The other image: Among the victims of terror in Paris a Muslim, one among the hostages who saved some other people, among the helpers Muslims etc. Muslims are affected by terrorism (as victims or emotionally) and work against terrorism like non-Muslims. Terror is terror, and "religionization", linking terror with a religion, is another thing, which is promoted by parts of the society for different reasons. And it has to be seen critically and its validity has to be checked with scrutiny.
For even though criminals commit crimes in the name of religion ("God wants it" was the slogan cruisaders marked on their flags and shields), this is not linked directly with the respective religion. There is no religion with violence in the centre of its teaching. Religions mainly preach human love, caring for the underprivileged, turning away from greed and hatred etc.
In marginal areas, they also deal with questions on violence and discuss cases, in which violence might be justified. There is a distance to the centre of teaching with these questions, as the answers are often ambiguous. Should one always offer the other cheek after a slap on the one, as recommended by Jesus and practiced by Gandhi? Should one tolerate the suppression of one's own religion and massacring of its members? These are questions without univocal and obliging answers as compared to more general ones like loving our neighbours.
Religion and Nonviolence
When criminals commit crimes in the name of religion, this is an excuse not covered by any religion. There is no religion, which approves of or orders crimes. There are ambiguous statements in the scriptures (e.g. Jesus: "I came not to bring peace but to bring a sword"). To derive a justification for violent deeds, is a matter or personal responsibility and cannot be derived from a religion, which contains strong arguments for nonviolence.
On the contrary, the ideas about nonviolence come to the larger extend from the pool of religions. Many enunciators of nonviolence have based their insights on religion. There is a certain logic to that: Over time, only movements can survive, which have chosen nonviolence as central value. Movements with violence as central value perish sooner or later by what they practice, like the crusades in the Middle Ages.
The Educational Societies and Prejudices
Even though, due to the events more knowledge about Islam flows into the public discourse, prejudices grow on the other hand. Those with little information about Islam may have gained more knowledge inbetween, as there is an educated discussion on Islam, its teachings and the role of violence (jihad) in this context. Those who did not know anything or hardly anything, may have adopted new prejudices offered in big numbers and with increasing publicity. This is the background of the increase of islamophobia, which interestingly does not correspond with the percentage of Muslims in society (it is comparably lower in France with the highest number of Muslims), but is stronger where there are less Muslims (e.g. in Eastern Germany).
It is difficult to understand when humans inflict violence on others. So grasping prejudices is a comfortable possibility to cope with it. We fixate a hostile group, and we feel safer (the enemy is visible) and simultanuously less safer (the enemy is visible). By fixating the enemy stereotype, we fixate our group on hostility. This again provides us with more safety - there are more of us with the same perception, and more unsafety, as the threat has become a part of our identity. This is the achievement of movements like Pegida in Germany or the Austrian Freedom Party. They affirm themselves in their fear-based prejudices and force their supporters to stand together as the only means to fight the imaginary menace.
Similar mechanisms lead to build up terror groups. We can observe similar dynamics, as they are fuelled by similar fears, only the direction is opposed. This is how the fear market is portioned.
We could formulate a nice conspiracy theory: IS and Al Qeida secretly cooperate with the islamophobic rightwing groups in Western countries towards seizing power - the first in the Muslimic states, the others in the Christian countries. Islamophobics need jihadistic acts of violence to be successful by attracting enough supportes for eventually taking over the positions of power. Jihadists need islamophobics to recruit more frustrated souls with death wish, to collect funds and to justify their atrocities (which over and over again victimize a large number of Muslims) - an alliance which does not and never will exist in reality. But the virtual experiment shows the similarity in goals and means on two opposite ends of a spectrum. (When one thinks historically, he might be reminded of the alliance between Hitler and Stalin of 1939, two extremely hatefilled and powergreedy dictators who overcame their mutual hatred, mistrust and contempt for the sake of expanding their power.)
Strengthening the Middle of Society
A civil society interested in broadening democracy and tolerance has to pay attention to the following tendency. The extremist edges of the spectrum of tolerance should not be upvalued, neither by media nor by argument. As long as the extremists are tiny compared to the large number of people in the center, not only in "Western", but increasingly in all societies, which open up to more education and distribution of information, they can only cause marginal damage. Even though every assassinated person is too much and is remorsed, it is not possible to overturn a society as such or to take total control of it by targeted or random acts of violence.
Even the almost 3000 victims of 9/11 did not cause the US-society to become more islamic or more friendly towards Islam, probably the contrary happened. The negative effects of the assault can be found on the level of the policy ruling at that time, which contracted in a kind of bunker mentality and drifted towards the edge instead of strengthening and expanding the middle of society. The massive militarization of the terror issue by the Bush-administration lead to several wars with hunderts of thousands of victims and the ruin of several states in the Middle East. It also caused the empowerment of the other edge with the result of terroristic activities around the world, but mainly in the regions it came from.
A Risk Society
The latest assaults have shown again, what came to awareness since 9/11. There is no state that is safe from terror and no state that can be made safe. It is impossible to perfectly safeguard society from the craziness and determined destructivity of single persons and small groups. It is impossible to place an anti-terror squad in front of every shop or editorial departement. There will be attacks with people wounded and killed, and probably we are among them. At the same time the strong and broad civil society will prevail, in case it does not allow to be taken over by an edge, taken hostage by an extreme minority. Instead, it grows by keeping up the values, for which generations behind us have fought, with courage and clarity .
The answer to the increasing feeling of unsafety and riks should not be to move more to the edge and find shelter in prejudices, defamation and outlawing, but in strengthening and expanding the middle. This means to manage complexity instead of simplification. Education and reflection and the free practice of the arts are the authorities, which should play a leading role in the public exchange of opinions so that reason based on humanity can continue to grow till the extremes lose their attraction.
Preventing Violence
The psychogram of terrorists does not vary much. They are mostly personalities with a story of failure, emotional lability and aggressivity and when infected by an ideology, they can become ready for using violence. Usually they are weakly educated in religion and conditioned by their cultural background. Very likely they are traumatized from their own lives and epigenetically by the fate of their anchestors.
Preventing violence requires integration. Every form of exclusion causes more aggressivity as exclusion is aggressive in itself. Integration requires a reduction of fear in the center of society. Their members have to offer an attitude free from fear and prejudices towards those coming in from the periphery. By this, the newcomers can reduce their fears and thus relieve their tendency to aggression.
The Ability of Differentiation
It is a trademark of an enlightened democratic and tolerant society to be able to differentiate. Generalizations, templates and clichés producing prejudices have to be checked again and again. Differentiation means discernment: What is single and what is more general. Which connection is real, and which is fantasy. Many assaults and acts of terror are committed by persons claiming to be Muslims. Many other assaults do not have this background. In cases with this connection, it has to be named and taken into consideration and evaluation, by Muslims and non-Muslims. At the same time, we have to be aware of the fact that compared to 1.8 billions of Muslims in the world, the number of those committing violent crimes is minimal.
Working on one's own ability of differentiation is connected with ongoing education and reflection and requires the reduction of inner fears. Violence is a very simple and short-sighted way of securing one's interests and power. So every step in inner growth, cognitively as well as emotionally, is connected with creating distance to any willingness of using violence and to open up the horizone necessary for the expansion of a rather welcoming than excluding society.
(PS. the term "risk society" was coined by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck, who died on Jan 1, 2015)
