"Europe only talks about radical Islam"

January 27th 2015 - In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, I interviewed Mustafa Ceric for ZEIT ONLINE. Ceric is the former Grand Mufti of Bosnia & Herzegovina and one of the most important Muslim scholars in Europe. A German version of this interview was published on January, 14th. 




DIE ZEIT: Mr Ceric, you have condemned the Paris attack in strong terms. You have also called it an attack on innocent journalists. There are a lot of people in the Muslim world who believe these journalists were not innocent, but guilty, because they ridiculed the Prophet Mohammed. What do you say to that?


Mustafa Ceric: I would like to postpone the question of innocence for now. We know from the Sira, the recorded history of his life, that whenever the Prophet was attacked and offended, these offences were not only more hurtful than the ones by Charlie Hebdo – but the Prophet did not issue any death sentences. As Muslims, if we want to express our love for him, we do this in our hearts. Of course, the caricatures are not OK. All Muslims feel embarrassed and uncomfortable about them. If Charlie Hebdo wanted to hurt Muslims, the magazine succeeded. If the magazine wanted to offer some kind of social criticism, if it wanted to make clear, that some Muslims have shortcomings – yes, of course, that is true, too. But my point is: You don't love the prophet and show it with a gun.


DIE ZEIT: Al-Qaida, to give just one example, has always argued that cartoonists have to die, when they ridicule the Prophet, because the Prophet himself set an example when he had Ka'ab bin al-Ashraf killed, who had ridiculed him. Is that wrong?


Mustafa Ceric: I don't accept this argument. These terrorists first decide to do something and then seek for arguments. You know what bothers Muslims more? Charlie Hebdo also ridiculed the Jewish faith, and at least one journalist was ousted for Antisemtitism. We want to know: How are we going to solve this puzzle? Or take Anders Breivik, for example. He killed over 70 people. He said he did it as a Christian. Did the media call him a Christian terrorist?


DIE ZEIT: Nobody denied that Breivik believed he was on a Christian mission.


Mustafa Ceric: Perhaps. But it did not lead to hysteria about Christian terrorism in Europe. Why, for God's sake, are the media always talking about „Islamic terrorism“? This is a double standard. What happened in Paris, is not „Islamic terrorism“. I would like to ask the media in Europa to apologize for using the term „Islamic terrorism“.


DIE ZEIT: So the perpetrators have nothing to do with Islam?


Mustafa Ceric: No, this has nothing to with Islam.


DIE ZEIT: If that is so, why did you sign a letter to the head of the „Islamic state“ terror group together with over 120 Muslim scholars, in which you tried to convince Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that his religious arguments were wrong? Clearly you addressed him as a Muslim!


Mustafa Ceric: There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world! When you talk about Islamic terrorism, you are including all of them. That is a verbal crime. Why do you not do the same with Christian terrorists? Or with Jewish terrorists, like the murderer of Yitzhak Rabin? Did anyone blame Moses for what that man did?


DIE ZEIT: But who is blaming the Prophet Mohammed for what the Paris killers did?


Mustafa Ceric: Everybody is blaming Islam!


DIE ZEIT: I find it confusing that you say the Paris attack has nothing to do with Islam, but argue about Muslim theology with the leader of the IS. So let me ask you: Does Paris have anything to do with Islam or not?


Mustafa Ceric: Does al-Baghdadi have to do with Paris?


DIE ZEIT: We don't know yet, but his school of thought is similar.


Mustafa Ceric: We don't know anything about the school of thought of the Paris attackers. I will put it this way: What happened in Paris is against Islam. And against Muslims! It is not acceptable. It is against the values of freedom, against the European values we all hold.


DIE ZEIT: Across Europe, there is a growing problem with young Muslims who are influenced by Jihadists. If you were to speak to a 17-year-old who is in the process of radicalizing and tells you he wants to kill cartoonists because they have ridiculed the Prophet and because the Prophet himself ordered the killing of Kaa'b bin al-Ashraf – what is your argument against that?


Mustafa Ceric: I would tell him that the Prophet has never killed for revenge or for any offence that he suffered. When the Prophet came to Mecca, he forgave the killers of his uncle Hamza. I would tell him: If you love the Prophet, the Prophet will love you for not killing anyone in his defence. The Prophet doesn't need revenge.


