Commemoration of the Charlie Hebdo attacks on Republic Square in Paris. Shutterstock/arenysam. Some rights reserved."The period of danger to the republic has come to an end, the period of difficulties starts" Leon Gambetta, the prominent ideologue of the French Third Republic, optimistically proclaimed in 1879. The recent Paris terrorist attacks and numerous other failed attempts unearthed some major ideological fault lines underpinned by considerable social alienation of some of the republic’s very own children.
There are numerous ideological factors that play a role in such acts of violence and several international contexts, where ethno–religious dividing lines result in considerable violence with a global impact. Particularly the Middle East appears to be providing a breeding ground for ideological activism, with the ongoing conflicts leading to pervasive injustice and violence inflicted on ethnic and religious grounds. Notwithstanding these issues, in this article I wish to highlight other internal political factors within the European borders that, amongst others, could be persuading some parts of our societies to use violence.
Civic rights and duties
In a recent speech at the Arab World Institute, President Francois Hollande emphatically underlined the “republican rights and duties” of all French citizens, including the Muslim minority. Prime Minister Manuel Valls, in denouncing social discrimination within society, went even so far as to refer to certain impoverished sections of the French community as instances of social apartheid. Such affirmations, while clearly highlighting some of the socio–spatial factors that lead to the isolation and ghettoization of some groups, do not appear to go far enough in highlighting the normative significance of such destructive political realities for the republican idea of being trapped in the prevailing imperative of a moral condemnation of violence.
