Photo: BBC
As we learn more about the Bastille Day attack in Nice, the idea that this was some sort of terror attack is morphing into something different, and raises disturbing questions about how we perceive crime.
They said he was a strange, weird loner.
As France reels from what seemed like yet another in a horrific terror attack, this time in the French Riviera town of Nice, which left at least 84 dead and another 50 fighting for their lives, new information about the assailant, identified as French-Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhel, seems to run counter to the instantly-preferred narrative of plain old Islamic Terrorism.
Reports from the scene depicted a man in a beard laughing as he plowed through a crowd during a Bastille Day fireworks celebration, and instantly, without much in the way of investigation, it was instantly deemed a terror attack, and across the globe, people took to social media to decry yet another act of terrorism, while not actually knowing whether or not it’s actually terrorism by definition.
Facebook pages lit up with French flags, and Twitter belched up declarations that we were sick of terrorism, and that terrorists would not stop us from living whatever lives we wanted to live, so we should do whatever we want and hold a middle finger to those who would try to step on our freedoms…even if many of those who made such bold declarations never actually stepped foot in France one day in their lives.
But why call that out?
As the Empire State Building lit up in the colors of the French flag (which are also our colors, so I guess there’s some symbolism there, right?) we still didn’t know much about the man who committed what is, without question, an atrocity. But even as we cannot question the result of the act, the idea that no one was willing to question why the attack happened says more about how people perceive crime, depending on who commits said crime.
We don’t need to stand up against Islam, we need to stand up against crime.
According to a report in The Telegraph, Lahouaiej-Bouhel wasn’t even known to be much of a religious man, much less some Islamist lone wolf waiting to pounce on unsuspecting infidels. In fact, it’s beginning to appear that the crime may actually stem from the fact that his wife recently left him, throwing him into a “depression”.
Do we know for sure that his broken heart led him to murder? No, but if we’re being honest, it paints a much more vivid picture of the man than the idea that being born in Tunisia and having a beard is a clear indicator that his crimes were sanctioned by ISIL.
Crime, whether at home or around the globe, is as ubiquitous as it is insidious. When you get right down to it, it doesn’t matter if Lahouaiej-Bouhel decided to murder for the glory of god or out of revenge for the love that he lost, it is still a crime and should be treated as such. We’ll never really know why he decided to drive a truck into a bunch of strangers, or why he was indifferent to who he ran over. Maybe he thought his wife was in that crowd, maybe his mind was gone. Who is to say? And just because we don’t know, it’s not safe, it’s never safe, to assume that because of his skin, because of his origin, he represents the real and imagined horde of terrorists bent on either world domination or religious purity.
Yes, ISIL is real. Yes, terrorism is real. However, our reactions are not always real, and they are often built on naked bigotry.
We’re not only talking about right-wing warmongers and armchair generals. There were just as many liberal-leaning self-identified progressives who instantly determined—without full knowledge—that this just had to be terrorism and that things should change because love must prevail.
All of that sounds well and good, but the problem is that there are scores of law-abiding Muslims who now bear the weight of further suspicion, further accusation, further bigotry, simply because people are so willing to fold into the comfort of their hatred. On one hand, you have people screaming that Islam should be bombed out of existence, on the other hand, you have people saying that they will stand up to Islam with defiance and love, and in the middle, you have Muslims who just want to live their lives.
They don’t want to be feared, and they don’t want to kill you. If we’re being honest, you could take all the existing, truly dangerous ideologues and extremists, and they wouldn’t fill an entire football stadium. That’s how few of them are out there. There aren’t millions of murderous Islamists waiting to cut off your head in front of a camera; there are a few thousand at best. Even if that number reached, say, 100 or 200 thousand, that number pales in comparison to the more than 1 billion men, women and children who claim Islam as their faith, and do so peacefully.
But as long as we continue to paint these people in a corner, as long as we persecute them, we are equally as culpable for their conversion into extremists as any ISIL recruiter is. You can only treat someone like a monster for so long until they become that very thing that you fear. We must be vigilant against extremism, but we must not overcompensate and create the very thing we want to eradicate.
Bombs will not stop terrorism. Bullets will not stop terrorism. Love will not stop terrorism.
Justice, freedom and respect will stop terrorism. When you treat a human being like a human being, they are less likely to be receptive to fanaticism. The fanatics will still be there, just as they are in every single belief system on the face of the earth, but if we collectively improve, if we treat our fellow man as our fellow man, that siren call of hatred will become less audible, and we will all begin to walk into the light together.
But there will also always be crime.
What happened in Nice is a crime, and an egregious one at that. Lahouaiej-Bouhel will no longer commit crimes as his bullet-riddled body is lying cold in a morgue waiting to be examined and then disposed of. But even as this criminal lies dead, crime still endures. Against that, we must all remain steadfast and vigilant.
We don’t need to stand up against Islam, we need to stand up against crime, that is our charge and it is one that each and every one of us can be a part of, regardless of our color, our nationality, our religion or our personal beliefs.
Hashim R. Hathaway (Uncle Shimbo) is the host of the Never Daunted Radio Network, and proud father to NeverDaunted.Net. You can reach him on Twitter @NeverDauntedNet