DIE ZEIT: According to the Quran, blasphemy will be punished by Allah after you die. There is no prescribed worldly punishment for blasphemy, correct?


Mustafa Ceric: Correct. And if Islam was the way these terrorists represent it, I don't think I would be a Muslim.


DIE ZEIT: As a scholar and a former grand Mufti, are you in competition with radical preachers in Europe?


Mustafa Ceric: Yes. And we need a broader approach to re-socializing and re-educating those who decide to go and fight in Syria and then come back. They need to understand that they are wrong. But the Muslim institutions are weak, they have little resources and many Imams have little knowledge. We need help by Europe's states to establish strong structures.


DIE ZEIT: Why is the radical theology of the IS and al-Qaeda so attractive?


Mustafa Ceric: Young people tend to be rebellious against established systems, that's one reason. But they are also giving them arguments without telling them about their responsibilities. They turn it into an adventure.


DIE ZEIT: What can be done?


Mustafa Ceric: For one, I believe Europe needs a Grand Mufti. We need a voice to calm down things. Not everybody will accept this office, but it will have an effect. But the European states are hesitant to support this.


DIE ZEIT: Muslims could do something themselves to establish that office...


Mustafa Ceric: But we are weak.


DIE ZEIT: In Germany, Muslim groups often find it very difficult to even agree with one another on a local level and on local issues.


Mustafa Ceric: This process is not easy. We need to structure Islam as an official institution. We need better teachers, better Imams, who are from here and not imported.


DIE ZEIT: But who is doing something about that?


Mustafa Ceric: I am fighting radical Imams every day. But even those who are trying to help are sometimes accused of being radicals. Who is an acceptable Muslim for Europeans? It seems like there is almost no acceptable Muslims for the governments or the media. We can't solve this problem alone. Europe complains about political Islam all the time. But Europe also only talks about political Islam.


DIE ZEIT: Should we distinguish between Islam and Islamism?


Mustafa Ceric: I think these distinctions cause a lot of confusion. The Paris attackers should be called neither. They are rebellious murderers. They don't know anything about Islam.


DIE ZEIT: But radical Muslims are often louder than moderate Muslims. They shape the image of Islam.


Mustafa Ceric: But they are not doing this on behalf of Islam! For me, they are destroyers of civilization.

„This threat will stay with us for at least a decade“

What kinds of terror attacks do we have to expect in Europe, and how dangerous are returning Foreign Fighters? Norwegian terror expert Thomas Hegghammer* shares his insights in this interview with DIE ZEIT**.

DIE ZEIT: In the Paris attack, there was a link to Yemen. In Belgium, where the police foiled a terror attack last week, we saw Syria returnees among the suspects. In Germany, the police arrested several Jihadists, some of whom had been to Syria, some of whom hadn't. What do these instances tell us about the current threat?

Hegghammer: Firstly, that it is varied indeed. The security services have to look at different kinds of threats all the time. I would also add to the list the sympathizers of the „Islamic State“ (IS). We have seen plots hatched by IS sympathizers in North America, Australia and Europe. In fact, there have been more plots by IS sympathizers than by actual Syria returnees.

DIE ZEIT: What do all these people have in common?

Hegghammer: Apart from the fact that they are radical Islamists who want to perpetrate violence? Not much, really. They don't organize formally. They take good precautionary measures. That's about it. If you look at their profiles, they are a very mixed bunch.

DIE ZEIT: But it is clear, that the pool of potential terrorists is bigger today than it was a few years ago. Does that mean this threat is going to stay for quite a while?

Hegghammer: O yes, at least for another decade! Syria and the IS phenomonen have given Jihadism in Europe a new lease on life. We will be facing threat levels like this for many years.

DIE ZEIT: Should we expect more attacks, but on a smaller magnitude than we were fearing before?

Hegghammer: It's impossible to make good predication of frequency and scale. The quantity need not go up, but it could. And attacks need not become smaller, there can still be big ones like Madrid or London every now and then. But I believe there are two new trends. We are currently observing more attacks with hand-held weapons than with explosives. And the attackers tend to seek out targets that leave little doubt about the message - like Charlie Hebdo, Jewish schools, Policemen or soldiers -, rather than, say, general transportation systems.

