France and civilisation are one and the same. Last week's attacks were not just attacks on Paris — they were calculated, prepared and nihilistic assaults on our common humanity. Today, all we can feel is grief, misery and shock. Shock will change to anger and calls for action. People will want to understand how this happened and assign blame. They will want to strike back. There will be those who will want to expel all Muslims from France. Others will call for Muslims to be ghettoised or made into a permanent suspect community. There will be calls on Muslims in France to dissociate themselves from these horrific acts, as if they had any ownership of them in the first place. The sense that something must be done, and fast, is very understandable. But recent history shows that it is also terribly dangerous. It risks playing into the hands of the Islamic State (IS) group. We now know that after 9/11 the United States reacted in exactly the wrong way to the atrocious attacks on the Twin Towers and Washington. The group of neo-conservative advisors around then-US President George W Bush had prepared Iraq and Iran as targets before 9/11. When the perfect opportunity came along, Bush lashed out by invading Iraq, to the dismay, we now know, of his better-informed father. Without the invasion of Iraq, there would be no IS, which has claimed responsibility for last week's horror. So let's ask what IS would like us to do now. And consider this: the French branch of IS is using exactly the same tactics used by jihadists to split Sunnis from Shias in Iraq. They want to provoke reactions to alienate French Muslims from their fellow countrymen. One IS video shows a group of heavily armed youths burning their French passports while appealing to French Muslims either to join IS and emigrate — or stay behind and fight the kafir (nonbelievers) in France. They repeatedly say “What are you waiting for? Do something. Poison them, run them over in your cars.” If Europe reacts in the wrong way we can help make this happen. There is a great danger that by reacting in the wrong way we will achieve just what the terrorists want, which is to destroy the French state and the magnificent values that it represents. There are powerful elements in the West that would welcome exactly that response. That is why I believe there are important lessons to be learned from the reaction by Norway after the horrific terrorist attacks in Oslo and Utoya Island in July 2011. The attacks carried out by lone wolf Andres Breivik killed 77 people, most of them young, and injured several hundred others. It was by far the most terrible attack that Norway has suffered since World War Two. Yet the Norwegians reacted with tremendous calm. This is what Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian prime minister, said on that day: “We are still shocked by what has happened, but we will never give up our values. Our response is more democracy, more openness and more humanity.” Stoltenberg went on to say, “We will answer hatred with love.” In the aftermath of the catastrophe, Stoltenberg commissioned a report. It did not blame the state security services and was very careful not to recommend a programme of reprisals. The Norwegians did not even change their gun laws. They did not stigmatise the section of the population from which Breivik, a white racist with fascist sympathies, had emerged. The Norwegians did not exaggerate the threat. They made certain that their society's values were maintained. However, it would be wrong to pretend that the atrocities in Paris can be equated to the atrocities in Norway four years ago. Friday's attacks in Paris were not the action of a single deranged individual. They were part of a carefully coordinated military assault on a peaceful population. They were designed to cause mayhem and fear. This was the point emphasised again and again in the videos of the young men, showing them around a campfire in a forest. Bring about terror in France, they urged. Make your fellow Frenchmen feel frightened going to the shops. This is terrorism in the purest sense of the word. It feeds off war and fear. This means that there is every reason to assume that such attacks will be mounted again, either in Paris or in any number of European cities, including London. The first duty of any government is to protect its citizens. French President Francois Hollande had no choice but to regard Friday's attacks as a mortal threat to the French state in a way that did not apply to Stoltenberg. I believe that it is nevertheless terribly important that France emulates the example of Norway. It must find a way of holding onto its republican values at the same time as protecting its citizens. That is why it is essential to place the attacks in Paris in the context of a wave of attacks carried out by IS in recent weeks, among them the dreadful bombings in Ankara, Beirut, Baghdad and elsewhere, as well as the suspected destruction of the Russian plane above Sinai. IS is fighting a global war in which Muslims are the primary target. This is not just in France, Britain and Europe. It has declared war on the world as a whole. It is committing atrocities in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and North Africa. It has made it clear that it is prepared to kill innocent people of whatever nationality, race or religion. It represents evil in its purest form. It must be confronted and destroyed. So far, the world has not been serious about waging war on IS. Regional powers in the Middle East have been so consumed by their own rivalries, aided and abetted by the United States and Russia, that they have been tempted to use IS to further their own agendas. As individuals, what can we do? Here's one thought. We could travel to Paris to tell the French people that we love them and that we share their grief. The writer was British Press Awards Columnist of the Year in 2013.
