html">“vulnerable”</a> and <a href="https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/about-us/who-we-are/staff-and-management/director-general/speeches-by-the-director-general/the-international-terrorist-threat-to-the-uk.html">“groomed”</a> online by vicious malcontents. This presents the next generation as lacking any agency, autonomy and – inadvertently perhaps – accountability for their actions.</p>
<p>In acting this way – by-passing political persuasion through legal diktat – Cameron and others have revealed themselves as having little to offer by way of an alternative.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bill Durodie receives funding from the Gerda-Henkel Foundation in Germany under its Special Programme Security, Society and the State for research into 'The Politics of Warning' and was previously funded through an ESRC grant under the New Security Challenges initiative to investigate 'The Domestic Management of Terrorist Attacks'.</span></em></p>Counter-extremism proposals replace tolerance with incarceration.Bill Durodie, Professor and Chair of International Relations, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/412682015-05-06T08:49:06Z2015-05-06T08:49:06Z‘Pussies and wimps’: why Salman Rushdie plea for free speech rings hollow<p>The PEN literary gala has been overshadowed by controversy. Its decision to honour Charlie Hebdo with an award for freedom of expression courage has provoked several authors – Peter Carey, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, and Taiye Selasi – to withdraw from the event in protest. </p>
<p>The protesting authors object that Charlie Hebdo is responsible for publishing <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2015/04/how-and-why-6-writers-denounced-pen.html">selectively offensive</a> material. While such offensive speech should be protected, they argue, it should not be rewarded and celebrated.</p>
<p>Salman Rushdie has been particularly vocal in his criticism of the protesting authors, publicly berating them on Twitter:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"592631127589965824"}"></div></p>
<p>Rushdie has since apologised for the remark, but it is not his first such outburst. He made <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jul/11/salmanrushdie.bookerprize">similar comments in 2008</a> when defending Martin Amis against accusations of Islamophobia: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we don’t say what we think or articulate what is being generally thought, then we are self-censoring, which is wimpish.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The link Rushdie draws between self-censorship – not saying everything we might want to say – and cowardice is too simplistic. Self-censorship can also be a form of civility.</p>
<p>Civility means avoiding insulting or disruptive speech, and making the effort to justify our political views in a way that even our opponents can potentially appreciate.</p>
<p>As such, civility is a way of keeping democratic debate alive amid hostile disagreement. The political philosopher, Jeremy Waldron writes that civility is a matter of “staying present” in political debate:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fierce political antagonism need not and should not precipitate exit from the political process … One stays with one’s antagonists, one stays, as it were, in the room, confronting them, debating with them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The trouble is that people can be discouraged from staying in the room, or even from entering it in the first place, if argument is conducted in an aggressive, disrespectful or abusive manner. </p>
<p>Civil self-censorship can help to create a more constructive discussion. It can also help to create a more democratic discussion in which all voices are heard. And to stand up for civility of this kind when everyone else is yelling can actually be quite a courageous thing to do.</p>
<p>That being said, there are certainly some valid free speech concerns about the appeal to civility. Throughout history, powerful elites have used particular understandings of what counts as civil or polite and uncivil or impolite behaviour as a way of stifling the speech of disadvantaged groups. </p>
<p>In particular, we can notice the way the language of civility has been used as a way of marginalising women and racial minorities. Notoriously, women who have publicly demanded equality have often been seen and discredited as improperly strident, while black people have been dismissed as rude.</p>
<p>This sort of thing continues today, though sometimes in a more subtle form. The insistence on a calm, orderly and uncontroversial tone in political debate can easily operate to exclude individuals and groups who may struggle to express themselves in the approved manner. It can also exclude certain kinds of legitimate grievances: it may be that there are dissenting views which can only be adequately expressed with bitterness and anger.</p>
<p>But for just these reasons, we should be uneasy about the terms in which Rushdie couches his criticism of the protesting authors. Calling those who disagree with you “pussies” and “wimps” is no way to defend free speech. It is, on the contrary, using demeaning language to belittle and marginalise opponents. Just as civility codes have been used historically as a way of stifling dissent, so too has the sort of obnoxious macho bullying practised by Rushdie.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41268/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek Edyvane currently receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust, and has in the past received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the British Academy, but the views here are his own and are not the views of any funding body.</span></em></p>The PEN literary gala has been overshadowed by controversy.Derek Edyvane, Associate Professor of Political Theory, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/377512015-02-24T11:07:44Z2015-02-24T11:07:44ZThe new terrorists and the roots they share with gangs and drug lords<p>The recent attacks in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-paris-shooting.html">Paris</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/europe/copenhagen-attacks-suspect-is-killed-police-say.html">Copenhagen</a> are the latest incarnations of a new type of terrorism. Decentralized and homegrown, it is hard to understand. </p>
<p>Last week, the Obama Administration convened a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/us/obama-to-outline-nonmilitary-plans-to-counter-groups-like-isis.html">three-day summit</a> to focus on the reasons young people become involved in this kind of violence. In many cases, these young perpetrators have been drawn to extremist ideologies without personal histories of religious commitment, militancy, or even social activism. </p>
<p>How do they – in a relatively short period of time – get to the point where they are willing to commit such violent acts?</p>
<p>Our research and program experience at the <a href="http://publichealth.gwu.edu/about/milken-institute-sph">George Washington University’s</a> <a href="http://www.cswd-gw.org/">Center for Social Well-Being and Development</a>, and the <a href="http://avancegw.org/">Avance Center for the Advancement of Immigrant/Refugee Health</a> may offer some guidance.</p>
<h2>Not isolated actions</h2>
<p>It is useful to think about such acts as taking place within a broader context. </p>
<p>The Kouachi brothers, for instance, reportedly felt excluded and ultimately just “wanted to be French.” They lived in the 19th arrondissement in Paris, a neighborhood long disconnected from the French mainstream, with high levels of unemployment, particularly for young adults.</p>
<p>In Copenhagen, 22-year old Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein was said to be seething with anger about exclusion from Danish society. He was radicalized in prison and swore allegiance to ISIS only moments before his shooting rampage.</p>
<p>How does this kind of context contribute to these outsized acts of violence? Our work suggests that it does so in at least two significant ways.</p>
<h2>The nature of exclusion</h2>
<p>The first has to do with the nature of excluded communities. Cut off by many boundaries, they become like islands disconnected from the society around them. These boundaries are socio-economic and cultural and are often made deeper by racism and discrimination. </p>
<p>But within these islands, people still strive to make a living, to belong, and to attain status. Because the possibilities are limited, the ways of achieving these basic goals may divert from conventional paths. The difference between legal and illegal becomes blurred and the definition of risk less clear. </p>
