The terrorist tragedy in Paris demonstrates once again how the world is ravaged by contradictions between medieval delusions and science-based society. Think of apes with technology. As Carl Sagan put it, "Sooner of later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces." We see these corrosive effects in the backward nature of the highly religious parts of the world, including the Middle East and the United States, by far the most religious of the industrialized nations.
The problems of the modern world are all about this contradiction, yet we shun unfettered discussion of religion. Humor, including satire, play an essential role in any intellectual discussion, regardless of topic. Thus the attack on Charlie Hebdo is an attack on the very means of solving the problem. I requested, but was respectfully denied, two Charlie Hebdo cartoons to accompany this article, one of them showing Muhammad in a humorous pose saying "100 lashes if you don't die of laughter." This is funny and innocuous stuff. Anybody who is offended by it needs to lighten up and join the 21st century. As a good antidote, I suggest Monty Python, especially the Christian satire "The Life of Brian."
One must sympathize with the Europeans in this problem, but also with the Muslim immigrants. Only one half of 1 percent of the immigrants are judged, by legal authorities, to be dangerous enough to require surveillance. The great majority are decent citizens who just want to live their lives. We must not stigmatize them as problematic individuals.
On the other hand, the one half of 1 percent are a real problem. The reason is that this small fraction is not a small number at all, it's about 20,000 among France's 4 million Muslims. Well more than 200,000 police would be needed to be assigned full time to keep this group under constant surveillance, and French resources are not nearly up to the task. In fact, news reports state that French authorities removed the two key Charlie Hebdo killers from surveillance just a few months prior to the tragedy, for just this reason. Having limited resources to follow some 20,000 potential terrorists, they quite rationally devoted those resources to the most likely suspects, and the two killers were not among them.
It's a hard problem, because so many Muslims live in France. In my opinion, nations such as France, England and Germany have admitted far more Muslims than they should have during recent decades. They're mostly fine folks, but it's just not possible to deal with so many safely. Until Islamic religious fervor subsides to more normal levels that can, for example, tolerate satire as an essential element of intellectual conversation, the world will be a better, safer, more humane place if immigration from the Muslim world into non-Muslim nations is greatly reduced.
There are however other solutions that some might prefer, solutions such as more selective procedures for admitting immigrants, and adding far more surveillance police. The humane and peaceful solution is of course to resolve the animosity between the Islamic community and the non-Islamic community. Integration -- Martin Luther King's solution to our own racial problems -- should be strongly supported by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Muslims need to integrate into the larger community, with intermarriage encouraged.
U.S. violence in the Middle East makes everything worse. To the Washington foreign policy establishment, every problem seems to require a military solution. Amedy Coulibaly, the man who killed a policewoman and terrorized a kosher grocery in Paris, was recorded on CNN as stating that French taxpayers supported France's violence in Muslim countries. "You pay taxes, so that means you agree" with France's violence against Muslims, he is reported to have said. While disagreeing with his reasoning, we must recognize the reality of the connection between military action abroad and terrorist violence at home. U.S. military action is doing more harm than good and should be replaced with a financially equivalent effort to provide humane assistance in food, medicine and education.
A key terrorist-promoting element in U.S. policy is our fervent support for Israel's benighted policies against the Palestinians. I see no reason to shell out a quarter-trillion dollars over the past 60 years, including over $3 billion in military aid last year, to a nation so irrational as to expand settlements into Palestinian territory at the same time that it claims to seek an eventual two-state solution. We should not provide the bullets for Israel to continue shooting itself in the foot.
Art Hobson is a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Arkansas. Email him at [email protected].
Commentary on 01/27/2015