When the Terrorist Threat Does Not Fit the Narrative

News:

Three Danish boys, aged just 15 and 16, have been charged with attempted terrorism after planning to kill and injure several people at Hadsten School.

According to the information made public, the attack was to involve, among other things, weapons and bomb explosions. The boys have Danish-sounding names and are to undergo mental examinations.

The case also comes at a time when the Danish intelligence service (PET) itself has warned that young people are increasingly appearing in extremist virtual environments. PET also describes the radicalization of young people and minors as a significant trend in the far-right terrorist threat in the West.

Comment:

For decades, the alleged terrorist threat from Muslims has been played up on the largest possible political and media scale. Suspicion directed at individuals has time and again been broadened into questions about Islam, mosques, Muslim communities, integration and Muslim values. Politicians from top to bottom have commented, shown contempt and expressed deep concern.

But what happens when extremely young Danish boys become so prone to violence that they are arrested for planning terrorism against children at a Danish public school?
Remarkably little.

Where are the major press conferences?

Where are the ministers warning about the radicalization of Danish youth?

Where are the headlines about a threat to Denmark?

Where is the national discussion about the scale of the problem?

Where are the new legislative packages?

Where are the demands that Danish society must “look inward?”

PET even acknowledges that the problem exists. The service itself has warned about far-right youth, digital environments and the radicalization of minors. And the phenomenon is not limited to Denmark but is seen across Western societies.

Nevertheless, the difference in the narrative is striking. It is apparently far more convenient to treat each new case as an isolated incident.

If the suspect has a Muslim-sounding name, the answer must be found in religion.

If the suspect has a Danish-sounding name, the answer must be found with the psychologist.

Then it is about distress, mental examinations, social media and problematic individuals.

Even when politicians distance themselves from this case in routine phrases, the moral indignation rings hollow, knowing full well that those very same politicians have absolutely no problem supplying a genocidal occupation with weapons components so it can bomb children and schools in Palestine.

Their branding of Islam as terrorist is misguided and an attempt to wash their hands of the consequences of their own policies, in which contempt for human life is embedded at the highest level and carries the mandate of the population.

For decades, the secular West has shown contempt for human life abroad, while at home demanding that Muslims explain themselves, distance themselves and repeatedly “look inward.”

Now it finds itself confronted with children planning terrorism and mass murder.

Where is the self-examination now?

Where is the question of where a society without a higher purpose, without a deeper meaning, without a fixed morality and without a convincing direction leaves its youth?

Where is the question of what the past 25 years of war and state terror have done to society’s view of violence and to entire generations growing up under it?

When massive violence and murder abroad are presented year after year as necessary, legitimate and moral, what impact does that have on the young people growing up in that culture?

One can continue to regard each case as an isolated incident.

But at some point, the isolated cases become a pattern.

How many “isolated incidents” will it take before Denmark begins to look inward?

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Ibrahim Atrach