<p>Social structures like gangs and family-like crime networks often develop to provide opportunities for income, protection and social bonds. Even so, competition for the finite number of opportunities is tough. The script for success may well include violence – and that is before we even consider religious or ideological motives.</p>
<p>Add to this general context a second, powerful factor. The people we are talking about are largely young, not far from adolescence.</p>
<h2>The significance of adolescence</h2>
<p>As the psychologist <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Identity-Youth-Crisis-Austen-Monograph/dp/0393311449">Erik Erikson</a> and others have noted, an important part of being an adolescent involves assembling a personal identity. </p>
<p>The material for putting that identity together comes from what one sees and experiences in one’s immediate community and cultural environment, as well as from the media and Internet. Attaching to an identity at this stage can be a deeply emotional process; it is all about getting social acceptance and recognition. The stakes are high.</p>
<p>In excluded communities, there are a limited number of valued identities to choose from that can also offer a viable future. Add one more level of difficulty if the community in question is an immigrant one. </p>
<h2>Exclusion and the search for identity – a toxic mix</h2>
<p>A young person searching for identity and status in an excluded community is vulnerable to the influence of people who use violence to demonstrate their importance. If that violence is connected with a sense of payback and revenge against those forces that exclude, then the situation is even more volatile. </p>
<p>This appears to be what happened in the cases of the prison-based jihadi networks in Denmark, and in Paris for the Buttes-Chaumont network that included the Kouachi brothers as well as Amedy Coulibaly. </p>
<p>It also holds true in different ways for the <a href="http://gangs.umd.edu/gangs/MS13.aspx">Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13)</a> and <a href="http://gangs.umd.edu/Gangs/18thStreet.aspx">18th Street</a> gangs in the US and Central America, for the <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/gangcolor/lacrips.htm">Crips and Bloods</a> and quite possibly for more than a few drug trafficking organizations. </p>
<p><a href="http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/edbeln">In one study</a>, young men interviewed from poverty-ridden colonias on the Mexican border recounted that they were willing to traffic in drugs and die or kill violently in order to be remembered as heroic in popular songs known as “narcocorridos.” </p>
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</figure>
<p>While not exact parallels, there is a common thread to these examples. </p>
<p>Though we do not equate gang or drug violence with terrorism, each of these is at least partially rooted in exclusion, where legends are made, songs written and YouTube videos are posted about people who become notorious through acts of violence. It is either that or having to eke out a living with little chance to get ahead.</p>
<p>Social exclusion and poverty, said anthropologist <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tell-Them-Who-Am-Homeless/dp/014024137X">Elliott Liebow</a>, is facelessness. There is a common human desire to be someone, to matter. For people who feel exclusion every day, the desire to be someone wells up and is ready to be channeled. Enter an ethos of heroic violence or heroic martyrdom, and you will see many takers.</p>
<h2>What can be done?</h2>
<p>Token jobs programs are not the answer, nor are token programs of any kind. We have to compete with the benefits offered by gangs, traffickers and potentially extremist groups.</p>
<p>This process takes time, local collaboration and resources. It is not easy or a quick fix. Young people must come of age seeing that there are multiple opportunities for them that include access to social capital, resources and decent work where they can retain a sense of identity and acceptance. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.layc-dc.org/index.php/md-programs/adelante.html">Adelante</a> program, currently being implemented in the Washington, DC, metro area community by George Washington University’s <a href="http://avancegw.org/">Avance Center</a> is one such attempt. </p>
<p>Adelante is a program designed to prevent substance abuse, sexual risk behavior and violence among immigrant Latino youth. To achieve this goal, the program works at three levels:</p>
<ol>
<li>It helps building skills and capabilities that participants can use to strengthen the community, stay healthy and increase their likelihood of finding decent employment or further education. </li>
<li>It brings together a range of organizations including non-profit groups, the faith community and businesses to connect with participants. </li>
<li>It helps create a positive identity for the process and its participants.</li>
</ol>
<p>To illustrate how it works, take the example of a high-school age young man who is on the verge of dropping out. </p>
<p>At Adelante, he learns advocacy skills and how to talk about problems in his community. He makes a presentation to a local community group together with several other youth. People listen. Encouraged by Adelante program staff, the community group then asks these young people if they want to be peer educators, maybe even with a stipend attached. Now school looks a little different, more meaningful. The prospect of getting involved in destructive activities loses a little of its pull. </p>
<h2>Going global</h2>
<p>At the <a href="http://www.cswd-gw.org/">Center for Social Well-Being and Development</a>, we are applying the same systematic approach in global settings. </p>
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<p>Key to this is our focus on “social well-being,” which is derived from the <a href="http://www.who.int/en/">World Health Organization’s</a> definition of health as “not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” We look at each community and its environment as a system that can promote good outcomes or bad ones. By identifying the factors that make families and young people vulnerable, we can help decide how to change that balance.</p>
<p>With partners at UNICEF, our staff developed the <a href="http://www.unicef.org/lac/core_INDICATORS_Part_3_MICS.pdf">Adolescent Well-Being Framework</a>. </p>
<p>This tool serves as a guide for identifying whether or not adolescents have the supports they need to do well. These supports relate to, among other things, safety, education, and having future possibilities for employment. The more such supports are in place, the less likely adolescents will be involved in violence and other situations that place them at risk. </p>
<p>This framework is now at the early stages of implementation and testing. For example, in one Central American country where we work, adolescent girls from a particular ethnic minority group are frequently trafficked. HIV rates are high. If we use the Framework as a guide, we might find that the problem is that there is little help to keep them in school; that there are few sources of income other than at local tourist sites; that their ethnic identity does not get any recognition and that there are limited funds allocated to HIV prevention for adolescents.</p>
<p>The conclusion, therefore, is that to give these girls and their families better options, some effort needs to be made to fill these gaps. The goal of this process is to move away from “band-aid” solutions. The Framework is able to highlight where comprehensive and sustainable changes must be made in the community.</p>
<p>It is from this perspective that we look at violence – and extremism – among youth. Our argument is that it is no accident that the use of violence is much higher in some communities than in others. There is something going on that increases vulnerability. The task is to find out what that is, and then make the effort to change that context. </p>
<p>Will these kinds of efforts eliminate homegrown terrorism or violence? </p>
