IN 2004 Abu Musab Zarqawi, leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, wrote a letter to Osama Bin Laden in which he set out his organisation’s strategy. Outlining Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian fault lines, Zarqawi declared his intention to target Iraq’s majority Shia population in order to create a reaction against Iraq’s Sunnis. He wrote, “If we succeed in dragging [the Shias] into the arena of sectarian war, it will become possible to awaken the inattentive Sunnis as they feel imminent danger and annihilating death at the hands of the [Shias].”

The logic was that those Sunnis, or some of them at least, would then flock to Al Qaeda’s banners. At the very least, the idea of coexistence and political compromise, abhorrent as it was to Zarqawi, would be badly damaged if not destroyed.

In 2015 the militant Islamic State group, that Al Qaeda in Iraq eventually metamorphosed into, featured an article in their English-language magazine, Dabiq. Titled ‘The Extinction of the Grey Zone’, it was published a month after the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Here they state their intention to create an environment which forces Muslims to choose between ‘kufr’ and the ‘khalifah.’ This was to be achieved in classic Zarqawi style, by provoking the West to act against its Muslim citizens; those who were living in that very grey zone of coexistence.

François Hollande said the Paris attacks targeted “youth in all its diversity”, and he was right. But the attacks themselves are a means to an end, not the end itself.

The targets were chosen to strike at the very soul of France.

Cafes, a stadium, a concert hall; these targets were chosen not just to maximise casualties but to, as clichéd as this sounds, strike at the very soul, hope and future of France. Like Zarqawi’s atrocities in Iraq, Paris was meant to provoke a reaction against the vast majority of Muslims peacefully living in the West; Paris was a blow at the grey zone and all those who dwell in it.

It was also aimed at the Syrian refugees fleeing to the West. The planting of a (likely forged) Syrian passport at the site of the Bataclan massacre was a clear ploy intended at creating mass hatred and fear of the Syrian refugees arriving in Europe; those ‘sinners and apostates’ who are living refutations of Baghdadi’s propaganda.

The right seized on the refugee issue to cement their own political support, marrying it to their long-standing xenophobia and hard-line stances on immigrants and Muslims. And in the aftermath of Paris, they used atrocity for political gain. Neither they nor IS can flourish in the grey; it is hate and fear that sustains them. Most European governments have not yet taken the bait, but there is little doubt that right-wing sentiment is on the rise. For every act of compassion and coexistence there are a dozen displays of hate and rage; fissures widen, hearts harden.

Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump campaigns on one of the most openly fascist political platforms the US has seen in years. And here too is method. Here too, the extinction of the grey in-between is something to be encouraged. Here too, polarisation means political gain. The wave he is riding is built on the fear of a section of white America that they are going to be second-class citizens in ‘their’ country; that they will be subject to alien laws in their own land. And, if poll numbers and public response is to be believed, he has a ready and growing audience for his hate-filled agenda.

Thus, when he talks of building a wall along the Mexican border, or says that a black activist attacked at his rally ‘should have been roughed up,’ he gains support among his core group. And when he talks of building a national database of Muslims and practically endorses warrantless searches of the same, many nod in agreement. From the armed protesters outside Texas mosques to the New Jersey policeman who posted an epithet-laced rant against Muslims on Facebook, all gather under Trumps’ banner.

There is a tendency to look at Trump as some kind of clown, with his boorish ways and impossible hair. Some claim he isn’t a serious contender but merely a businessman building his own personal brand. All this may be true but to ignore his stated political beliefs would be short-sighted indeed. After all, Hitler was also subjected to the same mockery at one time, for his militaristic pageantry and ridiculous moustache.

Even if we assume that Trump does not believe what he says and is instead speaking purely for cynical political gain, the fact that he has rallied the racist and the fearful, the bigoted and the ignorant under a single banner is significant indeed. It means that he has galvanised and given voice to a large number of people who think coexistence is something to be abhorred, that tolerance is the enemy. A world away, next door, Baghdadi has the last laugh.

The writer is a journalist.

Twitter: @zarrarkhuhro

Published in Dawn, November 30th, 2015