Two major terrorist attacks in France were made in 2015, and the third attack has happened only a couple of days back in the palm-lined Promenade des Anglais in the French Riviera resort. Eighty-four people are reported dead and dozens of children are injured, 50 of them being treated in the hospital.
31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel of Tunisian origin drove a truck helter-skelter along a distance of two kilometres (1.3 miles) through a crowd of people assembled to witness the jamboree. French President Hollande has called it “terrorist” attack. Gunpowder loaded in the truck was blown up that caused blast killing so many people and injuring children. Nothing could be more inhuman and barbaric.
France has nearly 32 per cent Muslim population, mostly from North African countries like Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya. Since France had its colonies in North African countries, which ultimately attained freedom from France and are now sovereign states. However, French law allowed the ex-colonised people to become the citizens of France after their migration and enjoyed equal rights with the people of that country. There are now a large number of Africans who are not only settled in France but have their progenies born and brought up in France.
The fact of the matter is that France has been very liberal to the immigrants ever since it withdrew from African colonies and the emigrants have been enjoying so many privileges and facilities. They have been enjoying freedom of religion and worship and never were any restriction imposed on them. But with the rise of fundamentalist ideology in various parts of the world, it drew certain people from France as in other Western or East European countries into the vortex of fundamentalist and extremist ideology.
It has now become clear to the world in general and to the Western countries in particular that the methodology adopted by the radicals and fundamentalists is quite different from an open and face to face confrontation. It is low intensity war, of choosing selected targets and attacking not in a massive way but through minimum strength but with maximum impact. It is challenging to the fundamentals of Western political theory meaning democracy and egalitarianism. What the fundamentalists ask for is an Islamic Caliphate that recognizes no territorial divisions, no class ridden society and no acceptance of the concept of a nation and no law except that of sharia. In view of this, Western societies have to decide once for all what way of life they would like to adhere to. France is in the lead of victims among European countries. In all probability, the time has come when the European world will come together to discuss among themselves ways and means of fighting this menace of contemporary times.
There is no doubt that considering the nature and space of the radicalization movement world over, Europe will come together in the shape of a well-knit society trying to fight back the scourge of contemporary century.
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