France’s militant challenge

Violent fundamentalism continues to be the choice of the minority, writes Paul Keenan

Some may call it divine providence, others a mere accident. However one chooses to view the self-shooting by a young French-Algerian man in his car in Paris on April 19, the incident led to the uncovering of a most dangerous plot against one if not two Catholic churches in the French capital. The number of worshippers killed or wounded had the injured man set his plans in train can only be guessed at.

The facts of the case as we have them at present are that the man, Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a student of computer technology, called for assistance when he accidently discharged a pistol into his own leg that Sunday.

Police became involved and discovered a stash of weapons in Ghlam’s car. A follow-up search of the man’s apartment uncovered yet more arms together with detailed plans of two churches in Paris, leading to the announcement that an imminent attack had been foiled.

Subsequent ballistic and DNA tests have linked Ghlam to the murder of a 32-year-old woman, Aurelie Chatelain, whose body was discovered in the boot of her own car in a Parisian suburb.

Capture

The French authorities immediately announced a ramping up of security measures, ordering even more military personnel to provide security at no fewer than 178 churches.

Responding to the capture of Ghlam, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls took to the airwaves to offer a dual message to citizens: “Terrorists are targeting France to divide us and our response must be, of course, to protect citizens but also to rally together, unite and to be hugely determined faced with this terrorist threat,” he said.

Meanwhile, in a message of defiance, the French Catholic Bishops stated: “The terrorist threats, whatever they may be, seek to sow fear. Catholics will not give in.” (Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris, has since met with Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve to discuss concerns over the church plot.)

And so Sid Ahmed Ghlam’s name was added to a ‘roll of notoriety’ that has been growing in France in recent times with the upsurge in militant Islamist activities. He joins Charlie Hebo attackers Cheirf and Said Kouachi, and Paris supermarket attacker Amedy Coulibaly.

Yet far more names are not in the public domain. As part of France’s counterterrorism strategy against militants – named Plan Vigipirate – some 400 individuals, potential sleepers, are being monitored. That is quite apart from the some 1,500 people who are thought to have left France to join the so-called caliphate of Islamic State (IS).

The fact that Ghlam was one of those on the security services watch-list does not offer a comforting picture of Plan Vigipirate, however.

But there are reasons to take at least a measure of comfort.

Regardless of which figure you choose, the 400 or 1,500, or even the dramatic 3,000 suspects under surveillance nationwide, these numbers must inevitably be set against the figure of five million which is the population of Muslims in France. A population whose majority rejects the activities ‘in the name of Islam’ that lone wolves such as Ghlam and groups such as IS undertake towards bolstering their twisted take on Islam.

This is not to downplay the significant threat currently faced by France and other European nations. But at the same time, fair coverage must be offered to the surge in attacks faced by Muslims in France already living with a sense of isolation from French society.

In the weeks after the January 7 attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices the number of attacks recorded against individual Muslims, at least 128, according to the French Council for the Muslim Religion, was greater than for all of 2014. It was in light of this reality that Prime Minister Valls issued his call for a rallying of all French citizens against division.

In was clear, too, that Sid Ahmed Ghlam operated within the same reality as a young Muslim. The clues lie not only in his drifting from a clear interest in and talent for computer science, but in the literature found by police in his bloodied car. Leaflets on the ideologies of both al Qaeda and IS were uncovered by investigating officers.

In coverage offered previously by The Irish Catholic in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack, the distinction between al Qaeda and IS was made clear, the antipathy the one holds for the other being in no doubt. Yet, just like the Hebdo perpetrators, Ghlam entertained a desire to belong to groups espousing disparate ideologies. This was not the rational choice of a man who had found truth in one quarter, but a disaffected man seeking to reject his existence in France by one means or another.

What this suggests again is that the starting point for men and women like Ghlam is not the draw of al Qaeda or IS (for others already with a taste for violence, yes) but the push of exclusion in France, and Western society in general.

Whatever about that, there is nothing to justify the indiscriminate attacks on journalists, police officers and ordinary citizens that have been the end result for some in their blinding eagerness to reject their Western existence for the poisonous allure of IS and al Qaeda. If there is any doubt, go ask the vast majority of French Muslims who reject violent extremism as the answer to Islamophobia.

And it is this majority which the Vatican continues to tap into in its conviction that wholesome dialogue is a central component to peaceful relations between traditions.

Just days after the French church plot was uncovered, the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue issued a statement in which it stressed that dialogue was more important now than ever before. 

With a finger to the pulse of events leading to further radicalisation, the council’s statement pointed out that recent incidents have led to “a radicalisation of community and religious discourse, with the consequent risks of increasing hatred, violence, terrorism and the growing and commonplace stigmatisation of Muslims and their religion.”

The statement went on to stress that “the great majority of Muslims themselves do not identify with the current acts of barbarism”.

The council’s message remained unaltered in light of later news of a possible targeting of the Vatican by extremists in Italy, uncovered during police raids there.

Such dialogue may not halt an attack on a church in France in the short-term. In the longer term, however, it will create an environment in which isolated and disaffected persons may find that there is a third, less lethal way, when they struggle between Islamophobia and extremism.