DIE ZEIT: A lot of these plots seems to be results of calls to „individual Jihad“ via „Inspire“ and other Jihadist propaganda. Has this phenomenon now taken centre stage?

Hegghammer: I am not sure. Look at Paris: the Kouachi brothers were part of an old network, exactly like what we used to have in the 2000s. In Belgium, we saw a rather large network of 10 to 15 people. That's not exactly „invidiual Jihad“. The attacks in Ottawa and Sydney, on the other hand, were. We have to understand that new tactics are being added, but old ones are being kept.

DIE ZEIT: You have worked extensively on „Foreign Fighters“. What's more important as a driving factor: adventure and life stlye or religion and ideology?

Hegghammer: People leave for different reasons, but if I were to hightlight one, it’s the desire to be part of a historical project. It's partly escapism. These people want to get away from the West, from corruption and discrimination, and they want to move into this assumedly pure zone where they think they can find true Islam.

DIE ZEIT: We like to think of the Western world as free and able to accomodate all kinds of religious lifestyles. Why does this concept not work for these people?

Hegghammer: Disillusionment is not limited to radical Islamists. Many young people across Europe are frustrated, see no future, are in opposition to the current order. But they have no alternative. The secular, drug-using delinquent in a Paris suburb – where is he going to go? Islamists, in contrast, are being offered an escape route. So availability is a factor here: Syria is easy to get to. It's an utopia that is at hand.

DIE ZEIT: Some Israeli soldiers escape to Goa after military service; some leftists start communes when they are sick of consumerism; but they usually don't turn into terrorists. Where does this element come from?

Hegghammer: Jihadism is a destructive project, concealed in a constructive one. They don't join in order to become terrorists. But they can become terrorists in the process. And our problem is that radicalizing and preparing to go abroad to fight is a kind of activity that is just below the threshold of police intervention. In a way, the reason we have a radicalization problem in Europe is that the Islamists are not that radical. Because a lot of these networks stay clear of terrorist plotting, there is little the state can do against them. If these people were all organized terrorists, we wouldn't have any problem defeating them. But as long as they are operating below that threshold, our hand are tied. All these gateway groups, like Sharia4Belgium, Sharia4Denmark, etc., they have become masters at toeing the line.

DIE ZEIT: So the window to act is too tiny?

Hegghammer: Exactly. And we can't just lower the threshold, or we will end up punishing people for opinions.

DIE ZEIT: Is there any indication of how long it takes foreign fighters to cool down once they return? Or do they stay radical?

Hegghammer: We know very little about Syria returnees so far. But what we do know is the proportion of people who returned from previous battlefields and then plotted attacks. Before Syria, that rate was 1 out of 15 to 20. If you look at open source data about returnees from Syria who were involved in terror plots across Europe, we have so far seen about 10 plots with roughly 20 returnees involved. That is 20 out of 3000 who left to fight abroad, or 20 out of just over 1000 who have already returned, repectively. So far, it is only a small minority who have become terrorists. The question before us is: How do you stop that minority without over-reacting towards the relatively harmless majority?

DIE ZEIT: But many returnees have only returned recently. Some of them still may become active as terrorists...

Hegghammer: Yes, that number will increase. But I think we can already say that the rate is not going to be extremely high. Given the sheer numbers, however, the absolute number of terror plots may well be higher than previously.

DIE ZEIT: How should our societies deal with this long-term threat?

Hegghammer: Some intelligence services in Europe will have to substantially grow, they need more analysts. Not necessarily new methods or new survaillance powers. Adding data usually just means having to process more data. Smarter analytical software can help, but we need more brains, too. Our publics also need to be prepared for more news like what we have heard in the past two weeks, and they need to be persuaded not to panic. Mind you, we are still no-where near the level of terrorist activitiy we had in the 70s and 80s from the far left and far right. We should be able to psychologically tolerate even an increase in terrorist activity.

DIE ZEIT: What other measures are sensible?

