With the Vienna massacre, jihadists show that no one is safe in the Europe of freedoms
Hardly had the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, received the condolences and support of the United Arab Emirates in the face of the silence of the intellectuals and the accusations of Muslim leaders such as the Turk Erdogan, a new terrorist massacre hammered home the same certainty: Jihadism, a radical, absolutely intolerant and criminal interpretation of Islam, does not tolerate the values of Europe or its civilisation.
On this occasion it was Vienna, one of the most peaceful and secure capitals so far, where the last terrorist attack on Stadttempel's central synagogue dated from 1981. The Austrian capital thus joins the long list of cities that have fallen victim to hatred: Madrid, London, Paris, Brussels, Barcelona, Manchester, Berlin, Nice, Lyon... One after the other, they have become the scene of attacks using a variety of methods, from home-made bombs to the merciless slitting of throats of people who have been identified or found at random, to the indiscriminate running over of pedestrians.
In view of the repeated attacks it seems inevitable to consider that Jihadist terrorism is not only a security problem. Europe's tolerance of so-called multiculturalism has given rise to numerous pockets of radical Muslims who, born and raised in a society where freedoms are sacred, neither admit it nor in many cases respect it, citing the alleged grievances of their own frustrations.
Europe's open arms towards Islam should not be confused with the admission, even implicit, of the inferiority of its own values. The great conquest of Europe, after so many centuries of fratricidal strife, has been to establish civil values whose success, in addition to morality, can be seen in its prosperity and in serving as a mirror in which to look at oneself. Among these civil values is the no lesser power to believe in any religion and to pray individually or as a community to their god or to none, without exclusivity, which ultimately translates into raising the dignity of each person to its highest expression.
Whether Daesh, al-Qaeda or any of the Islamist organisations that have declared the West, particularly Old Europe, to be a Jihad, they abhor the freedoms that are practised here and which they seek to replace with exclusive subjection, by degree or by force, to their own designs. It is therefore evident that the first condition for successfully combating Jihadist terrorism is the conviction of the superiority of these values, which are rooted in freedom, over those that are based on submission. It is therefore disheartening, for example, that the European Union has not yet reached an agreement on the European Commission's proposal in 2018 to counter terrorist content on networks.
It also seems necessary, once again, to draw the attention of Muslim leaders and intellectuals, who for the most part react with thunderous silence to each of these attacks on freedom. It is clear that Islam requires a major debate on this concept, which, at least in Europe, has cost centuries and much blood to appreciate, and even today many strongholds are emerging that seek to question, limit and ultimately curtail it, simply because accepting the great value of freedom means rejecting the everlasting temptation of totalitarianism.
It would also be appropriate to warn against those who seek to justify attacks on the basis of a non-existent war of religions. These, in the past, covered up struggles for power. Now the veil of this imposture has long since been lifted, except for the radical Jihadists who still advocate the killing of Christians and Jews from their mosques. If this were to happen in churches or synagogues, it would immediately lead to the transfer to psychiatric centres of anyone who dared recommend the killing of Muslims.