Many liberals are unable to understand the deep-seated racism and Islamophobia that shapes European consciousness today. There is an entire history of segregation, exclusion and occupation of Muslim, Arab and African lands stemming from the colonial era. Countries such as France

not only committed unspeakable crimes in places like Algeria, they refused to ever acknowledge the ways in which they demeaned their fellow human beings in the colonies. In contemporary Paris, working class Muslims/Africans live in "banlieus" where police violence/racism is

rampant & conditions of life extremely brutal. Today, Muslim immigrants tend to support Left-wing & liberal parties across Europe at a time when Far-Right & fascist parties are capturing public imagination. Fascism was and remains the biggest threat to European stability. In the

early twentieth century, fascists used the fear of Jews to mobilize their support. Today, they use the fear of Muslims and Islamophobia to whip up their base. In each case, the target is to create "weapons of mass distraction" by creating phantoms while enhancing the power of

tiny elites that control contemporary European politics.

In the Muslim world, the reaction against the crisis has been hypocritical to say the least. Defending acts such as beheading or condemning the West does not give us an inch of moral superiority. Instead, we should see how

Europe is showing us a mirror in terms of how we treat religious minorities and other vulnerable groups in society. Moreover, we can see how our ruling elites are also trying to manipulate this incident to block important internal debates by fueling hatred of other societies.

Accepting the racist civilizational discourse created by modern Europe is the worst way to show solidarity to Muslim minorities in Europe. There is no "Muslim" vs "West" binary as the West could not be where it is today without its encounters with the Muslim World. Instead,

we need to posit universal values of humanity, decency and equality if we are to prevent the ruling classes from making ordinary people clash with each other.

Today, we require new encounters between those who seek to create coalitions of the weak and the vulnerable.

immigrant rights activists in France, to minority rights activists in Pakistan, from feminists in the Muslim world to climate activists in Europe, we must forge a new internationalism that is indifferent to the differences of our identity. Rather than fighting the phantom of

"enemy civilization", we must shift our focus to imperialism, war, climate catastrophe and a failing capitalist order that pose a challenge to all of humanity. Let us no longer allow the symptoms disorient us from fighting the diseases that are devouring us, diseases that

we can only fight together, irrespective of our race, geography and religion.