<p>Not entirely. Not all terrorists are driven by the motivations described above. But such actions will at least help drain the fuel that feeds the fire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Edberg is director of the Avance Center and of CSWD. The Avance Center is funded through a grant from the National Institutes of Health; CSWD currently receives funding from UNICEF for specific projects. These funds do not go directly to Mark Edberg, but to the George Washington University, where the centers are located. .</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Center for Social Well-Being and Development (CSWD) currently receives funding from UNICEF for specific projects. These funds do not go directly to Hina Shaikh, but to the George Washington University, where the center is located. </span></em></p>What makes some communities more vulnerable to the use of violence than others?Mark Edberg, Associate Professor in the Milken Institute School of Public Health, Department of Anthropology, and Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, and Director of both the Avance Center for the Advancement of Immigrant/Refug, George Washington UniversityHina Shaikh, Director, Program Management and Research Operations of the Center for Social Well-Being and Development, Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/364412015-02-18T06:20:27Z2015-02-18T06:20:27ZUK still values Jewish communities, study shows<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72257/original/image-20150217-19502-jmie1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jewish communities are warmly received in the UK.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcasey/107392282/">dcaseyphoto</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The cowardly murder of Jews in <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/charlie-hebdo-attack">France</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/copenhagen-shootings">Denmark</a>, in conjunction with terrorist attacks designed to shut down discussion, is justifiably a cause for more than a passing concern. Europe may be witnessing the dawn of a period where extra steps must be taken to defend citizens against those who will resort to physical force to silence those who offer biting, challenging or difficult critiques of their own points of view or religious beliefs.</p>
<p>In this moment of soul searching, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has inserted himself into the debate, all but declaring Europe as a lost cause and hopelessly anti-Semitic. In a speech following the Copenhagen attacks, he went as far as to call for a <a href="https://theconversation.com/netanyahus-blatant-campaigning-abroad-will-win-him-votes-but-its-hurting-israel-37545">mass exodus</a>, urging European Jews to emigrate to Israel.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/05/antisemitic-attacks-uk-community-security-trust-britain-jewish-population">Studies</a> have shown that anti-Semitic attacks did increase between 2013 and 2014 but an inspection of British attitudes towards Jews, whose number in the UK is just over a quarter of a million, belies Netanyahu’s doom-mongering. </p>
<p>As part of a yet to be published study of 2,774 British people in the summer of 2013, we asked respondents what they thought of a variety of groups, institutions, and countries on what is known as a “thermometer scale” that ranges from a freezing rating of 0, a moderate score of 50, and a warm rating of 100. </p>
<p>The mean scores offer no evidence that Jews are viewed any more negatively than other groups. Respondents give them an average ranking of 62, just below the average evaluation of 63 given to Christians and gay people, and above the score of 55 given to Asians. The biggest concern though was the response to questions about Muslims. An average score of only 42 raises suggests the integration of Muslims continues to be challenging.</p>
<p>Although all this may be bad for news for the political narrative Netanyahu wishes to create, Britons are able to differentiate between attitudes towards the state of Israel, whose foreign policy is hotly debated, and Jews. Even before the recent Israeli incursions into Gaza, Britons gave Israel an average rating of only 40. </p>
<p>As we find with other contentious foreign policy matters, the British public is not stupid. States and entities that pursue controversial policies are almost always rated lower than their people. For example, the British rate Germans, Italians and the French more warmly than coldly, but give the European Union a score of just 38, one point less than Israel.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most surprising finding of this survey though is that the correlations between attitudes towards Muslims, Jews, and Israel are all positive. So, feeling warmly towards one group is associated with feeling warmly towards another (and vice versa), even though Muslims and Jews and Muslims and Israel are too often depicted as sworn enemies. </p>
<p>The volatile situation in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/middle-east">Middle East</a>, along with American and British incursions into the affairs of nations in the region, make for tense times. Retaliatory attacks by terror groups that strike at the heart of the ideals held dear by liberal Western societies don’t appear to make matters any easier. But our findings suggest that scaremongering about widespread antisemitism may be rather wide of the mark – at least in the UK. </p>
<p>Although there is a segment of the British population that might harbour animosity towards religious minorities, data suggest that a considerable segment of the population is more than open to peaceful co-existence with religious minorities. </p>
<p>What’s more, the significant and positive correlations reported for feeling thermometers measuring affect toward Muslims and Jews suggests that there will be a core group of citizens who will support minorities regardless of differences of opinion they may have with specific religious beliefs. In challenging times, this gives reason to believe the European glass is more half full than half empty, at least in Britain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Scotto receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) that enabled the data used in this piece to be collected.</span></em></p>The cowardly murder of Jews in France and Denmark, in conjunction with terrorist attacks designed to shut down discussion, is justifiably a cause for more than a passing concern. Europe may be witnessing…Thomas Scotto, Professor of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/376702015-02-17T17:44:08Z2015-02-17T17:44:08ZMemorial in Copenhagen draws 40,000 for show of unity<p>A <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/denmark/11416754/Copenhagen-shooting-Denmark-holds-mass-memorial-and-rally-to-honour-victims.html">memorial service</a> has been held in Copenhagen for the victims of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/copenhagen-shootings">shootings</a> that killed two and injured five in the city on February 14. A crowd of up to 40,000 people gathered just around the corner from the scene of the first shootings, at which documentary film director <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/15/copenhagen-shooting-the-victims-finn-norgaard-dan-uzan-denmark">Finn Nørgaard</a> was killed. He had been attending a debate meeting on art, blasphemy and freedom of speech featuring the controversial Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who had once depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a dog. </p>
<p>Copenhageners paid a unforgettable tribute to the two victims at the memorial service. The programme included a number of guest speakers, including prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, and the French ambassador, François Zimeray, who survived the first attack at the debate meeting.</p>
<p>The memorial was being organised on behalf of all the political parties represented at Copenhagen Municipality, who announced they are standing together across political boundaries to protect freedom of expression, democracy and free speech in the wake of the attacks.</p>
<p>There has been concern that the suspected perpetrator, Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, a 22-year-old man born and raised in Denmark, may have been inspired by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/charlie-hebdo-attack">Islamist attacks in Paris</a> a month ago, and decided to carry out similar murders at the debate and at a synagogue. He was known to the police and national intelligence agencies. He has been involved in weapons violations and violence and had ties to gangs in Copenhagen. He was released from prison just a few weeks ago.</p>
<p>When young Muslim men, born and raised in Western cultures, turn to radical interpretations of Islam and lash out at the society in which they live, talk quickly turns to the spectre of the “home-grown terrorist”. Questions are asked about what part that society, their community or their parents played in their being drawn to extremism.</p>
<p>Prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt has described the shootings in Copenhagen as a “cynical act of terror” but added: “We are not in a fight between Islam and the West. This is not a conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims. This is a conflict between the core values of our society and violent extremists.”</p>
