Ever since the beginning of the month I had to think about a curious announcement I saw in the EUobserver which reported on an interview in the German Bild:
“Germany’s interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told Bild newspaper on Monday that there are almost 1000 people in Germany that could [be] classed as "possible Islamic terrorists". Of those, 128 seem to be "dangerous" and have the potential to commit attacks.”
I don’t have much to say on the German Minister’s original statement. except what is this supposed to mean? That Germany is confronted with “only” 128 potential dangerous Islamic terrorists? Then what about the other 872? Are we saying that there are actually non-dangerous terrorists out there? Why do we care about them? Or do we maybe mean that there are 872 people from the Islamic community in Germany that, though not dangerous in a violent sense, are dangerous in that they might hold radical ideas? That we cannot trust them? Or that for one reason or another they simply are personae non gratae, someone the German government would rather not have among society?
It is absolute nonsense but I am not sure anyone still notices it with this decade-old terrorist hypebole: Either something is wrong with our definition of the very word “terrorist” or with our understanding of democracy.
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