The cost of hate speech

The three-day siege in Paris between January 7 and 9 can at best be understood as a consequence of something much larger at play in Europe. The killings inside the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo raise questions well beyond the battle between free speech and growing intolerance. It highlights the urgent need to better understand the predicament of integration inside European cities. For sure, whilst the so-called Kouachi brothers executed the heinous operation, their mentors did not live in southern Yemen or in Afghanistan.

They preached and recruited from the boroughs of London and Paris. They thrived on their ability to radicalise. They did so with impunity, sometimes inside a place of worship, at other times openly on the high street or on television. Imagine for a minute the likes of Hafiz Saeed roaming the streets of Mumbai and New Delhi. Such impossibilities continue to remain a fact in Europe.

To understand the shootings in Paris there is an urgent need to understand Islamist radicalisation. The term itself is, of course, contested. Extremism is hardly a problem associated only with Islamists. Yet, there is a Islamist agenda at work in Europe that clearly betrays both religion and rule of law. Such a form of radicalisation, unless swiftly dealt with inside Europe, may well turn parts of the western hemisphere into an abode for global terrorism.

Take, for instance, the case of Cherif and his brother Said Kouachi. They were radicalised in Paris by a man named Djamel Beghal who in turn was mentored by the cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri. Masri, a night club bouncer turned preacher, arrived in the UK in 1979. In his visits abroad, he travelled to Afghanistan, met Abdullah Azzam — the founder of Al Qaeda — and finally returned as a cleric to Finsbury Park mosque in London in 1997. He openly denied Laden’s role in the attacks on NY’s Twin Towers. He was arrested in 2004 on terrorism charges. Eight years later he was extradited to the US. Yet, in the six years that he was allowed to preach in London, Masri did more to shape the narrative for radicalisation than perhaps any other preacher till date. In short, Masri became something of a phenomenon.

His dealings with those like Beghal — allegedly the top Al Qaeda recruiter in Europe — provided the ominous intellectual narrative required to inspire a network of radical militants. To be sure, Beghal met Cherif Kouachi in prison between 2005 and 2008. It is also where Kouachi met with Amedy Coulibaly, the third gunman who stormed the kosher shop. In a sense, the plotters came together in a French prison, tutored by their ideologue. The narrative above is only a case in point. The reality of radicalisation in Europe is in fact more shocking. Officials in the UK claim that 500-550 Britons have made their way to Syria to fight for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and other groups. At the end of 2014, 250 returned. Only 30, according to some reports, have been arrested. Accordingly, at least 120 networked fighters remain at large. No doubt many are under surveillance, but some are not.

Whilst the shootings in Paris appears to have shifted the attention of both the media and security officials to look more carefully at Britain’s security infrastructure, such as arming more beat cops with stun guns, the narrative basis of radicalisation once espoused by the likes of Masri can still be heard in some form or shape. A BBC investigation in January 2015 clearly showed how non-violent extremists use such narratives to their advantage. Many such non-violent extremists are often heard on British television talking about “Islam spreading all over the world”. They cannot be arrested because they do not directly advocate violence, but as PM David Cameron stated at the UN in September 2014, their “worldview can be used as a justification of it”. One such non-violent extremist openly argues that parliamentary democracy in Britain ought to be exploited because “unbelievers” run it.

The Sheikh in question is a member of the Sharia Council of UK. He openly advocates the creation of a theocratic state. Matters associated with religion are by far the most sensitive matters of state in any democracy. How Britain chooses to battle narratives that stop short of inciting violence depends of course on its elected representatives and the executive. Yet, the attacks in Paris clearly demonstrate that foot soldiers in one country can well be provided with a nefarious but highly effective master narrative authored by a preacher in another. The menacing spirit that drives Islamist extremism cannot be contained within geographical borders. Britain has done well to acknowledge that a problem exists. Further, it has possibly done more than any other country in the world to combat home-grown extremism and design strategies to integrate those less enthused by democracy. But the time has come to also acknowledge that its Islamist militants and militant preachers are not only a British problem. Those allowed to preach their hatred in London are as much to blame as the executioners driven by that hatred.

The writer is the author of Forged in Crisis: India and the United States since 1947