<p>And in fact, surprisingly few politicians have used the attack as an opportunity to articulate resentment toward Islam and the Muslim population in Denmark. The prime minister’s interpretation of the event as a “politically motivated attack” has been widely accepted with only a few exceptions. </p>
<p>Denmark is considered an open, free and peaceful democracy. According to political leaders from the government and the opposition, this will not change as a result of these incidents. Debate about freedom of speech is inevitable – especially when it comes to Islam and blasphemy – and there will now probably be more debate about the freedom of assembly too after the attack on a open and free debate meeting. But these debates are not new and were heated long before this attack. </p>
<p>But there is another issue that will need to be addressed after this tragedy. El-Hussein grew up in the social housing complex of Mjølnerparken in Copenhagen. His social background is comparable to the three men who carried out the attacks in Paris in January. Following the horrors of Paris, many asked if the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-jihadism-appeals-to-religiously-illiterate-loners-36106">homegrown amateur terrorist</a> is the new face of extremism and the events in Copenhagen over the weekend would appear to confirm that development.</p>
<p>However, given that it is extremely difficult to predict who will carry out a lone-wolf attack or track everyone who has been in contact with the security agencies, a broader approach is needed. We need better anti-radicalisation programmes in public institutions, including prisons, and more focused integration projects in the social housing complexes in which radicalisation can breed. We also, of course, need better gun control laws.</p>
<p>The ability of home-grown terrorists to attain meaningful goals through individual attacks is limited, but as an agent for division, the significance of such events should not be underestimated. They have the potential to destabilise social unity and compound radicalisation.</p>
<p>The former does not appear to have happened in Denmark as a result of this attack. The memorial service showed a city resisting division. The question for the Danish authorities now though, is how to integrate disaffected young people like El-Hussein so that radicalisation no longer appeals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Arly Jacobsen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A memorial service has been held in Copenhagen for the victims of the shootings that killed two and injured five in the city on February 14. A crowd of up to 40,000 people gathered just around the corner…Brian Arly Jacobsen, Assistant professor, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of CopenhagenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/365472015-01-29T01:44:27Z2015-01-29T01:44:27ZHow do we decide if offending someone is unethical or not?<p>Causing offence to others often causes hurt. Such actions have been condemned as unethical, even immoral behaviour in a civilised society. There have been many examples.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/body-issues-20120913-25taz.html">Bill Henson photographs</a> of naked children <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/archives/80days/stories/2012/01/19/3415368.htm">created much opposition</a>. The <a href="http://www.dw.de/the-rushdie-fatwa-25-years-on/a-17425932">Salman Rushdie fatwa</a> is another. The <a href="http://www.complex.com/style/2013/10/controversial-art-exhibitions/piss-christ">“Piss Christ”</a> photograph depicting a crucifix submerged in a glass of urine created <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/andres-serrano-piss-christ-triggers-religious-fury-and-court-battle-in-1990s-trials/story-fnat7dag-1226591823318">“religious fury”</a> and the Catholic Church unsuccessfully sought a court order to suppress it. </p>
<p>Mel Gibson’s controversial 2004 film, <a href="http://ncronline.org/news/art-media/decade-later-passion-still-raises-questions-anti-semitism">The Passion of the Christ</a>, attracted charges of anti-Semitism and the actors were forced <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2004/03/23636/">to seek protection</a>.</p>
<p>Now we have the <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlie-hebdo-editors-double-down-on-their-principles-in-first-issue-since-attacks-36269">cartoons of Charlie Hebdo</a>. Are they unethical? Is it OK to give offence to others, especially to religions? Or is it just plain wrong?</p>
<p>It has been a long unanswered question for this writer. It was most recently examined when I was a speaker in an <a href="https://visualarts.net.au/media/uploads/files/NAVA_FutureForward_Program_Online_1.pdf">Association of Visual Arts</a> panel discussion on ethical boundaries in the visual arts. </p>
<h2>Ethical behaviour and the link to harm</h2>
<p>In attempting to answer questions about the ethics of giving offence, first we have to define ethical behaviour. Unfortunately, philosophers have been waging this argument for more than 2000 years and still have not reached agreement.</p>
<p>This examination will search many moral philosophies, first using the most common ethical guideline, the version of <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Utilitarianism.html?id=Ju4oAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y">Utilitarianism</a> developed by British philosopher John Stuart Mill. His overriding rule is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one another … are more important to human well-being than any maxims. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is also my personal ethical guideline, as I have <a href="https://theconversation.com/telling-right-from-wrong-why-is-utilitarianism-under-attack-30559">argued in The Conversation</a>. Mill claims his version incorporates the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule">Golden Rule</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do unto to others as you would want done for yourself. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As such, Mill is also saying that we should prevent or alleviate harm that is being suffered by others.</p>
<p>But is giving offence the same as harming someone? If you search the philosophers, you can find a dozen interpretations where a harm would clearly be a wrong.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Gert#Ten_moral_rules">Bernard Gert</a> gives us several: causing pain; depriving freedom; depriving others of pleasure; deceiving; telling untruths. Even an indirect harm through a misleading advertisement that nobody reads is a wrong.</p>
<p>Joel Feinberg in <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Harm_to_Others.html?id=z3DC0qYNAwIC">Harm to Others</a> tells us that the harm has to be wrong – that is, it violates someone’s rights. It also has to be universally disliked, an unpleasant experience that causes disgust, revulsion, shock, shame, embarrassment, anxiety, etc. It has to be serious, too. </p>
<p>Finally, Feinberg requires that the interests of those who wish to avoid offensive behaviour be weighed against the interests of those who wish to engage in it.</p>
<p>Mill argues that causing mental anguish is sufficient. He labels his utilitarianism “The Greatest Happiness Principle”, which is telling us that we should not cause unhappiness. Mill’s <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645o/">On Liberty</a> is also the first, and greatest, advocacy for free speech:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But none of the great philosophers clearly tells us whether to insult somebody – to offend a religion and its leader – is to cause harm. Or even whether it is unethical. </p>
<h2>A question of purpose</h2>
<p>Immanuel Kant, esteemed by many, has another philosophical guideline that can possibly help us in a version of his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#The_Second_Formulation">categorical imperative</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In short, Kant is saying: “Do not use other people for your own purposes.”</p>
<p>But we do not know what was the purpose of Bill Henson or those parents who pushed their children into being photographed naked by Henson. If it was to boost their own public image, then the children were being used. It is then wrong.</p>
<p>Kant’s <a href="http://thinkjustdoit.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/pl-431-kants-formulations-of.html">other version of the categorical imperative</a> is that we all have to agree that to be moral, an act is universally acceptable:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You may get an indication that photographing children naked is likely wrong by asking at your next dinner party whether any parents would allow their 12-year-old daughter to be photographed naked and the photographs put on display.</p>
<p>The media are ambivalent about cartoons or photographs that offend a religion.
