Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Europe is facing the challenge of terrorism

As if a global pandemic wasn’t enough, Europe has become the epicenter of a new and worrying wave of attacks by Islamic extremists. France, which in recent years has been the victim of several terrorist attacks, is once again the protagonist of three episodes within a few days: the beheading of a professor found guilty of having shown cartoons on Muhammad in the newspaper Charlie Hebdo, the killing of three people in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Nice and the attempted murder of a Greek Orthodox priest in Lyon.

During a speech given in early October, President Macron announced an action plan against Islamist separatism, introducing a draft law to strengthen the secularism of the country that will be officially presented on December 9. France has the highest European percentage of Muslim citizens (5.7 million, equal to 8.5% of the population) and the estimate for 2050 will see this figure increase, reaching between 12.7 and 18%, depending on the migratory incidence.

During 2020, numerous mosques and Koranic schools were closed as they were considered places of radicalization and other associations would be in the sights of the Ministry of the Interior. Macron would like to prevent external actors from continuing to influence national Islamic communities (currently 151 imams are paid by Turkey, 120 from Algeria and 20 from Morocco) and he wants the imams to be educated in France, as well as to strengthen controls on schools and places of worship.

France is not the only European victim of this new round of violence. On 2 November it was the turn of Austria, hit in the night before the start of a new lockdown. The 20-year-old Austro-Macedonian Kujtimi Fejzulai, supported by some accomplices, opened fire on passers-by at various points in the center of Vienna, killing 4 people and wounding 22, before being shot dead. The attacker belonged to the “Lions of the Balkans”, a jihadist-style group born in 2018 and whose members live and operate in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The accusations for lack of attention, mainly linked to the release of the attacker after a short period of detention (he had in fact already been arrested in 2018 after an unsuccessful attempt to reach Syria), inevitably fell on the judiciary, on the secret services and on the internal services responsible for monitoring and countering terrorism.

Although episodes of religious violence have been sporadic in recent years (the Austrian Muslim community is quite integrated, unlike the French one), during the war in Syria there were over 300 foreign fighters who left Austria to fight in the ranks of the Islamic State; an indication of the considerable extremist substratum. Here too, the government had taken steps to close some mosques, including the one where the young terrorist is believed to have radicalized.

The social rift caused by these attacks has inevitable repercussions on the domestic and international political landscape, especially in the French case. A more extreme position allows Macron to approach a slice of the electorate that in recent years has increasingly turned towards Marine Le Pen, a likely opponent in the 2022 elections. The clash with the Turkish President Erdogan, an opposer in various conflict scenarios and champion of the Islamic cause in all respects, gave the French president a scapegoat that unites not only the national but also the European public opinion.

This polarization, however, only exacerbates the existing frictions, which are the result of a failed integration model and migration policy. If we want to avoid the clash of civilizations, we must be aware that the process to be followed are long and tortuous and require the effort of all actors, both political and religious. This path must inevitably pass from the firm condemnation of violence, the respect for personal and collective freedoms and the acceptance and adaptation to national laws.

The fight against extremism (not religions) is the only way to be able to live peacefully between different cultures.

Davide Garavoglia

…

This article was originally posted in Italian on Polikós: https://www.polikos.it/geopolitica/2020/11/non-solo-covid-leuropa-di-fronte-alla-sfida-del-terrorismo/