One story dominates the front pages, and many inside pages, of today’s national newspapers: the murderous attack in Tunisia. With 30 Britons among the dead, that is to be expected.
Amid the emotion and the fear, there is fact: 30 Brits are dead (Daily Mirror); Tunisia attack: police on alert amid fears UK toll will hit 30 (Guardian); “And still the death toll climbs” (i); Terror police on alert amid fears of UK attack (Times); and David Cameron: now the fightback begins (the Daily Telegraph’s report on an article written by the prime minister for the paper).
There is speculation: Tunisian killer may not have acted alone (Independent). There is defiance, exemplified by a couple’s decision to get engaged after fleeing the guman: Our love is stronger than their hate (Sun); To hell with terror.. let’s get married (Star) and “Our love proves terror won’t prevail” (Metro).
There are demands: Tell us if loved ones are dead or alive (Daily Mail) and Send in SAS to crush Jihadis (Daily Express).
So what do the newspapers have to say in their editorials about the massacre in Sousse as they strive to come to terms with its ramifications?
For the Telegraph, the major lesson of the incident is the need for Muslims in Britain, especially their religious leaders, to denounce the “poisonous ideology” that gave rise to the atrocity “at every turn – in schools, in the home and in the mosques.” It concludes:
“Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, a Pakistani theologian, recently issued a fatwa against suicide bombers, stating that they should be ostracised, not lauded as martyrs.
He has suggested that British Muslims hold a mass march for peace to protest against the terrorists and everything they stand for.
Many Muslims may argue that they should not need to demonstrate their disgust for these jihadi killers. But a resolute, systematic and outspoken denunciation of the theological rationale they use to justify their actions is always welcome.”
The Sun takes a similar line in a leading article headlined Muslim families must call cops. “The authorities have done amazing work stopping IS from succeeding here so far,” it says, “but it’s an impossible task expecting them to be able to shield us forever.” It continues:
“Whether it’s through social media, Islamist forums or direct contact with hate preachers, IS’s poisonous ideology is inspiring too many British Muslims.
Home secretary Theresa May is right to demand that Muslim families report their children to the police if they fear that they’re becoming radicalised. It sounds brutal. But if they don’t, they risk becoming the parents not of oddballs intrigued by radicalisation, but of cold-blooded terrorists.”
The Sun backs Cameron’s argument that Muslim communities must do more to prevent Isis’s poison from spreading. If not, “their numbers are going to grow and grow.”
A similar view is evident in the op-ed article by Leo McKinstry in the Express, We must stand up to the extremism taking hold here. He writes:
“Contrary to the fashionable talk about ‘the vast majority’ of moderates, 40% of Muslims in Britain want to see sharia law formally established here while 30% of Muslim students on British university campuses desire a caliphate and think that killing in the name of Islam is justified.
Far from taking the fight to extremism our political class has allowed it to flourish. The vital work of our security forces has been undermined by human rights legislation and by anxiety about accusations of so-called Islamophobia.”
The Times takes a much wider view by considering the implications of the fragility of the democratic movements in north Africa. In its leader, Cherish Tunisia, it points to the “desperately forlorn” hopes that once thrived in that country and elsewhere. It says:
“If democracy fails or the economy craters in Tunisia, all that will remain of the Arab Spring will be war, autocracy and the obscenity of the so-called caliphate.
The only significant difference between north Africa before and after its experiment with plural government will be that the region is now an even more lethal incubator of extremism than it was.”
But the paper regards Tunisia as “a beachhead for civilisation in a region where civilisation is on the run.” Yet Tunisia “exports more fighters to Syria than any other country. Youth unemployment is at 35% and rising. Reforms to root out corruption and liberalise the labour market have stalled.”
For the Times, “Tunisia is a symbol of what is possible. Its ruling party is secular. Its leading Islamist party is avowedly democratic, resisting the idea of Islam as a source and limit of law.” The paper concludes:
“It is a reason to stand by Tunis come what may. Its brave experiment with democracy is too important to fail.”
The Independent is much more pessimistic about Tunisia’s future because it believes people will shy away from choosing it as a holiday destination.
In fact, says the paper, it is a further example of the way in which “the world is being closed off to casual visitors from our part of the world.” It lists others: Afghanistan (once “an important stopping-off point on a ‘hippie trail’”), Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Libya and Egypt.
“Mass tourism has a gross and exploitative side to it,” says the Indy, “but it is an important economic motor in many poor, developing countries.” And it argues:
“Our world is effectively shrinking and, as our physical horizons are reduced, it is hard not to believe that our mental horizons will not suffer the same fate.”
Both the Guardian and the Mirror praise the reaction of the Tunisian people, including hotel staff, who helped holidaymakers during the attack. Staff and medics who ran towards the bullets showed “extraordinary bravery”, says the Guardian.
Tunisia’s prosperity is now threatened, it says, “because of the shadow one madman has cast across its reputation as a holiday paradise” and it concludes:
“The terrorists’ version of Islam is a twisted distortion. Real Islam stresses hospitality. Tunisians have shown what that looks like when it is fortified with courage.”
The Mirror agrees. “In the midst of the despair, we also discover the very best in people. The heroes, British and Tunisian, who risked their lives to save others... And the Tunisians now demonstrating against the Islamists.” It says:
“Confronting the bloodthirsty fascists of the so-called Islamic State requires bravery so we should cheer the Tunisians making a stand. So as we mourn, let us welcome a glimmer of hope – supporting those in north Africa and the Middle East, most of them Muslims, in the frontline against Islamist wickedness.”
The Mail sounds a very different note by attacking the British government for its response to the incident. Why was the Foreign Office “so slow in confirming the identities of the Islamist gunman’s victims?”
It also launches an assault on “social media... for providing a vehicle for the vile Islamic State propaganda that fuelled Tunisian gunman Seifeddine Rezgui and the countless others like him who the security services fear are plotting similar ‘lone wolf’ attacks in Britain.”
Like the Telegraph and the Sun, it sees virtue in the plea by home secretary Theresa May to Muslim families to inform on their own children or friends:
“While the overwhelming majority of British Muslims abhor the terrorists – some in the Islamic community can do more to condemn and root out extremism.”