Hegghammer: We need a sophisticated system to deal with returnees. We need soft measures to re-integrate those who can be re-integrated, and tough measures to incarcerate those who need to be incarcerated. And there is the internet. I am very aware of free speech concerns, but we have reached a point where something needs to be done about the access of Jhadis to broadcasting tools. JM Berger makes a really good point about this when he argues that the question at stake is not in fact free speech, given that Twitter and Facebook are really like TV stations. Should these people have the right to voice their opinion? Of course! Should they also have the right to broadcast them? Well, I don't think so.

DIE ZEIT: Prisons are also a problem in regard to radicalization.

Hegghammer: And that is a true dillemma. You have three options, none of which is great: Put Jihadists in a prison together, and they will wind each other up. Spread them out, and you will have the risk of the radicals radicalizing other people. Third option: Solitary confinement. But that's inhumane. This dillemma is accentuated by the European tradition of short sentences. In the US, Jhadists get very long sentences. They die in prison or grow old there. In Europe, they will be back on the streets after a few years. For me, all this is a good argument for putting as few people in prison as possible.

DIE ZEIT: How do you prepare for day X? Can resiliance be learnt?

Hegghammer: That's almost impossible, because whether an attack has a unifying or polarizing effect, has to do with the target. And you have no control over that. Take Paris, for example: There is a lot of tension now, the country hasn't simply united after the attack. And that has to with the nature of the target. It was very controversial. When the Twitter-Hashtag „JeSuisCharlie“ came up, that kind of forced people to identify with that controversial target. And lo and behold, within hours you had alternative Hashtags like „JeSuisAhmed“ or „IamnotCharlie“. It was very different in Norway, when Breivik killed 77 people, because it is hard to disagree that killing children is bad. That made it much easier to stand together. 

* Thomas Hegghammer is the director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment and an internationally renowned expert on Jihadist ideology, Foreign Fighters and Saudi Arabia. (Foto Credit: Christian Vinculado Tandberg / FFI)

** This interview was conducted by Yassin Musharbash for DIE ZEIT. A slightly edited and shortened German version of this interview was published in the current issue of DIE ZEIT which can be purchased online here. We have a cover story this week called "Living with Terror", apart from the interview you will find an in-depth-story on German reactions to the Paris attack and the Belgian arrests as well as a report from Belgium (and other good stuff). 

The Paris Attacks - one Plot or two?

We have fairly solid evidence by now that the attack on the Paris satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was commissioned by AQAP. In total, there are three indications of this:

* On Friday, shortly after the perpetrators Cherif and Said Kouachi were killed by French police, a ranking AQAP cadre first sent a communique to several journalists by email and then posted a series of tweets that amounted to a claim of responsibility by the group

* Even before that, the two perpetrators during their operation had already told a by-stander and later a journalist they they were acting on behalf of AQAP

* Lastly, earlier today, an 11 minute video was published by AQAP. It appears legit and it features high ranking AQAP member Nasir bin Ali al-Anissi. In the video, he not only claimed the attack as AQAP's, but also insisted that one of the two brothers (he didn't say which one) had been appointed amir of the operation and had been in direct touch about the operation with Anwar al-Awlaki. This would in theory be consistent with reports according to which Said Kouachi spent some time in Yemen in 2011.

Overall, there is little reason to doubt that there was indeed a connection between the brothers and AQAP. The idea to attack Charlie Hebdo may very well have been born in Yemen in 2011, at a time when AQAP was experiencing an influx of foreign fighters, quite a few of whom where from France and who quite possibly would have known about Charlie Hebdo and the kind of cartoons the magazine had been printing.

So was this an AQAP attack? 

Yes. But it may have been more than just that.

Because there is another thread to be scrutinized here. On the morning following the Charlie Hebdo attack, a young man by the name of Amedy Koulibaly shot and killed a policewoman in Paris. The day after, when the Kouachi brothers had been tracked down by the police and were holed up in an industrial area near the airport with a hostage, Koulibaly re-entered the stage and took control of a Kosher supermarket. He took hostages as well and let it be known that he would kill these hostages unless the Kouachi brothers were let got.

