There’s been lots written about the Paris attacks, and I don’t feel the need to add much to the cacophony on the issue of what specifically motivated the attackers, or whether this represents a problem with Islam, or how best to respond. I’ve been trying to collect my thoughts for a few days, and the one thing that I keep returning to in the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher is not so much the attacks themselves, but the responses to the attacks, and I find it difficult to conclude anything other than the fact that we have lost.
The use of “we” here is somewhat loaded, and I don’t use it as a means of implying a Samuel Huntington clash of civilizations argument. I don’t think that the West is fated to clash with the “Muslim world” – however one wants to define such an amorphous term – and I also don’t think that vast hordes of Middle Eastern Muslims are seeking to overrun the West or reestablish a caliphate. Different people coming from different cultural environments are going to have different worldviews, and most just want to live their own lives according to their own values. There exists in France a cadre of extremely nasty, retrograde, barbaric, brutal Islamist terrorists, three of whose lives were thankfully extinguished by French security forces last Friday. There are more where those three came from, and the fact that they are Muslim is neither an irrelevant piece of information nor the only relevant piece of information one needs. The situation is bad enough; there’s no need to exaggerate it and extrapolate from Paris that all Muslims are terrorists, that all Muslims are responsible for the acts of some, or that holding intemperate views of Western society, Israel, or Jews automatically makes one a suicide bomber in waiting (although it certainly doesn’t speak well for most people who do hold those intemperate views). There is also no need to pretend that the Islamist views held by these three particular terrorists are simply a coincidence, that they were motivated solely by poverty and cultural alienation, and that their womanizing and weed-smoking pasts mean that their late-in-life religious awakening makes them completely unconnected from any authentic and authoritative version of Islam.
With that out of the way, by “we” I mean non-extremists of all stripes, and we are losing the fight against extremists. I don’t mean this in a military sense, as committed Western states will always be able to kill far more terrorists thugs than terrorists can kill civilians. As I wrote a few of months ago in relation to ISIS, the real fight here is against an ideology rather than against a specific group of people, and until the ideology itself becomes discredited, the symptom of jihadi violence is going to be here to stay. Contra Francis Fukuyama circa 1992, we have not yet arrived at the end of political history and reached some sort of political equilibrium, and until the ideology motivating jihadi extremism is defeated on the battlefield of ideas, we can kill as many al-Qaida leaders as we can find and station as many soldiers in front of synagogues and Jewish schools as we can manage, but it won’t end the problem. Ideas are defeated by more powerful ideas, not by military hardware and firepower.
This may be my own bias at work here given my obvious personal and professional interest, but the largest bellwether to me in illustrating the fact that we are losing is Turkey. You’ll never see me spout the simplistic platitudes about Turkey having one foot in the West and one in the East or using the metaphor of Istanbul being a land bridge between continents to glean some larger lesson, but it is highly relevant that Turkey is a Muslim-majority country that is part of NATO and is looking to join the EU, as these variables make it exposed to Europe and the West in a significant way. If Turkey buys into the extremist rhetoric and outlandish ideas rocketing around the Middle East, then we have little hope of convincing those who have less firsthand experience with the West that we aren’t evil personified.
So what do we see coming from Turkey? For starters, as Steven Cook highlighted yesterday, there’s the unwavering belief that jihadi terrorism is caused by Islamophobia, and thus victims such as the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists have it coming to them due to their actions (never mind the inconvenient fact of Jews murdered in a kosher grocery store just for being Jewish rather than for anything they have allegedly done). This line of argument is spouted not just by uneducated Anatolian farmers, but by the president, prime minister, and foreign minister of Turkey. It is an argument that deeply believes free speech must have limits, and that when those limits are violated, the responsibility for any ensuing terrorism or violence primarily lies at the feet of those whose speech went too far. If you want a sense of the zeitgeist in Turkey with regard to this issue, Ibrahim Kalın – President Erdoğan’s top foreign policy advisor – has a column in this morning’s Daily Sabah that lays out the argument dominating the thinking of Turkey’s government and pro-government elites, in which he explicitly makes the case that Islamophobia is as large a problem as al-Qaida terrorism, and that stopping and condemning hate speech against Muslims is as important to preventing future attacks as is taking counter-terror measures. I do not mean to imply that Islamophobia isn’t real, or that it’s not a genuine problem, but when your initial reaction to a terrorist attack is, “that’s what happens when you let free speech get out of control,” I’d suggest that you are well outside the proper and appropriate Western consensus. I have a personal mantra that I am sure I have used on this blog and that my coworkers make fun of me for spouting ad nauseum, which is that the response to objectionable speech should always be more speech. It should certainly not be terrorist violence. I am a free speech absolutist and I do not believe that speech should ever be censored; if someone says something you don’t like, then use your right to free speech to argue with them and make sure that your speech, rather than theirs, wins in the marketplace of ideas. If you are not willing to unreservedly condemn terrorism against Charlie Hebdo, Jyllands-Posten, Theo van Gogh, and others because you are offended by what these publications and people had to say, then you’re doing it wrong. But the fact is that large swathes of people, not just in Turkey but also in countries ranging from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia, disagree with me, and that means that we are losing.
