It’s hard to admit to a reaction other than sadness to the murder of 12 people, especially when it takes place in a city that feels so close by. The images of sprawling bodies and masked assailants on familiar-looking streets gives the tragedy an extra edge of horror.
Yet in the moments after the news broke about the Charlie Hebdo massacre, I found it impossible to ignore a sinking feeling: the recognition that we were being pulled further into a cycle of distrust and division.
It grew as I read through the responses online. The straightforward reaction from far-right extremists was the hashtag #killallmuslims, which would have been easy to ignore as empty words if it hadn’t reminded me of the firebombing of mosques after the Lee Rigby murder.
Less violent but still divisive was the way the attack was depicted as a battle between Islam and freedom of speech, or between Muslims and satire – a clash-of-civilisations argument that splits the world neatly into “them” and “us”, by ignoring the staggering death toll of terrorist attacks abroad (most recently the massacre of schoolchildren in Pakistan).
Then came the seemingly reasonable calls, which always seem to accompany such atrocities, for Muslims to condemn the attack. While this demand may sound inoffensive, it implies that all Muslims, not just extremists, are implicated or secretly agree with all attacks undertaken by people in the name of religion anywhere in the world, unless we explicitly state otherwise.
It is easy to assume that terrorism works only if demands are met: if a magazine is closed down, if political changes are made. But terrorism also feeds itself by exploiting our society’s fears and fissures.
Outright Islamophobic attacks and the subtler but relentless questioning of the loyalty of Muslims create feelings of alienation that are all too easy for extremist organisations to use for their gain. In the rush to show terrorists they can’t win, solidarity and unity should not be trampled underfoot.
