Two weeks ago, as I was driving to Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show, the radio program I typically listen to reported breaking news that a terrorist attack in Paris had occurred. As the information kept coming through, it turned out that they had killed eleven people in the offices of French Satirical Magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had notoriously published comedic images of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. Over the next two days, four more attacks occurred within the Île-de-France region, which included holding civilians’ hostage in a kosher supermarket. In total, 20 people died, and another 22 were injured. It was later announced that Al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula had taken responsibility for the attacks, which were the deadliest terrorist attacks in France since 1961. These attacks raised many concerns over the fate of free speech in France as well as the safety of the country’s Jewish population.
Like many individuals around the world, I was shocked and could not keep the incident out of my mind during my stay in the city that never sleeps. Still, my trip went as planned until I walked into the bathroom of a bar that Friday night. In the restroom above the urinal was a chalkboard where patrons could write what they please. Beside the usual babble and jokes, right in the center of the board was written, “Fuck all Muslims.” This pales in comparison to the 60 separate anti-Muslim incidents that have taken place in France since the attacks, including attacks on 26 places of worship, according to the National Observatory Against Islamophobia in a press report on Jan. 19.
Opinion editorials have been published extensively, having given a wide range of opinions and explanations for the attacks. The one thing that is clear is that innocent people— Muslims, Jews, Christians, Atheists, etc. – were victims of extremist, bigoted views regardless of their religious and nationalistic preoccupations with these horrible attacks. Such incidents only create a circle of violence in the midst of fear and confusion. While there is no justification for such violent atrocities, one must understand the underlying issues allowing them to occur in order to avoid them.
Surprisingly, the assailants were born and raised in France. The country has a sizable Muslim minority that numbers at roughly 4.7 million adherents, according to a 2011 Pew Forum study. While they are diverse in national and cultural origins, an overwhelming majority are—or descended from— immigrants who arrived from the former North African French colonies that are present-day Morocco, Tunisia and Libya.
While it is easy to assume that Islam itself is to blame for the incidents, one must look at other factors to understand what prompted the three attackers to join a radical Islam group and commit such an extreme act. As French sociologist Ali Saad wrote in an Op-Ed for Al Jazeer, “Failing to take into account the catastrophic socioeconomic factor would be tantamount to promoting the very context that contributes to the development of fundamentalist ideologies.” According to the Brooking Institution, over 40 percent of French Muslims 15-29 are unemployed. Many of these youth feel like outsiders in French society, growing up in impoverished neighborhoods where access to social services is subpar compared to the rest of the country. Despite only making up six percent of the French population, 35 percent of prison inmates within the French prison system belong to ethnic groups that come from Muslim-majority countries. Much like the United States, poverty correlates highly with crime, and as such, youth are more likely to become criminals and be alienated from the rest of national society. Like prison gangs in the U.S., radical Islamist groups take advantage of these youths’ situation and recruit them into their movements.
Within the American Muslim community, reactions over the attacks in France have been met with much condemnation. The Center for American-Islamic Relations, one of the leading American-Muslim advocacy groups in the country put out a press release the day of the shootings at the Charlie Hebdo office that stated, “We strongly condemn this brutal and cowardly attack and reiterate our repudiation of any such assault on freedom of speech, even speech that mocks faiths and religious figures.” Sadly, such a statement did not reach the person who scribbled the hate speech on that bathroom chalkboard in Vegas.
However, our own diverse community here at California State University, Long Beach serves as a model for the world. 49ers who are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Atheist, Arab, white, black, Latino, etc. study and socialize together on a daily basis regardless of whether they disagree with each other. Thus, one can conclude that hate only creates more hate, but understanding creates peace.
Jacob Yungman is a junior majoring in political science.