Of course they weren't let got. But very interestingly, Koulibaly during the hostage situation explained to a journalist that he was acting on the behalf of the "Islamic State" terror organization. He re-iterated this claim in a video he later published. The IS did not claim the attack for itself. But according to some reports, it did praise the attack during a Friday sermon in the city of Mossul.

At the same time, though, Koulibaly also stated that he had co-ordinated with the Kouachi brothers.

Now how does all of that add up? Especially since AQ and the IS are enemies: They are fighting each other in Syria. They are competing for leadership of the global Jihadist movement. It is highly unlikely they respective leaderships would have agreed to a shared plot.

First of all, it is important to note that the Kouachi brothers have known Koulibaly for years. Apparently a while ago they asked him for money, presumably in order to help finance their plot. This may well be how he Koulibaly got into it all.

But what are we really looked at here? 

I believe it makes most sense to treat the Paris incidents as two separate plots. Even though there may have been a degree of co-ordination, perhaps only regarding timing, it effectively were two distinct plots. And intriguingly each of these attacks fits rather neatly with what AQ and IS have asked for and have been demanding or trying to accomplish for a while, respectively.

AQAP as well as AQ Central have been talking about revenge for the cartoons for a long time. In 2010, AQ Central sent an operative to Denmark in order to research Jyllandsposten, the paper that became known in 2005 for publishing Mohammed cartoons. He war arrested in time, but his plan seems to have been to take the staff as hostages and later execute them.

In 2011, German police arrested a man who they accused of having been dispatched by Junis al-Mauretani of AQ Central in order to plan attacks in Europe. Police recovered a notebook in is possesions. One item was about what they believed were potential targets. Charlie Hebdo was among them.

Add to that AQAP's several death lists with cartoonists' names on them and verbal and written threats against cartoonists - and what you get is a clear indication that striking either Jyllandsposten or Charlie Hebdo was something that AQ wanted really badly. Looked at from an AQ perspective, the Kouachi brothers were like two drones that finally and precisely hit their long assigned target. This long term way of thinking, in combination with a taste for precision, is an AQ hallmark.

The IS, on the other hand, has also asked it's followers for attacks in the West, but is not equally focussed on precision targeting. The IS has been talking about very crude kinds of attacks (Killing people with stones or tossing them of high places or even burning crop fields) and it has not spoken about Mohammed cartoons much at all. IS has also made it clear that anybody should feel invited to perpetrate such an attack in their name and that training by them or contact with them wouldn't be needed. That is true of Koulibaly, as far as we know. If his attack had occurred just by itself and the Charlie Hebdo attack had never happened, most experts would have had little trouble classifying it as an event most likely induced by IS propaganda and perpetrated by a radicalized individual.

I am, of course, aware of the fact that AQ and AQAP have also asked for similar attacks, but it wasn't their main approach. It has been for the IS though.

It is therefor safe to say that the acts that Koulibaly perpetrated fit the IS pattern much better than the al-Qaida pattern. Killing a policewoman because she was French and killing hostages because they were Jewish is rather crude. Koulibaly also said these people had to die because France was part of the anti-IS coalition. This is an argument that the Kouachi brothers did not make. But it is an argument that the IS made when it asked for attacks in the West.

So let's agree this was really two attacks that only took place simultaneously because the perpetrators knew each other and didn't mind about their different leanings and also because they obviously didn't care that AQ and IS may not like their unprecedented alliance: What does that mean? 

First of all: Pragmatism beats ideology. Apparently attackers can be more than robots. For Koulibaly and the Kouachi brothers, doing this together was more important than ideological purity. It is telling that in the AQAP video, Al-Anissi devotes a few sentences to this and interprets the simultaneity of the attacks as "co-incidence". he needs to do that to maintain ideological purity, but it is of course not true.

Secondly: We may need to take into account that this may happen again. Security services tend to sort radicals they are keeping track of in terms of known group allegiances. But these can be trumped. In the real life, things can happen that don't happen on an analyst's spread sheet. Both these plots could have happened weeks apart from one another. They only happened at the same time because the guys knew each other.

Thridly: AQ is not dead. It is still a threat, among other reasons precisely because it entertains a long term perspective.



NB: This Blog Post relies in parts on an analysis I wrote for the current edition of DIE ZEIT. It is available for purchase online via www.zeit.de