I was talking at the weekend to a journalist friend who has just returned to the UK from Paris after a week of reporting on the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. She was very tired, physically and, not surprisingly, emotionally. She spent many hours talking to people who found themselves caught up in the atrocities, to the families of some of those who were killed, to ordinary citizens trying to understand what had happened to their city.
Amid all the darkness, the grief, the shock, however, she said one thing gave her real hope: the determination that nothing would fundamentally change. Every Parisien my friend spoke to bar none rejected any suggestion that these attacks would make them change the way they lived. By the end of the week, she observed, this was being reflected in the social fabric of the city. People were understandably nervous and a bit jumpy, they were perhaps more aware of their surroundings than they would normally be, but crucially they had returned to the restaurants, the cafes and the galleries. They were eating, drinking, talking loudly and looking at art. They were doing what Paris does best.
This sense of resilience was wonderfully evoked this week on the front cover of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, itself a victim of terrorism in January when Islamic fundamentalists stormed the offices of the title and gunned down 12 of the journalists. The typically silly cartoon depicts a man quaffing champagne, which in turn spouts out of holes all over his body. The headline, however, cuts right to the heart of the issue. Roughly translated, it reads: “They have weapons. Screw them. We have champagne.” This says everything you need to know about the in your face, hedonistic, often arrogant vibe that Paris prides itself on.
It is just this type of response that we must all adopt if we are to avoid allowing the aftermath of this atrocity to be blown out of all proportion. And let’s be clear, that’s exactly what the death cult behind both of these attacks wants - for us to get ourselves into a hysterical, hate-filled spiral.
Some, it would seem, are intent on playing into the hands of the terrorists. David Dimbleby’s opening gambit on Thursday night’s Question Time was a case in point. The panel was there to talk about “how the world has changed in the last seven days”, apparently. There was no sense of questioning this concept; it was a statement. Should the BBC, supposedly the pinnacle of impartiality really be telling me, you, the people of France, ISIS, that the world has changed? Certainly not. The discussion itself was actually engaging, robust and varied. But the premise was completely over-hyped. The more institutions like the BBC tell people the world has changed, the more we and the terrorists will believe it. And the more power to scare and terrorise they will possess. Why are we so freely and unthinkingly giving them this power?
We saw the same knee-jerk over-reactions after 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London. Life would never be the same, many in the media and government told us. After both events, amid all the shock and fear, this seemed a pretty fair assessment. Foreign policy did change, of course, almost always for the worse. But let’s be absolutely honest here, did the way most ordinary folk live their lives truly, fundamentally change? No, thank God.
One of the most interesting pieces I’ve read in the wake of the Paris attacks was one by Nicolas Henin, a Frenchman held for 10 months by ISIS in Syria, many of whose fellow hostages were brutally murdered by the group. According to Henin the members of ISIS he met were indeed the cold, calculating, brain-washed ideologues we imagine them to be. They felt no remorse about the pain and terror they inflicted on innocent people. But what does disturb them, apparently, is evidence that we in the West are not willing to change the way we live our lives, restrict our own freedoms and turn on our Muslim neighbours, friends and colleagues following their sickening attacks. That we still want to help the refugees fleeing Syria. That we will continue to embrace the multi-cultural, plural world they despise.
That’s what makes the hate attacks we’ve seen against Muslims in Scotland over the last week so utterly frustrating and depressing. News of such actions will have had ISIS members celebrating in their bunkers, no doubt.
Embracing and celebrating our freedoms and not giving in to hate and suspicion is surely the only possible response to this and other such atrocities. With his in mind, I raise a glass of champagne to the resilience of Paris and its citizens. I urge you to do the same, while repeating the mantra: terrorists have not changed us, terrorists will not change us.
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