By Sholto Byrnes
In this chaotic age, the real truth is rarely heard
Germany is reeling after a week of unprovoked violence that left many wondering whether any public space, any gathering or any normal activity outside the confines of their own homes can now be considered safe.
An axe-wielding teenager attacks fellow passengers on a train near Wuerzburg. Another teenager uses Facebook to lure potential victims to a McDonald’s in Munich, and then kills nine people before shooting himself. A 21-year-old with a machete butchers a pregnant woman in Reutlingen. And on the same day – last Sunday – another young man explodes a rucksack next to an outdoor music festival in Ansbach, injuring 15 and taking his own life.
Three of the men were asylum seekers, and the fourth was the son of asylum seekers. It would be easy to paint the attacks as being scant thanks for Angela Merkel’s courageous generosity in opening Germany’s borders to so many migrants and for the policy of accepting other peoples in the long term.
The far right has already tried to score political points in the wake of the incidents. “If we were in power, this would not happen,” tweeted the Reutlingen branch of the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), before later taking it down. “Wuerzburg, Reutlingen, Ansbach – is Germany colourful enough for you now, Mrs Merkel?” wrote the AfD’s co-chairwoman, Fauke Petry, on Facebook. “What else has to happen so that authorities open their eyes and see what’s going on in Germany now?”
A climate in which 77 per cent of Germans now fear imminent terrorist attacks, according to a poll on Monday, may favour anti-immigrant sentiment, especially when it has been rising across the continent, and neighbouring Austria reruns a presidential election which could see a far-right candidate elected head of state for the first time in the European Union – a lamentable milestone indeed.
But the state authorities have, for the most part so far, been displaying admirable restraint. They have been referring to the perpetrators as two Syrians, a German-Iranian, and a refugee from Afghanistan. The country’s foreign minister, Thomas de Maiziere, pointed out that “in the Ansbach incident, neither a link to international Islamic State terrorism nor a mental disorder can be ruled out. It could be a combination of both”.
There have been echoes of the line taken by the Australian attorney general, George Brandis, over the weekend. “Not every mass casualty attack is an act of terrorism,” he said. “Not every premeditated act of violence is an act of terrorism.”
However, all four of the attackers had Muslim names, and two of them appeared to be inspired by ISIL. The finger is, inevitably, already being pointed at Islam and at Muslim immigrants as being violent foreigners who not only have no desire to integrate with the host culture, but who actively despise it.
The truth will struggle to be heard, which is why it is more urgent than ever that it is stated: that it would be wrong to blame either immigration or Islam for these attacks. Many of the individuals concerned were disturbed, or petty criminals, or angry men looking for a cause. As the distinguished French scholar Olivier Roy has put it, these kind of attacks in Germany, and others, such as in Nice or in Orlando, are often “more related to disenfranchisement and petty delinquency than to Islam”.
The perpetrators are frequently highly irreligious until shortly before committing their atrocities. As Mr Roy stated in an interview with Slate magazine: “It is not because they pray more and more, or go more and more to a mosque, that they become radicals.” When they become radicals, he argues, “They frame their wrath in a religious narrative”. It is what he calls “the Islamicisation of radicalism”. Islam, he says “is not the primary cause”. But ISIL’s perverted version of it provides the justification for those who already have the desire to commit evil.
Europe is familiar from its history with acts of war that were supposedly prompted by religion. It is equally aware that, from as far back as Charlemagne, religion – Christianity in this case – has been a convenient cloak under which to conduct land grabs, to rob, kill and to subject whole peoples. No Christian would accept that his religion was the true cause of these misdeeds; he would say that it was a misuse to act thus under its banner.
Europe needs to cling on to that principle and apply it as well to Islam. Many of the continent’s leaders have correctly stated that Islam is a religion of peace. It is vital that, even amid this barrage of attacks, tolerance and understanding are maintained.
Yes, the four men responsible for the recent shocking events in Germany all had Muslim names. But many of those responsible for shooting sprees in America have Christian names; and no one suggests that their crimes are terrorist acts inspired by Christianity. The black flag of ISIL is widespread enough. There is nothing to be gained from attaching it to every public murder, other than stoking the chaos the terrorists desire.
If Europeans cannot continue to separate a peaceful religion from those who fraudulently act in its name, they will not just be “living with terrorism”, as the French prime minister Manuel Valls said after the Nice atrocity. They will, in fact, have handed those self-same terrorists an important victory – ironically won on the backs of deluded individuals whose actions blaspheme the name of the religion in which they claim to act.
Sholto Byrnes is a senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia.
26 July 2016