The Paris attacks: magical thinking hijacking trust
The recent attacks in Paris have highlighted three key issues which face Europe. The most obvious one, of course, is the issue of political violence. Although the official figures that national governments provide each year to Europol do not disclose the number of attacks, convictions, or acquittals which could be categorized as 'religiously inspired, this matters very little (Europol 2015) Following the Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher killings in January 2015, the mass shootings at the Stade de France and Bataclan in November last year, and the fact that 5000 Europeans are estimated to be fighting in Syria (The Guardian; 8 December 2015) the general feeling is one of an overwhelming and growing threat. The public is scared, and they are looking for solutions from their government (The New York Times; 23 November 2015) The second major concern is that diasporic Muslim communities across Europe are increasingly feeling insecure as a result of targeted hatred and discrimination. They feel excluded not only by right wing extremist movements, but also by mainstream institutions of society such as the media, schools, and the police (The Independent; 16 November 2015) institutions that are supposed to guarantee their security, safety, and well being. The third issue is that government responses currently deployed in France as well as in most European countries are based on at least two forms of magical thinking which are, at best, unlikely to solve the first issue, but are quite certain to make the second worse. Since the mid 2000s, governments across Europe have deployed several measures to counter radicalization and terrorism. While there is not much space to describe them here in detail, they all revolve around a combination of 'hard measures' based on surveillance and coercion, as well as a set of supposedly 'softer' measures aimed at detecting and treating 'radicals' with the help of professionals, religious representatives, and civil society organizations, engaging in dialogue and producing counter narratives to violent ideologies (Thomas 2012) While the 'hard' measures can be efficient when targeted and respectful of the rule of law, the 'softer measures, as they are currently deployed by European governments, are by and large both flawed and dangerous. They are based on two forms of magical thinking (Heath Kelly 2012a) The first is the idea that we can track or recognize a process of radicalization; that there are 'potential' radicals and that with the right tools and the right criteria we could anticipate the making of future terrorists (Kundnani 2012) Although most state agencies recognize that radicalization is not a simple or linear process, all of them state that certain elements allow us to anticipate it. This assumption suggests that not only the police, but also the entire civil society teachers, university professors, prison guards, social workers, and imams should participate in the detection and identification of future radicals. However, John Horgan (2009) who tracked the trajectory of dozens of former