Then there is the related idea that Islamophobes are the ones who actually carry out terrorist attacks and purposely frame Muslims in order to discredit Islam in the West. Just read this column from Ibrahim Karagül in Yeni Şafak – one of Turkey’s most prominent Islamist newspapers – in which he says that the attack was a false flag operation designed to discredit Muslims, that the global war on terrorism was concocted by the U.S. and Europe as a way to shape the 21st century, and that terrorist attacks in the vein of the Charlie Hebdo massacre share the characteristic of being linked to intelligence agencies. To quote from this vile abomination of a column directly: “In this context, an extremely strategic target was chosen in the latest attack. The perfect excuse has been handed to the rising racist tide by killing a magazine team with a previous record. No better target could have been chosen to spur the European public to action. No other place could be found to nourish hostility against Islam and spur the masses to action. No better example could be provided to depict the link between Islam and violence.” On second thought, don’t read the column, as Yeni Şafak doesn’t deserve any more clicks that it already gets.
Keep in mind that this is not coming from the fringe, but from one of Erdoğan’s favorite papers and a reliable government mouthpiece. While the esteemed Mr. Karagül never fingers the true Paris culprit or culprits by name, you can imagine whom he believes is responsible. Just in case your imagination has limits, we can thankfully turn to the always reliable AKP mayor of Ankara, “Mad” Melih Gökçek, who is happy to let us know that the Mossad carried out the attacks in Paris in retaliation for France’s recognition of Palestine, and that it is all part of an effort to stir up Islamophobia by framing Muslims for the attacks. That this attitude is widespread within the AKP should not be surprising, as the tone was set from the top in 2009 when Erdoğan insisted that Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir could not be responsible for genocide in Darfur because “it is not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide,” and therefore ipso facto it cannot have occurred. The same logic applies here, and thus it requires a search for the real killers, ignoring any shred of evidence that maybe, just maybe, the terrorist attacks in France were indeed carried out by Islamist jihadis inspired by ideas promulgated by groups like al-Qaida and ISIS.
I could go on, but hopefully by now you get the point. A NATO-member country, with massive commercial and defense links to the U.S. and Europe, whose leaders speak English and many of whom have been educated in the U.S. and Europe, should know better. It should know that terrorism against civilians must be condemned full-stop, that drawing offensive cartoons does not mean that you deserve to be killed, that the Mossad did not just engage in a deadly false flag operation, and that no government is killing its own people in order to gin up anti-Muslim sentiment and create a pretext for persecuting its own Muslim population. When it doesn’t seem to know these things, it means we have lost the battle of ideas, and the extremists are winning. Not insignificant numbers of educated and sophisticated people in the Middle East genuinely believe that what happened in Paris is part of a larger conspiracy to frame Muslims for violent acts, that the U.S. created ISIS as an excuse to launch new military operations in Iraq and Syria, that 9/11 was a false flag operation designed to further a clash between the West and Islam, and on and on. The debate over whether the appropriate approach to combating jihadi terrorism is a military one or a law enforcement one is the wrong debate, because it misses the point. Neither approach is going to do the job, because this is a war of ideas, and so killing or prosecuting terrorists will only get you so far. People need to be convinced that extremism is both futile and the wrong way of seeing the world, and I don’t know how best to wage that battle, but I am pretty confident it is the one that needs to be waged.
