‘Us and them’ only aids militants

When politicians use the language of division, they are echoing the language of extremists, writes Shelina Janmohamed

A front view of the bus which was destroyed by a suicide bomber in London on July 7th, 2005. (AP Photo / Dylan Martinez)

It is the violent interruption of an ordinary day that makes acts of terror so powerful. At first, July 7th 2005, was just an ordinary day. My then-fiancé was on his normal morning commute to work. Then, I realised it was only a miracle that he wasn’t on one of the three fateful trains that were blown up 10 years ago in London.

Terror affects all of us, everywhere. In Norway, it was 69 people enjoying a retreat at Utoya Island. Last month it was nine people attending church in Charleston. Last week it was 27 fasting worshippers at Friday prayers in a Shia mosque in Kuwait, and 38 tourists on a beach in Tunisia.

We realise at these moments that we are all constantly vulnerable to those in our midst. Yet all of us put our trust in those around us – into those who are similar to us as well as those who are very different – to respect our lives and protect our humanity. We trust these people we live among, and expect them to return the trust. When violent interruption comes, we instinctively stand together. Or at least we should.

By contrast, terrorists propel themselves forward on the binary idea of “us or them”, seeking to shatter this trust and to pit us against each other.

They thrive when this black and white view of society is echoed back to them, reinforcing their world view. They whisper their devilish words into the ears of the vulnerable: we told you that they hate you, that they want to destroy your way of life.

Yet foolishly, world leaders respond time and time again to terror incidents involving Muslims with echoes of exactly the same words: they hate us, they want to destroy our way of life. It is about “our values”, and about “existential threats”. This is “us”. What hangs loud but unspoken in the air is that everyone else is “them”.

British prime minister David Cameron spoke of how British Muslims are supposedly “quietly condoning” ISIL. Nobody in their right mind and with a human heart is “quietly condoning” extremists. To suggest such a thing is to ring-fence Muslims as outside the trusted circle of “our values”, to say in all but the words that they are of a lesser humanity.

Leading newspapers and commentators even get away with the astonishing suggestion that only the violent extremist version of Islam is “real”.

The way to neutralise the ideas of extremists is not to echo and reinforce them. The right way is to create a sense of belonging, shared trust and to see them as natural and integral elements of society. Muslims believe that the state can be their ally, if it stopped viewing them only as potential security risks.

The vulnerability to terror begins when we buy into the distinction between them and us. It can be erased by reinforcing trust between us, within and across societies.

On the beach in Tunisia, the Muslim hotel staff formed a human chain to protect the tourists who were the gunman’s target. “You must get past us first,” they told him.

When it comes to dealing with terror, it is this powerful image of the human chain that we must replicate: standing together, hand in hand, against those who seek to perpetrate terror .

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www.spirit21.co.uk