November 23, 2015

San Francisco Showing Support for Paris. Photo by Thomas Hawk.

This piece was originally published in The Hill.

The Paris attacks last Friday mark a change of strategy for ISIS with an added focus on international operations as evidenced by the attack in Lebanon and on the Russian airliner. 

No longer is ISIS focusing on building a so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria.  It is clear that ISIS is targeting those countries as revenge for their involvement in Syria. The Russian airliner was brought down not long after Russia’s military involvement in Syria. France has been supporting the United States in its air campaign against ISIS. The alleged mastermind even admitted his intention to “terrorize” Europe.

The other motivation for ISIS is its fear that Muslims will choose to move to and live in Western nations, thus rejecting the so-called caliphate, a society supposedly built for Muslims. This fear was compounded when Europe opened its doors to Syrian refugees. The Syrians that gave up their savings, risked their lives in rubber dinghies, and trekked miles for the hope to live in a free society served to repudiate ISIS’ nation-building experiment. Worse still for ISIS, instead of being turned back, countries like Germany actually welcomed the refugees, putting ISIS on the defensive. We thus saw an uptick in ISIS videos appealing to the refugees to return.

If Europe is accepting Muslims who are attracted to its freedom, security, and pluralism, that hurts ISIS’ narrative of a war between Islam and the West. Thus, what ISIS feels it must do is sow discord between Europe and its Muslim population and new refugees. It feeds into the ISIS narrative when Europe fears the refugees. When refugees are mistreated, ISIS is able to demonstrate to the Muslims around the world that the only place for them is the caliphate. Insecure in what their “state” actually offers and acknowledging they are losing the battle of hearts, ISIS resorts to feeding into the fears of xenophobes in order to create a false narrative of the West being hostile to Muslims.

With an alleged Syrian passport found on the bodies of one of the attackers, ISIS is hoping refugees will be rejected, Muslims will be further discriminated against, and Muslim communities targeted. By pushing Europe to actions it would not have otherwise taken, ISIS can then argue that Europe was never an open society and point out that the caliphate is the only refuge for Muslims. This is the recruiting tool used to attract disenfranchised youth toward radicalization.

Now is the time to show ISIS we are not falling for their plan. This is not the time to say we will only accept Christian refugees. This is not the time to call for a halt to refugees. Here in the U.S., we must show ISIS that not only do we have confidence in our security screening procedures, we will actually take the people that have rejected the death trap of ISIS. We will not compromise the values that make America great.