The Economist’s editor-in-chief, John Micklethwaite, <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21638118-islamists-are-assailing-freedom-speech-vilifying-all-islam-wrong-way-counter">argues in his leader</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The magazine was targeted because it cherished and promoted its right to offend: specifically to offend Muslims. That motive invokes two big themes. One is free speech, and whether it should have limits, self-imposed or otherwise. The answer to that is an emphatic no. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Others – such as the UK’s Telegraph and the New York Post – disagree and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/charlie-hebdo-cartoons-media-around-the-world-chart-different-courses-20150108-12k90p.html">published photos</a> of Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier holding one of the offending front-page cartoons, but either cropped the photo or blurred part of the image.</p>
<p>The Associated Press distributed no images that included the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. This was in keeping with its longstanding policy on offensive images, AP vice-president Santiago Lyon <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/news-organizations-wrestle-with-whether-to-publish-charlie-hebdo-cartoons-after-attack/2015/01/07/841e9c8c-96bc-11e4-8005-1924ede3e54a_story.html">said</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’ve taken the view that we don’t want to publish hate speech or spectacles that offend, provoke or intimidate, or anything that desecrates religious symbols or angers people along religious or ethnic lines.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thus the media, perhaps even the rest of us, do not meet Kant’s criterion of universality. So is offending others a wrong – an unethical act? </p>
<p>The answer has to be “only you know”. For it is only you who knows what your intentions are.</p>
<p>If they are to use the denigration of others for your own purposes, be that to sell your magazine, or photographs, or publicise your name, then it is unethical. If it is an offensive action where your purpose is obvious to all of us, and that is to benefit yourself, then it is unethical. It is wrong. Otherwise free speech must override.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: Peter will be answering questions between 11am and noon AEDT on Friday January 30. You can ask your questions about the article in the comments below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36547/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Bowden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Causing offence to others often causes hurt. Such actions have been condemned as unethical, even immoral behaviour in a civilised society. There have been many examples. The Bill Henson photographs of…Peter Bowden, Honorary Research Associate in Philosophy; Lecturer in Ethics and Engineering , University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/364022015-01-23T19:51:49Z2015-01-23T19:51:49ZWhy there’s opposition to images of Muhammad<p>After the violent attacks on Charlie Hebdo – the French satirical weekly that routinely published caricatures of Muhammad – many are wondering: are depictions of Muhammad actually forbidden in Islamic scripture? From where does this aversion to pictorial representations arise? And are all Muslims similarly offended? </p>
<p>Muslim opposition to pictorial representations of religious figures (or of God) does not come directly from the Quran (which doesn’t address the topic of images). But it <em>does</em> date to early Muslim texts that evince an antipathy toward idolatry; it also emerges from a related desire, among Muslims, to distinguish themselves from other religious communities. </p>
<p>Historically, many Muslims have viewed the possession of religious images as a slippery slope: a step toward worshiping idols or assigning partners to God (and thereby corrupting one’s monotheism, or <em>shirk</em>, in Arabic). It’s a concern Islam shares with Judaism and several forms of Protestant Christianity. </p>
<p>While it’s naïve to view recent violence as strictly a “reaction to images,” in the context of the culture wars that pervade our planet, images are nonetheless powerful symbols that spread quickly. </p>
<h2>Paintings and partial taboos</h2>
<p>Muslims haven’t always associated religious images with idolatry. There are many fine examples of <a href="http://www.davidmus.dk/assets/3822/Copyright_David_Collection_Copenhagen_14_2014_recto_web.jpg">painted images of Muhammad</a> – many appear in <a href="http://kilyos.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/%7Ehistory/ottoman33.html">lavishly illustrated biographies</a> of him that date from medieval times.</p>
<p>Almost invariably, the rich were the sole possessors of these rare, expensive books and, as is often the case, the rules of the palace differed from those of the street. For this reason, the art and book collections of the elite probably had little influence on the religious practices of the majority, and most surviving Islamic talismans and relics in mass circulation don’t depict Muhammad or other religious figures. </p>
<p>Still, pictorial traditions survived in some places, while new ones emerged in others, most notably in the proliferation of <a href="http://www.org.uib.no/popularikonografi//lrg/236_a_.jpg">colorful images of Muhammad</a> and saints in modern Iran. Whether this can be attributed to a theological characteristic of Shi'ism – the dominant Muslim sect in Iran – or a peculiarity of Persian culture is open to debate. Outside of Shi'ism, however, predominantly Sunni societies – which, in most countries, account for the overwhelming majority of Muslims – treat religious images with an aversion verging on taboo. </p>
<p>But having an aversion to religious images isn’t the same as violently responding to them. Indeed, devoutly religious people often deliberately avoid subjecting their beliefs to the rough handling of the political arena. These attitudes of social quietism characterize the majority of Muslims. </p>
<p>To the frequent horror and chagrin of this majority, there exist Muslim individuals and groups who espouse a muscular and confrontational interpretation of their religion. They cast themselves as the moral guardians of their faith and espouse a social ideal where a singular interpretation of the religion dictates the course of private and public life. This ideology – Salafism – flourishes in an environment of conflict and disorder. It’s shared by diverse groups such as ISIS/Da’ish, Boko Haram and by the various al-Qa’ida franchises. </p>
<p>Such groups are always publicly opposed to any and all forms of visual representation of Muhammad – just as they are to many other aspects of Muslim life, such as visiting shrines, religious music and dance and female participation in public life. Although the Saudi state might not directly support any of these Salafi groups, it ideologically and materially sustains the politicized social agendas of Salafism. In fact, this sort of highly politicized iconoclasm has motivated Saudi Arabia <a href="http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/saudi_destruction_of_muslim_historical_sites1">to destroy cherished pieces of Islamic heritage</a>, including artifacts associated directly with Muhammad: his wife Khadija’s house has been demolished and there are recurrent threats to erase Muhammad’s own grave. </p>