One of the widespread techniques used when teaching international relations to undergraduates is to look at the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War and apply different schools of international relations theory toward explaining this earth-shattering event. If you are a realist, you point to the fact that U.S. military spending and economic superiority were too much for the Soviets to overcome, and they were brought down by overwhelming American hard power that can be measured. If you are a constructivist, you look at the battle of ideas and trace the way in which Communism became so discredited in the face of Western liberal democracy and capitalism that the entire Communist edifice collapsed as it lost its legitimacy. I have always been more drawn to the latter explanation for a number of reasons, but most of all because it wasn’t just the Soviet Union that disappeared overnight, but Communism itself. Yes, small pockets of it remain (and no, China is not Communist today in any meaningful way), but for a political and economic system that controlled nearly half the world to just disappear is remarkable, and it wouldn’t have happened had the only blow been the fall of its largest state patron.
The same thing needs to happen when it comes to the philosophy of extremism motivating the type of jihadi terror as we saw in Paris last week. There is no way to prevent these types of attacks from a logistical perspective; Paris was not an intelligence failure, and while the French police can deploy thousands of soldiers and police to protect nearly every potential Jewish target in France, there is not enough manpower to sustain that permanently. Even if there was, it wouldn’t be a failsafe solution. Until attitudes change in a major way, until jihadi extremism is discredited, until more extremists believe that there is a better way, and until the ideas animating jihadi extremist terror are demonstrated to have failed abjectly and completely, we will continue to lose. Pretty depressing way to start the new year, huh?
These attitudes have been in the Muslim community for hundreds of years. Nothing is new here. They were kidnapping, enslaving our sailers, and blackmailing us to the tune of 20% of our national budget in the name of their religion until Jefferson put an end to it. All of a sudden this attitude is going to change? Islamophobia is a phony issue. There are far more attacks on Jews than Muslims. This nonsense of islamophobia is heavily supported by most of our media. When Jews are slaughtered in France the NY Times runs an article on the effect on Muslims. What about the Jews who send their kid to school with guards armed with machine Guns?
The problem lies in the hypocrisy of the most western country’s thinking. They demand complete respect for their values as in the case of this recent “Free speech” case, while they show complete disrespect for other’s values and they go as far as trashing their Prophet!
By the way, from my name do not assume I am a Muslim. I am an atheist and have no religion; however, I have enough common sense to recognize hypocrisy when I see it!
Thinking in the “west” is not a monolith, governments do not always represent what the people want either. There are universal values, free speech being one of them, as well as expected honesty when representing the character of another person; a check and a balancing act to be performed. I dislike the inconsiderate treatment of the prophet Mohammed by these cartoonists, but how to address this hurt is a matter of gaining the understanding, respect, and support of the public by public gatherings and explaining what it feels like to have been so wronged in a like manner to those who are of another faith, rather than armed attacks on a bunch of toonies.
What it seems to be is a sense of empathy lost in this world, for any one of us could be in anyone else’s shoes at any time, if we put our minds to it.
Can we really expect their understanding by sweet talking to those cartoonists? What choice left to the hard core Muslims?
Very well written. My reply is more to Mr. Tok than the blog, because I agree full heartedly with it. One of the main problems we are facing today is we have completely become depend on other cultures, religions and people when it comes to our own self worth. We are like adolecent children seeking praise from their parents and clinge to their words, hoping they will respect us and treat us in a more equal footing. But, why do we care so much? Have we lost so much of our self worth, that when a satarical magazine, that I have never heard of before until the disgusting attack in Paris, makes fun of Islam, Muslims or the Prophet we go all hysterical. I know we are believers in the youngest monotheists religion, but seriously we need to act more our age as Islam is almost 1500 years old.
I actually have to agree with Ergun Tok. Free speech, while central to the Western system for finding truth, justice, and individual happiness, probably could survive and still fulfill all of its important social functions with a little bit of a blasphemy carve-out, to respect the differing values of a population with whom we share the globe. I’m not interested in any free speech restrictions. I’m a gay western liberal. I’m not interested in any blasphemy laws. Nor am I interested in “capitulating to terrorists.” But, you know, this images of the Prophet thing is a really big deal for Muslims. It’s not actually that big of an ask, in the grand scheme of things. Given that we’re not going to get the entire globe to adopt one way of thinking (nor should we), we have to find out how to live together. Going ahead and making it illegal to cartoon the Prophet — and I know this is 1000% against everybody’s mood right now — is really a pretty small gesture toward living together. Demanding that every foreign culture meet us on exactly our terms, under our conditions — well, it *is* arrogant. Free speech is strong enough as a principle and a means of living that it doesnt need to be defended with the absolutist and totalizing zeal of a partisan.
