Authors: Vaibhav Pal and Pritam Sarbabidya
The UK and France has been a melting pot of many cultures, showing its colonial heritage and it is a global city. However, both have experienced a growth in Islamic fundamentalism over the past few decades which poses significant threat to their security, culture and society at large. This trend not only spells doom for Britain and France, but also serves as an eye opener to India in her own fight against extremism; thus, we must delve into this increase’s intricacies, implications and what India needs to learn from these two European partners. Several factors have contributed to the emergence of religious extremism historically and socio-politically.
In fact, after World War II was over there were huge influxes of immigrants from former British colonies that are Muslim dominated countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh. The newcomers from these areas had to face numerous difficulties including joblessness and lack of housing thereby leading to desperation because they felt outcasted. France too carrying its colonial legacy just like UK, migrants from erstwhile colonies like Algeria happened to find France as their home but decades down the line a large number of them have not been able to adjust into the French society. By virtue of occupying substantial percentage of French population which happens to be the largest population of Islamic faith in a European country, there is tension among various sections. Though majority of people are peaceful and are engaged in their day to day lives there is a section that create struggle in society. France has witnessed several religious riots prominent among them being 2005 widespread civil unrest that was flamed by the death of two teenagers and obviously the Yellow vest protests in 2018-19, due to anti–Muslim or anti-sematic instances. But the one that got more attention was Charlie Hebdo attack which was followed by several protests causing anti-Muslim backlash. It is open to everyone that France does face threat from Islamic extremism but we have to go through this with nuance and context in which they take place. 2023 riots sparked off after allegations of Police brutality against a 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk who was shot fatally by police after traffic violations. French society has largely been witnessing riots where it is claimed that administration selectively targets migrants from African especially Moroccan and Algerian descent.
United kingdom’s concern has been focused on Islamic radicalisation and extremism since the London 7/7 bombings. Radicalisation, although it has been in existence in Britain for years, was not talked about or considered a threat to homeland security. From the incident itself, public awareness grew after 7/7 attack. The attack made London a clear subject of retrospection and how this problem of home-grown terrorism and radicalization was a big deal. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism has had severe and direct effects on national security in the UK. This influence is most evident through an increase in terrorist activities and violent extremism. Al-Qaeda and ISIS groups have used disaffected individuals as tools for their own gain, leading to high-profile incidents such as the Manchester Arena bombing (2017) and London Bridge attacks. These events highlighted the danger posed by radicalised individuals or cells, operating inside the UK. Recently Leicester city in England saw religious ethnic tensions between predominantly British Hindus and British Muslims during August – September 2022. It led to riots, protest marches, sloganeering as well as violence against both communities.’
Despite being the resident of France since long, a large chunk of population is not mainstreamed, the racial discrimination, and felling of “otherness” is very much there among the people of non-European origins who are majorly concentrated in the suburban area of Paris and hence we often find it being held hostage by protests occurring time and again. The social inequality and the economic disparity often led to alienation among Muslim youth that serves as the breeding ground for their radicalization. In the recent decades, world witnessed a large number of Europeans joining ISIS and also working for other terrorist groups active in the world. Paris itself has been victim to this – November 2015 attacks that took 130 lives and the Nice truck attack that killed 86 people on the occasion of the Bastille day. There have been other incidents like these.
Lessons for India
Challenge for French and British authorities have been the frequently occurring protests and them being going out of control and taking form of riots. India can learn a lot from these things as we see similar trends in India too where protests take form of hooliganism be it 2021 Red Fort incident on Republic Day on the pretext of Farmer’s protest or 2020 Delhi riots that took away several lives. We increasingly see religious tension and it becomes important to bring police reforms. Action by Police often come under scrutiny and in the age of social media and fake news, the sentiments are deliberately put out in a manner to make people outrage against the administration. In French and British situation, we see policeman carrying cameras in their helmets, bodycam and various other precautions to avoid any kind of falsification of information. It is important for governments to address the issues leading to riots. It can involve community engagement, Anti-discrimination measures and to focus on the education and youth empowerment.
CONCLUSION
Protests are the right of the citizenry and it must be applied to address the grievances against the administration but when it becomes systematic and susceptible to get hostage by people with certain political inclination and use the crowd to put pressure on the establishment and in the process, it unleashes those forces into the society that create ruckus and often result in loss of lives and resources of the state at the same time creating distrust among communities.