<h2>The Prophet as American lawgiver</h2>
<p>Attention given to a representation of Muhammad in the US Supreme Court is illustrative of conflicting meanings of religious images to Muslims. </p>
<p>On the chamber’s interior north wall, there’s a marble frieze that celebrates great lawgivers in history. Muhammad stands among them. Holding the Quran in his left hand and a scimitar in his right, he is flanked by Charmelagne and Justinian. Moses stands nearby. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69918/original/image-20150123-24505-1fb8fz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69918/original/image-20150123-24505-1fb8fz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69918/original/image-20150123-24505-1fb8fz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69918/original/image-20150123-24505-1fb8fz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69918/original/image-20150123-24505-1fb8fz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69918/original/image-20150123-24505-1fb8fz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69918/original/image-20150123-24505-1fb8fz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On the interior of the Supreme Court’s north wall, there’s a marble frieze that depicts Muhammad.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Muhammad_-_SCOTUS.jpg">Franz Jantzen</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Muhammad’s image went largely unnoticed for 66 years. But in early 1997, it came to the attention of Muslim groups in the US. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/supcourt/stories/sculpture.htm">16 of them came together to sign a petition requesting that the face be erased</a>. They pointed out that a 3D statue was more problematic than a painting because it mimicked the human form more closely – and, therefore, was more likely to be subjected to inappropriate veneration. </p>
<p>Some Muslim groups argued that it wasn’t just Muhammad who should be defaced, but Moses as well: as a prophet, he deserved the same treatment. Other objections concerned the negative connotations of the sword in Muhammad’s right hand and the placement of the Quran in his left (which is reserved for unclean tasks in Muslim cultures). </p>
<p>The collective Muslim reaction was respectful and thoughtful. They expressed appreciation for the intent behind including Muhammad in the frieze and suggested that some form of face veil (or sandblasting) would be enough to satisfy their concerns. </p>
<p>Though their demands weren’t met, the Supreme Court information sheet describing the frieze was revised to refer to Muhammad as a “prophet” rather than as the “founder” of Islam (as he’d initially been designated). It now pointedly <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/northandsouthwalls.pdf">states</a> that the figure “…bears no resemblance to Muhammad. Muslims generally have a strong aversion to sculptured or pictured representations of their Prophet.” The matter has not been revived in the years since. </p>
<p>Pictures have no intrinsic value – as allowable or forbidden, likable or loathsome – to Muslims or anyone else. They matter as artifacts, and artifacts matter for their symbolic value. There may be no easy answer to the question of how and when one bows to political pressure or religious sensitivity, but one thing is for sure: as long as Muslim identity remains a contested part of regional and global conflicts, the battle over images won’t be over.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36402/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamal J. Elias does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After the violent attacks on Charlie Hebdo – the French satirical weekly that routinely published caricatures of Muhammad – many are wondering: are depictions of Muhammad actually forbidden in Islamic…Jamal J. Elias, Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies, University of PennsylvaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/365802015-01-21T21:49:47Z2015-01-21T21:49:47ZCan the French teach us a basic civics lesson about handling terrorism?<p>We have now had time to digest the tragic events in Paris. </p>
<p>The press has made its predictable set of news cycles in the last two weeks. They have covered the actual events themselves. Then, in America, we moved to the historic rallies in the aftermath of the attack - and the issue of President Obama’s absence. </p>
<p>What the American press clearly missed in that discussion was that nobody in France particularly cared about Obama’s absence. What they loved was that John Kerry made a condolence speech directed to them in French. </p>
<p>This was quickly followed by the news of the escape of some of those who were involved, then the antiterrorism raids in Belgium, the publication of the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo and, more recently, the summit meetings intended to improve coordination and the arrest of possible collaborators.</p>
<p>What is particularly notable in the reporting, debates and discussion is the strikingly different tone on each side of the Atlantic. I was in Paris in those early days and witnessed some events first-hand. But I have been following the discussion in the media in France and the US since I returned to the US. </p>
<p>Frankly, we in the US don’t look very good in this comparison. </p>
<h2>Unity in being French</h2>
<p>From day one, the French, despite their heightened anxiety, have stressed the importance of unity. Their politicians from the two main political parties have gone to great lengths to emphasize that “being French” is all that matters, regardless of whether you are a Muslim, a Jew or a subversive, secular cartoonist. </p>
<p>Invoking what is perennially called their “assimilationist” model of integration, France’s Socialist President, Francois Hollande, vowed that his country will protect all religions, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30829733">saying</a> that Muslims are the main victims of fanaticism. France’s police and military forces have been assigned to protect its synagogues, but also its mosques. </p>
<p>Having marched in solidarity in the Place de la Republique, Hollande was quick to give a speech at the Renaissance Forum of the Arab World Institute to demonstrate he stood behind what he said about national unity.</p>
<p>Prime Minister <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30794973">Manuel Valls</a> has actively supported Hollande’s message of unity. Valls suggested France simply cannot be France without its Jews. So the government must do everything it can to ensure they are – and they feel – safe. Yet in an even handed approach, he was <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30794973">quick to stress</a> that that France is at war with terrorism, not with Islam. But the response is not just greater security. Much of the onus has been on education and urban development in the poorer sections of France’s Muslim community. </p>
<p>The governing socialist party has not been alone in advancing the theme of unity, or of civil liberties. </p>
<p>When leading Conservative UMP (Union Pour Un Mouvement Populaire) politician Dominique de Villepin was asked what he thought of introducing Patriot Act style legislation, he responded that he didn’t think it was a good idea. <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/France-Patriot-Act-terror-attacks/2015/01/17/id/619215/">He feared</a> it would endanger France’s “moral compass.” </p>
