Radicalism is a disease of the mind. You cannot see it, hear it, feel it or know it exists until it is too late, as revellers in Nice enjoying Bastille Day fireworks found out on Thursday evening. As terrorists evolve strategies to attack innocent life with evermore creative methods, the global response remains mired in advancing techno-gadgetry that no longer gets the job done. François Molins, France’s counter-terrorism prosecutor, emphasised the point when he made clear that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who used a lorry to kill 84 people in Nice, had not shown up in any of the intelligence services’ databases.
Yet at the heart of our collective failure to halt the march of Islamism against humanity is the unforgivable silence of us peaceful Muslims. While we have long enjoyed “liberté, égalité, fraternité”, we have failed to root out radicalism where it grows. We have been unable or unwilling to openly challenge wrong-headed views on Islam for fear the lunatic fringe would brand us non-Muslim traitors. This must now stop.
We must shoulder responsibility for what has happened to our great religion. We must rebuild the shattered trust between peace-loving Muslims boxed in by Islamists calling us kaffirs, or non-believers, and fellow citizens who see us as pacifist enablers. This will happen more swiftly if western political leaders demonstrate a better grasp of what Islam’s core value system was at its birth and acknowledge how radicalism came to pollute its practice.