L’horreur

“Every man has two cities,” Ernest Hemingway wrote long ago, “Paris and his own.” Having lived and studied in France, I have long held that statement as true.

That has to be truest at this time. On the night of Friday the 13th, at least eight terrorists attacked six locations in the City of Lights — 129 were killed in those attacks. Over 350 were wounded, some of them very seriously.

The event, now simply called The Horror, traumatized Parisians and shocked the world. In its aftermath, there is a flood of sympathy for the victims of terror, a deluge of condemnation for the ideological scourge responsible for such violence.

Over the next few days, policies regarding Europe’s open borders and the whole continent’s attitude towards immigrants and refugees will change dramatically. When something as bad as this happens, the right-wing parties in Europe inevitably benefit.

Hours after the attacks, French President Francois Hollande declared a state of emergency and ordered his country’s borders closed. This is the first time since 1962 that a state of emergency was declared in metropolitan France. The army was called up to reinforce the police. Parisians were asked to stay at home, although that did not prevent the transformation of monuments in the city into shrines for the victims. As the City of Lights mourned, tens of thousands of candles were lit – partly to commiserate, partly to show defiance.

Meme pas peur. We are not afraid. That appears to be the emerging slogan in the wake of last Friday’s barbarism.

Only ten months ago, terrorists of the same inspiration as last Friday’s attacked the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Another gunman attacked a Jewish store in another part of Paris. All the perpetrators were quickly tracked and killed.

Following the dictate of political correctness, French authorities were careful to separate the effort against radical Islamists from policies affecting migration. A new law was introduced giving the police more powers to conduct electronic surveillance of suspected radicals. Otherwise, the general policy structure covering open borders and relatively liberal migration policies remained intact.

Hollande and his Socialist Party are generally disposed towards more liberal migration policies. That might begin to change, however, driven by real security concerns as much as by the dynamic of domestic politics – especially by the growing influence of the rightwing, anti-immigrant parties.

Remarkably, in the wake of the attacks, Hollande invited his predecessor and bitter political rival Nicolas Sarkozy to the presidential palace for a conference. The meeting between the leader of the left and the leader of the right is as much a show of solidarity in the face of terrorist challenge as a substantial policy discussion. Sarkozy, before he was elected French president, served as interior minister and has intimate knowledge of the workings of the country’s security agencies.

The meeting between Hollande and Sarkozy is particularly remarkable for Filipinos. That is a meeting requested by a sitting president from his predecessor that would not happen here, certainly not under the current president who vainly thinks he has nothing to learn from his predecessors.

More remarkably, Hollande and Sarkozy are likely to slug it out once more in the forthcoming elections. The latter is now more fondly remembered for the tough internal security policies he maintained and, among other things, for banning Muslim women from wearing veils in public.

Although France may have tougher policies on immigrants than, say, Sweden (although this country too began tightening its own policies), she remains vulnerable to attacks undertaken by Islamic radicals. This is because France has the largest proportion of immigrants from Islamic countries. Fully 7.5% of French citizens identify themselves as Muslims, the highest among European countries.

Muslim immigrants in France constitute a growing underclass. They have the lowest incomes and the highest incidence of joblessness. As it is, there is a high degree of alienation in the Muslim ghettoes. That alienation is likely to rise even more as discrimination understandably deepens.

The Muslim ghettoes are hotbeds for radicalism. Radical clerics in many of these neighborhoods have been preaching a more radical version of Islam. Hundreds of French-born Muslims are believed to have travelled to war-torn Syria to train with radical groups there.

It’s noteworthy, however, that of the 7,000 Muslims on the French security watch list, fully 40% are converts from Christianity. This is the surprising observation of one French senator exercising oversight over the internal security agencies.

The tens of thousands of refugees from Islamic countries torn by civil war will bear the brunt of whatever tightening in immigration policies. One of last Friday’s attackers was identified, by way of his fingerprints, as having recently travelled to Europe disguised as a refugee. He entered the continent via Greece and travelled to Serbia and Croatia before making his way to Paris to join the attacks.

The tightening of border controls could lead to the scuttling of the Schengen regime, an arrangement where most European countries offer open borders to anyone who holds a visa to a signatory country. The Schengen regime applies the idea of a single Europe. That travel regime might now be in jeopardy.

Also in jeopardy is Angela Merkel’s effort to convince the other European countries to accept more refugees from the war-torn Islamic countries. There is now greater public resistance to enlarging the number of Muslim communities in Christian countries. Europe will now be a less welcoming place for those seeking sanctuary from countries ruined by civil war and ravaged by Islamic radicalism.