<p>This spirit of unity is probably best personified by Lassana Bathily, the Muslim Malian national who worked at the kosher supermarket that was attacked. </p>
<p>Bathily hid shoppers during the attack, was universally lauded, and then awarded French citizenship in a fast-track process. When interviewed, <a href="http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2015/01/16/lassana-bathily-sera-naturalise-francais_4557681_3224.html">he told reporters</a> that the Jewish staff there would kid him, asking when he was going to find a nice Jewish girlfriend.</p>
<p>Likewise, million of French of all shades and religions have marched in solidarity over the last two weeks. This included in Marseille, the city with the largest number of Muslims, where <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30769681">thousands</a> took to the streets to voice their rejection of fanaticism. </p>
<p>Sure, Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front Party, has opportunistically used these events <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/opinion/marine-le-pen-france-was-attacked-by-islamic-fundamentalism.html?_r=0">to call </a>for a more strident foreign policy against Jihadists abroad and the re-imposition of border controls at home. </p>
<p>But what has been notable has been the way her views, and her party, have been sidelined.<a href="http://example.com/"> A recent opinion poll</a> had the Socialists ahead (30%) of the National Front (28%) for the first time since September : Le Pen has not enjoyed the popular wave of nationalist support that many anticipated. France’s political moderates, from the left and the right, have endorsed a greater public show of security, but defied all calls for sectarianism.</p>
<h2>Plus ca change: polarized in the US</h2>
<p>In contrast, the American media has continued to emphasize the politics of division, the politics of identity, the politics of “us versus them.” </p>
<p>Some of this supposed reporting has been astoundingly inaccurate, inept and divisive. Steve Emerson, identified on Fox News as a terrorism expert, told the host Sean Hannity that, “there are no-go zones” throughout Europe ruled by Muslims. This is patently false and the news station had to retract and apologize for repeating the claim. </p>
<p>Indeed, Fox News have made such fools of themselves that they have had to issue a public apology. Meanwhile, the French have caricatured them on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/world/europe/fox-news-becomes-unwilling-star-of-french-tv-show.html?src=me">Le Petit Journal</a>, their equivalent of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. </p>
<p>But even the far more subtle and sophisticated <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/world/europe/new-charlie-hebdo-has-muhammad-cartoon.html?action=click&contentCollection=US%20Open&region=Article&module=Promotron">New York Times</a> has published an endless stream of articles focusing on the theme of potential divisions between Muslims and the rest of France rather than the theme of solidarity. </p>
<p>What is so curious about this is that we Americans pride ourselves on being a “melting pot” for people of all races, religions and countries. Our politicians constantly tell us that America is a model. It is a shining light for the rest of the world. But you don’t have to be a fan of France to recognize a sober reality. The French are handling their equivalent of 9/11 a lot differently – and some would argue better – then we have. </p>
<p>In the aftermath of 9/11 we constricted civil liberties at home. We rounded up and incarcerated Muslims. And we instituted surveillance programs. American Muslims were treated as the enemy of this country, as were people who supposedly looked like Muslims. It is easy now to recall the misplaced horror with which critics reacted to the idea of a mosque being located near the twin towers in New York. Those critics included respectable politicians who should have been a voice of moderation. </p>
<p>We also, of course, tortured foreign suspects, imprisoned them in Guantanamo (and still do) and prosecuted two wars. Some of these things have clearly changed. Some have improved. Many Americans regret some of our activities during this period, putting it down to some kind of national psychosis. </p>
<p>But the hangover from that period is clearly still with us. We see the events in France through the lens of our own experience. We focus on what we think should divide the French. We are, it would seem, incredulous that they don’t share our propensity to look for a widespread subversive enemy within. That they prefer to treat this as a criminal, policing issue rather than the basis for a foreign war.</p>
<p>Of course, all this internal strife may yet come to pass. </p>
<p>The French have stepped up their military involvement in Iraq and Syria. And the moderating efforts of the center may not hold against the forces of division. But today, as things stand, it looks like the French can clearly teach us a thing or two about “standing together or falling apart.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36580/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
We have now had time to digest the tragic events in Paris. The press has made its predictable set of news cycles in the last two weeks. They have covered the actual events themselves. Then, in America…Simon Reich, Professor in The Division of Global Affairs and The Department of Political Science, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/360922015-01-21T10:59:57Z2015-01-21T10:59:57ZThe cycle of anti-Muslim discrimination in France is likely to worsen<p>Muslims in France and the French host population are locked in a discriminatory equilibrium. This is the conclusion, summarized in our soon-to-be published <a href="https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/events/book-conference-why-muslim-integration-fails-inquiry-christian-heritage-societies">book,</a> of a six-year research program that investigates whether and why Muslims are discriminated against in France.</p>
<p>In 2009, we organized behavioral games in Paris in which “rooted” French (French with no recent immigrant background) interacted with Muslim and Christian immigrants. With the exception of their religion, these Muslim and Christian immigrants were similar. They hail from the same two ethnic groups and the same socio-economic class in Senegal and migrated to France at the same time (the 1970s) and for the same economic reasons.</p>
<p>Our behavioral games allowed us to compare the level of trust and altruism that rooted French exhibit toward Muslim immigrants and their Christian counterparts by having them play simultaneously a <a href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bestiary_of_Behavioral_Economics/Trust_Game">trust game</a> and a <a href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bestiary_of_Behavioral_Economics/Dictator_Game">dictator game</a>.</p>
<h2>The research shows basic bias against Muslims</h2>
<p><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mavalfortwebpage/home/research/ALV_EquilibriumJPopE.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1">Our results</a> show that, while the rooted French do not distrust Muslims any more than Christians, they are less altruistic toward Muslims. </p>
<p>Put differently, rooted French discriminate in a “non rational” manner against Muslims. When given a common task, they are less cooperative toward Muslims (particularly those with recognizably Muslim names) even when they do not expect any particular hostility from the Muslims with whom they interact.</p>
