BBC One’s Panorama show tonight provided new evidence about the terrible murders of innocent tourists in Sousse, Tunisia, less than two years ago. Less than two years ago, 26 June 2015. I thought it was much longer ago than that. Security services could have done more, some of the police officers were too frightened to attend the scene, Panorama now knows the mastermind behind the killings. Some mastermind. And Seifeddine Rezgui, the terrorist who slaughtered ordinary decent people who were on holiday, well I wish there was a hell for him to go to. Perhaps the security services could have done more, but they might not have been able to have done enough.
Brits don’t go to Sousse anymore, or any of the other resorts around the area. The area where the murders occurred is closed down and run down, the Tunisian tourist economy is in tatters and so the Tunisian economy is in tatters. That won’t bring good news anytime soon.
For holidays, the world gets smaller. No one goes to the Red Sea resorts of Egypt, no one goes to Tunisia and a lot less people are going to Turkey. It’s understandable. People are scared. They’ll want to go to places where they feel safe. But where is safe?
Paris used to be safe until recently, until the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and then the Bataclan. I have tried to carry on living my life as before in order to not let the terrorists win, but in a way with me they already have won. At a recent gig at the Bristol O2 academy, we were all searched on the way in, which I hadn’t been expecting. We got upstairs in a crowded house and I have to confess that, every so often, I did have the odd suspicious look around, as a woman left her bag to dance, as a man left his jacket to get nearer to the front of the balcony. Irrational, perhaps, but a small part of me was affected by terrorism. The same recently when we were in Amsterdam. Not oppressively so, but where I would normally get by in serenity and joy, I found myself looking at people. And guess which people? Middle Eastern people, that’s who.
So we go where we think we will be safe. And we go where we hope that additional security will keep us safe where there was terrorism before. Instead of Egypt and Tunisia, tourism is booming in some parts of Spain. Spain’s safe, right, except in 2004 when an al-Qaeda terror cell murdered nearly 200 people at Madrid’s main train station. We know France is all right, except Paris and maybe Nice now, forgot about Nice. And the UK? Well, we had the terrorist atrocity in London in 2004 and the murder of Lee Rigby, but it’s okay here.
The truth is nowhere is safe now. If the terrorists can no longer commandeer jet planes to fly into buildings, they will try something else, like hijack a lorry or got to a beach and mow people down. Terrorism works. We stay at home instead of going to Turkey, or go to Greece instead of Tunisia. These killers may be sick, twisted and evil but sadly they are not all stupid. They’ll go somewhere, do something that we least expect. Wreck the economy and weaken the country and – hey presto! – there’s another terrorist haven.
There is, of course, one overwhelming theme that runs through all this terrorism: islamic fascism. All religions, in my view, are wrong about the world in one way or another, but only one is the direct cause of mass terrorism throughout the world and it’s islam. That’s not to say all muslims are terrorists because it’s only a small percentage of them that commit heinous acts of terrorism. But it’s not enough to leave it at that. I believe there are two solutions.
Firstly, we should demand a secular society in which the church is separated from the state and that people of different religions and beliefs are equal under the law. People have the right to believe in any religion they want but by the same token people should be permitted to be free from religion, with the proviso that human rights will always be put before religious beliefs. This is not negotiable. It will require some difficult choices, such as the abandonment of all so called “faith” schools, where religious parents send their (obviously) non-religious children in order to cement their faith. This means Catholic schools as well as islamic schools as well as scientology schools and so on. Secularism is not atheism. However…
Secondly, we should recognise that “faith” is dying out. Only 28% of the population now believes there is a God. This figure can only decline as our understanding of science becomes greater and we rely more on reason than superstition. And as more people learn that religion is largely superstition and that it isn’t true, we steer a path away from religious terrorism.
You may say that I’m a dreamer, as someone very famous once said, but what else is there? We will not defeat islamic fascism and terrorism by way of the bomb and the bullet. Actually, we’ll need to go much further.
One reason young men become terrorists is because of their lives, the lack of hope, the absence of a future. If there’s nothing for them at home, like a job, then the carrot of a so-called islamic state becomes more appealing. So overseas aid, greater investment aboard is a necessity. Young men will not seek to leave a thriving, prosperous country where they have opportunities and hope.
In a world where there are as many, if not more, religious fanatics in America than in anywhere else in the world and in Britain where all the main parties support religious separatist schooling and, indeed, the current government wants to rapidly expand them.
It’s secularity, it’s education, it’s investment or it’s more of the same and probably worse of the same. As we hotels and beaches of Sousse get overgrown and the swimming pools turn green, has anyone got a better idea?