Thanks you for a very informative commentary, which makes a very important point. Yet all of this “Je suis Charlie” alienates Muslims all the more. If we are truly interested in winning over Muslims, isn’t it in the West’s strong interest to be seen by them as respectful toward their most sacred beliefs? I’m not talking about state-censorship but enlightened self-control.
You consider yourself a free speech absolutist yet live in a global melting pot of ethnic groups that haven’t been fully melted-in yet. What many in the West consider “satire” is regarded by Muslims as blasphemy. Is it any surprise that the occasional explosion happens in this volatile melting pot?
In the U.S., incendiary speech is constrained in the public interest for good reason. One could argue that your absolutist position is also outside the Western consensus.
I do believe that Europe is in trouble with its substantial Muslim population being simply told to accept that poking fun at Mohammed should be OK. Even in the US, poking fun at Jesus is generally not acceptable in mainstream discourse.
Not everyone in France is a sophisticated anti-clerical enlightenment thinker. France will learn eventually, but French arrogance will make it difficult.
I have read your article with great interest. I found it interesting and informative but it is missing a singularly important context. That context is that Erdogan in Turkey is trying to cover up his own failures and corruption by gravitating towards Islam–a far cry from the secularism of Ataturk.
The Turkish ruling elite will now say anything that will make them be seen as genuine Islamists. I don’t think they actually believe what they are saying but for them it is a useful political ploy. The real concern therefore is where this might lead their followers.
So here is a writer who writes well…. but his narrow vision….renders him part of the problem rather than part of the solution in my opinion.
What he fails to elaborate upon is the sad fact that a lot of blow-back that innocent Jews face around the globe, unjustifiably, could very well be infact tied to the Israeli policies towards its Arab citizens and its Arab neighbors. It is that very injustice that AKP & Erdogan can capitalize on…. and you cant blame them if they do, cuz it is very effective politics for them.
What he fails to grasp is that in the backdrop of WMD lies to invade Iraq, you cannot blame Putins of the world for taking over Crimea…..
What he fails to understand is that in having dictatorial allies like Saudi Arabia and such, the west enables Russias and Irans of the world to help Assads of the world……
what he doesn’t mention is that in parts of the world where a few hundred thousand innocent lives are lost each year(and rendered collateral damage) to western powers pursuing their interests ruthlessly…. its kinda hard to convince them to mourn a few dead journalists that those people had no contact with except for that they perceive them as some rather mundane and peaceful souls that insulted their sensibilities…. for some odd reason.
On this world’s stage….. in this the tango of international diplomacy and relations….. each move is a reactionary one……
So if you really want to change the status quo, you need to change the music and take a lead…..
So here is a writer who writes well…. but his narrow vision….renders him part of the problem rather than part of the solution in my opinion.
What he fails to elaborate upon is the sad fact that a lot of blow-back that innocent Jews face around the globe, unjustifiably, could very well be infact tied to the Israeli policies towards its Arab citizens and its Arab neighbors. It is that very injustice that AKP & Erdogan can capitalize on…. and you cant blame them if they do, cuz it is very effective politics for them.
What he fails to grasp is that in the backdrop of WMD lies to invade Iraq, you cannot blame Putins of the world for taking over Crimea…..
What he fails to understand is that in having dictatorial allies like Saudi Arabia and such, the west enables Russias and Irans of the world to help Assads of the world……
What he doesn’t mention is that in parts of the world where a few hundred thousand innocent lives are lost each year(and rendered collateral damage) to western powers pursuing their interests ruthlessly…. its kinda hard to convince them to mourn a few dead journalists that those people had no contact with except for that they perceive them as some rather mundane and peaceful souls that insulted their sensibilities…. for some odd reason.
On this world’s stage….. in this tango of international diplomacy and relations….. each move is a reactionary one……
So if you really want to change the status quo, you need to change the music and take a lead…..
muslims demand alot when in western societies. they aspire to become leaders in the legislation, and even the top leadership positions. however, when you visit an majority islamic nation, you find that its not remotely possible for a christian or jew to aspire to any significant elected position. islam will not allow such a thing, therefore, neither should we. it is what it is, and only they can change this.
Great writing! I don’t agree with everything that was said, but what was said was done beautifully.
I think the West has to admit once and for all that their actions in Western Asia has been destructive and caused more harm then solved problems. And the old saying “when you are in a hole, you stop digging” applies here. Western countries need to stop digging holes.
Stop arming groups and bombing countries to please special interests would be a start.
Excellent article. Keep fighting the good fight but stay safe.
