In the past month we have been reminded once again that, even after decades of co-ordinated efforts to counter them, violent extremists continue to present a threat to societies around the world.
Last week, a ceremony commemorating Armistice Day was targeted in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Several individuals, including foreign diplomats, were wounded. It followed a spate of other terrorist attacks in France and Austria.
Although police investigations in all three countries continue, the wave of violence has been linked to tensions arising from ongoing debates in France around free expression, competing notions of what is sacred and the integration of immigrant communities. For many, the issue points to a wider question of how Western countries approach integration policies.
The failure to address integration in Europe in a viable and sustainable manner has global consequences. Through the migrant crisis and other events that have captured Western headlines in recent years, Europeans have become very familiar with the notion that socio-political issues that plague the Middle East have an impact on their daily lives. But as the events in Jeddah last week demonstrate, Europe’s politics can affect the day-to-day security of those living in the Middle East.
On Friday, EU member states’ interior ministers issued a statement outlining their response to the situation. It reaffirms their commitment to secure borders, cross-country police co-operation and the need to tackle online radicalisation.
In recognition of the role of integration in bolstering these efforts, the statement also highlights the need to address “social cohesion”. It is a worthy concept for Europe’s policymakers to pin down, and an area in which the approaches taken by various EU member states lack any real uniformity.
In the 1957 Treaty of Rome, a precursor to the treaties that eventually formed the European Union, European states declared their commitment to achieving an “ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe”. But the identities and demographics that constitute Europe’s peoples are very different today than they were six decades ago. European unity is a more complicated, more diverse and, ultimately, richer aspiration now.
A police officer in Nice, France, inspects flowers in front of Notre Dame basilica, before a mass to pay tribute to terrorist attack victims on November 1, 2020 in Nice, France. Getty
Europe's politics can affect the day-to-day security of those living in the Middle East
In France, public institutions historically have sought unity through a top-down approach, in which the French state’s secular values crowd out any others in the public square. Detractors – and there are many – point out that such an approach has alienated religious communities, and has contributed to a rise in extremism. It is hardly a coincidence that a disproportionate number of ISIS recruits in the terrorist group’s heyday were French citizens.
Britain, an EU member until this year, has in its own recent history taken the contrary approach. Its leaders have viewed integration as an organic process. The state, therefore, hardly need interfere.
Even such a laissez-faire attitude, however, has drawn fair criticism. Many allege that the British approach has resulted in certain communities living separately from the rest of society. This, say the critics, leads to cultures of abuse and radicalisation. It is no secret that Britain has its own extremism problem.
Europe’s policymakers are right to debate the subject. Doing so allows the moderate majority to have its say in the conversation. Not doing so risks ceding the issue to political extremes.
Until now, the choice between France’s approach and that of Britain has often been framed as one between intolerance and tolerance. But a sensible middle ground must be found – one that respects the sacred role of religion in believers’ personal lives while allowing common ground to shine in the public square. Any strategy that causes extremists to proliferate their kind, whether by alienation or by appeasement, only serves to make society less tolerant – and less tolerable – for everyone else.
MATCH INFO
Southampton 0
Manchester City 1 (Sterling 16')
Man of the match: Kevin de Bruyne (Manchester City)
RESULTS
2pm: Handicap (PA) Dh40,000 (Dirt) 1,200m Winner: Najem Al Rwasi, Fabrice Veron (jockey), Ahmed Al Shemaili (trainer)
2.30pm: Handicap (PA) Dh40,000 (D) 2,000m Winner: Fandim, Fernando Jara, Majed Al Jahouri
3pm: Maiden (PA) Dh40,000 (D) 1,700m Winner: Harbh, Pat Cosgrave, Ahmed Al Mehairbi
3.30pm: Maiden (PA) Dh40,000 (D) 1,700m Winner: Wakeel W’Rsan, Richard Mullen, Jaci Wickham
4pm: Crown Prince of Sharjah Cup Prestige (PA) Dh200,000 (D) 1,200m Winner: Jawaal, Fernando Jara, Majed Al Jahouri
4.30pm: Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Cup (TB) Dh200,000 (D) 2,000m Winner: Tailor’s Row, Royston Ffrench, Salem bin Ghadayer
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
RESULT
Huddersfield Town 1 Manchester City 2 Huddersfield: Otamendi (45' 1 og), van La Parra (red card 90' 6) Man City: Agüero (47' pen), Sterling (84')
Man of the match: Christopher Schindler (Huddersfield Town)
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024. It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine. Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages]. The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts. With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians. Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved. Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world. The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Countdown to Zero exhibition will show how disease can be beaten
Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease, an international multimedia exhibition created by the American Museum of National History in collaboration with The Carter Center, will open in Abu Dhabi a month before Reaching the Last Mile.
Opening on October 15 and running until November 15, the free exhibition opens at The Galleria mall on Al Maryah Island, and has already been seen at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Leaderboard
15 under: Paul Casey (ENG)
-14: Robert MacIntyre (SCO)
-13 Brandon Stone (SA)
-10 Laurie Canter (ENG) , Sergio Garcia (ESP)
-9 Kalle Samooja (FIN)
-8 Thomas Detry (BEL), Justin Harding (SA), Justin Rose (ENG)
The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.
Founders: Mike Dawson, Varuna Singh, and Benita Rowe
Based: Dubai
Sector: Education technology
Size: Five employees
Investment: $100,000 from the ExpoLive Innovation Grant programme in 2018 and an initial $30,000 pre-seed investment from the Turn8 Accelerator in 2014. Most of the projects are government funded.
Partners/incubators: Turn8 Accelerator; In5 Innovation Centre; Expo Live Innovation Impact Grant Programme; Dubai Future Accelerators; FHI 360; VSO and Consult and Coach for a Cause (C3)
Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