<p>Moreover, while increasing the proportion of Muslims in French society might reduce such prejudice due to increased opportunity for interaction, <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mavalfortwebpage/home/research/AESFullPaper_AdidaLaitinValfortREVISED-FINAL.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1">our results</a> suggest the opposite. </p>
<p>When we increased the proportion of Muslims in our game environment there were measurable signs that the discriminatory attitudes of the rooted French were heightened. The <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2011/01/27/the-future-of-the-global-muslim-population/">expected</a> increase of the Muslim population in France (from 7.5% in 2010 to 10.3% in 2030), our research suggests, will not improve anti-Muslim prejudice, other factors remaining constant.</p>
<h2>Discrimination evident in the workplace</h2>
<p>The anti-Muslim discrimination we reveal is not confined to the lab. </p>
<p>We accompanied our behavioral games with <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mavalfortwebpage/home/research/ALV-PNAS.pdf?attredirects=0">a correspondence test</a> comparing responses to a Senegalese Christian (<em>Marie</em> Diouf) and to a Senegalese Muslim (<em>Khadija</em> Diouf) job applicant who submitted the exact same CVs, with two differences only: one job and one volunteer experience. </p>
<p>One of Khadija’s past positions was with <em>Secours Islamique</em> (Islamic Relief) and one of Marie’s was with <em>Secours Catholique</em> (Catholic relief). Also, Khadija did voluntary work for the <em>Scouts Musulmans de France</em>, whereas Marie did the same for the comparable Catholic organization, <em>Scouts et Guides de France</em>. </p>
<p>Our findings reveal that a job applicant in France is 2.5 times less likely to receive a job interview callback when she is perceived as Muslim instead of Christian by the employer.</p>
<h2>What about religious norms?</h2>
<p>Is there a factual basis for the sense of cultural threat rooted French experience when interacting with Muslims? </p>
<p>In his research, Berkeley political scientist Steven Fish <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/are-muslims-distinctive-9780199769209?cc=us&lang=en&">shows</a> that the average Muslim respondent is more religious than the average Christian respondent. The average Muslim score (on a 1 to 10 scale where 1 means that God has the least importance in one’s life and 10 means that it has the greatest importance) is 9.5. For the average Christian it is 8.1. </p>
<p>Our own survey, conducted in France among the group of Senegalese Christian and Muslim immigrants mentioned above, <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mavalfortwebpage/home/research/ALV_EquilibriumJPopE.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1">confirms</a> that Muslims are distinctive from their Christian counterparts in terms of religiosity. Their mean score on the 1 to 10 scale is 9.0 compared with 7.6 for their Christian counterparts and 3.1 for the average rooted French respondent. </p>
<p>But Muslims are distinctive in other ways also. </p>
<h2>What about women?</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Are-Muslims-Distinctive-Look-Evidence/dp/0199769214">Steven Fish’s work showed</a> that Muslims are more likely to agree that “a university education is more important for a boy than for a girl,” to think that “when jobs are scarce, men should have more rights to a job than women” and to support the idea that “men make better political leaders than women do.” </p>
<p>Our research <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mavalfortwebpage/home/research/Economics%26Politics_ALV.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1">confirms</a> that Muslim immigrants in France differ from their Christian counterparts in gender attitudes. Senegalese Christian immigrants and rooted French show greater altruism toward their female game partners than toward their male ones but the opposite is true for Muslims: they are more generous toward men than women.</p>
<p>Muslims in France not only attach more importance to religion than do the average French, but they also support more conservative views and behaviors towards women. </p>
<p>They <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20121025-france-muslim-opinion-poll-survey-exposes-french-anxieties-over-islam-mosque-far-right/">are perceived by the French host population</a> as a challenge to France’s century-long commitment to the separation of church and state (what the French call laïcité) and its 50-year struggle for gender equality. </p>
<p>But this sense of a cultural threat is not rational. As French political scientists Sylvain Brouard and Vincent Tiberj <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2103_reg.html">have shown,</a> the average Muslim’s higher level of religiosity has nothing to do with the Islamist position that religious principles should be the foundation of governance. Nor do their more traditional views on gender roles call for the repression of women.</p>
<h2>Discrimination leads Muslim community to withdraw further</h2>
<p>Yet, this sense of threat felt by the so-called rooted French feeds irrational anti-Muslim behavior. And this behavior, in turn, encourages Muslims to withdraw from French society. </p>
<p>Our survey results <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mavalfortwebpage/home/research/ALV_EquilibriumJPopE.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1">clearly indicate</a> that Muslim immigrants detect more hostility in France toward them than do their Christian counterparts. Consequently, they have few incentives to abandon their own cultural norms to identify more closely with French culture and society. This withdrawal further feeds anti-Muslim discrimination in France.</p>
<p>Distressingly, the Charlie Hebdo shooting and the attack on a kosher supermarket can only reinforce this vicious cycle of discrimination. </p>
<p>The attack by a few has strengthened the misguided belief that Muslims as a whole constitute a major threat to France. </p>
<p>To break this cycle, actions must be taken to increase public awareness that “being a Muslim” is not equivalent to “being a Jihadist.” Mobilizing the Muslim population in France to coalesce at least around the “I am neither Koachi nor Coulibaly” slogan if not around “I am Charlie” would also help unravel France’s worrisome discriminatory trap.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36092/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Laitin receives funding from the United States National Science Foundation. He was affiliated with Sciences-Po (Paris) as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire L. Adida and Marie-Anne Valfort do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Muslims in France and the French host population are locked in a discriminatory equilibrium. This is the conclusion, summarized in our soon-to-be published book, of a six-year research program that investigates…Marie-Anne Valfort, Associate Professor of Economics, Paris School of Economics , Université Paris 1 Panthéon-SorbonneClaire L. Adida, Assisant Professor, Political Science , University of California, San DiegoDavid Laitin, James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science, Stanford UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.