From Persians to Americans for past 2500 years the project of divide and conquer continues. The methods are the same but players are different. The recent Englishman take over of Middle-East oil and resources not too long ago had to be cleaned up by Americans; Saddam, Gadhafi, and others to come in the near future. There are new players in this game now that West does not like to share with.
East eventually will win since it has better cards in this World Poker Game of control, and Islam as a weapon of mass mental destructions. Weapons and muscles have short gains, but Mental mass destructions that answers to only one commander, god, has endless gains.
Fighting with god is a endless game that has no winning on horizon. God with his followers will eventually prevail.
There were reasons that empires in the past had to relate themselves to god in order to control masses. As we know America is the land of laws that only answers to people who make the laws. When a government put god above law, it will eventually gain endless support from its people.
render unto caesar what is caesar’s. you are reading from the wrong book. american law is based on the bible, new testament.
World Jewry understand well how hate speech against Jews, particularly in Europe, can lead to tragedy. Suppose this French magazine had a clearly anti-Semitic cartoon on its cover? Jews around the world would justifiably be outraged. Where Jews are dominant (as in Israel), a sufficiently anti-Semitic provocation could also lead to bloodshed. I do not support violence against anyone; but why is this parallel not more clearly understood? How can the author, as Director of the Israel Institute, really be an “absolutist” about free speech? Perhaps Muslims should have their own Anti-defamation League?
Muslims do have an anti-defamation league . It is quite widespread and successful and is called called CAIR (https://cair.com ). The ADL and CAIR don’t get along, which is a pity but the group exists.
As for Charlie being a vehicle to marginalize Muslims I’d agree with you. France secularists are still fundamentally Catholic secularists. That’s a problem Jews have been trying to deal with for 250 years and because it is so hard not always successfully.
If history is any teacher, often pure political animals have used events to gain public support for their party or group, and unfortunately this seems still to be the case; real empathy is lost in excusing the killings, real motivations forgotten as well, all for placating an audience. They ride on a wave of general frustration in the population they are supposed to represent, and bend the truth to suit what outcomes they wish to get from their audience. Beware of the political animals.
Because emotional dramas and rhetoric sells, it is easy for some in the media to mess with the heads of millions, and thus extremism makes it all the easier to see things through a simplistic lens and join a given team to which one offers alligience unquestioningly. Teamism of the extremism.
Perhaps one reason I questioned events is because of the use of 9/11 to shove us into multiple wars, the history of ships being sunk that led to wars as well – it isn’t out the realm of possibilities that operatives could stage a false event, though this seems less likely in these cases. Just keep all eyes open and all ears perked, that’s all I am saying. Even more so when those who wish to reverse the story come out with their version of events, for here too are some of the most devious spin-doctors, planters of seeds of doubt.
The truth is more nuanced, no doubt frustration in poor neighborhoods provide fodder for radical preachers and extremists, but also the problem of dismissiveness and reverse blame towards the victims is completely wrong and excuses such awful acts, to which there is no excuse.
One thing troubling me is the basis for nation states and/or political groups rooted in an ‘ism’, a doctrine of absolutes which cannot be reconciled with another and cannot be complimentary of the other; it is as though the north going zax and the south going zax are butting heads, but the lights are turned out, so one cannot speak directly of the problem on the tracks. If progress is to be made, some softening of both hearts must occur, and a path for both worked out.
the response to objectionable speech should always be more speech: you have hit the nail on the head, dead center. Remember Radio Free Europe, as a way to counter the enemies of the Cold War? Guns and bombs can’t win the war with extreme jihadists. Rather (underline this) it is the word of Muslims against the extremists amongst them. The airwaves should be humming with interviews with their bretheren, those of the same faith but not the same persuasion vis a vis the jihadists. There should be Islamic heroes who espouse the ideals of Mohammed rather than false credoes who use out-of-context verses to legitimize terribly misleading ideas and deeds. I am but a simple man without faith in any religious persuasion. What I believe in is Kindness: SO MANY GODS/ SO MANY CREEDS/ SO MANY PATHS/ THAT WIND AND WIND/ WHILE THE/ SIMPLE ART/ OF BEING KIND/ IS ALL THE SAD WORLD/ NEEDS.
Free speech is fine for all. But what is neglected is that Islam as a whole believes in God over state. This is the fundamental clash as the west obviously believes in the state over God.
The only way around this problem is a treason laws that states that if you are fundamentally opposed to your host countries idealogical existence ,then you are being treasonous and must face the consequences. Simple.