The past week’s terrorist attacks in Paris sent shockwaves throughout the civilised world. Last Wednesday, two masked men armed with assault rifles brutally murdered 12 people at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and the following day four more individuals lost their lives in a kosher supermarket.
Among the dead was a policeman, who happened to be a Muslim, who was executed in cold blood as he lay wounded on the ground pleading for his life.
This terrorist atrocity is the deadliest attack in France in decades. Sadly, the West has been fearing attacks of this nature for some time: home-grown jihadists committing atrocities against civilians. The alleged perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attack, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, are known to have been promoting Islamic extremism for more than a decade.
The attack on Charlie Hebdo was not only a callous act of premeditated murder; it was also an attack on freedom of speech that is an essential pillar of any democracy.
The killers were said to have been offended because the magazine had published cartoons satirising Islam; however, while in a democracy it is certainly acceptable to have a debate about to what extent religion can be subjected to satire, this cannot come about at the expense of freedom of expression that falls within the law.
This latest terrorist outrage will no doubt raise a number of security and other questions, both in France and the rest of Europe. Were the Kouachi brothers on the radar of French authorities? – they were certainly on the watch-lists of the UK and US – and if not, why not?
Was this attack actually planned and ordered by a terrorist organisation such as al-Qaeda or Islamic State? Why is it that a minority of young Muslim men in France have become radicalised and even chosen to become jihadists in Syria?
Whatever questions are asked and whatever security reviews are carried out, it is important that France and other European countries do not allow themselves to be engulfed in anti-Muslim sentiment. Equating Islam with terrorism is wrong, and the overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world do not adhere to a violent jihadist ideology.
A ‘clash of civilisations’ is exactly what al-Qaeda and Islamic State want to provoke and this is precisely what we must not allow to happen. Far-right and populist leaders in France, Netherlands, the UK and Italy have already stepped up their rhetoric in the hours after the shooting, equating terrorism with immigration and fanning the flames of bigotry and Islamophobia.
Mainstream politicians, however, must reject such a knee-jerk reaction and should appeal for a calm and dignified response to this latest atrocity.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was right to caution on Friday against turning the attack on Charlie Hebdo into a clash of civilisations. Dr Muscat said that while there was consensus in Malta that freedom of expression should be defended, “we should not allow such incidents to take us down the road of prejudice”.
Muslim leaders, on the other hand, both in Europe and the wider world, must continue to be vocal in their condemnation of Islamist extremism and jihadism and to speak a language of tolerance and mutual respect for different shades of opinion.
Yet we cannot deny that we are living in an age of increased security threat – and that people can be targeted on any given day by terrorists wielding arms.
While vigilance is important, so is the absolute determination for people to go about their lives in the most normal manner possible.