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In a gruesome incident that sent shock waves across France and much of Europe, Mohammed Merah, a 23-year-old French citizen of Algerian descent, shot dead a Franco-Israeli rabbi and his two sons and the daughter of the headmaster outside a Jewish school in Toulouse on March 19, 2012. A few days earlier, on March 11, Merah had gunned down three French paratroopers, one in Toulouse and two others in Montauban. The victims were Muslims of North African origin and were part of the parachute regiments that had served in Afghanistan.

As soon as the French police tracked Merah, they stormed the building in which he was hiding and after a 32-hour siege he was shot down by the heavily armed elite forces. Merah’s father wanted him to be buried in his native Algeria, but the Algerian government refused the request. He was buried in his hometown Toulouse.

The brutal and mindless killings shook France and it looked like the incident would inflame passions and further polarize French society. The French media initially suggested that the incident was part of a terrorist plot engineered by Al Qaeda. However, the facts that subsequently came to light tell a different story. Merah’s parents separated when he was five. In his youth he took to petty crimes, which landed him in jail twice. He liked to party and was seen dancing in a nightclub a few days before he started his shooting spree on March 11. Though Merah bragged about his links to terrorist groups, the French police have not discovered any such links.

Merah did not belong to any religious congregation or any Islamic movement, nor was he affiliated to any militant or terrorist cell. He lived in fact on the margins of not only French society but also his own Algerian Muslim community. In a perceptive article in The New York Times, Oliver Roy wrote that all the evidence suggests that Merah was acting alone, and that he was ideologically drawn to Al Qaeda by watching videos on the Internet. He was in fact far closer to lone terrorists like Anders Behring Breivik, who recklessly gunned down 77 people in Norway in July 2011. Roy draws attention to the fact that the actions of terrorists like Merah are often misconstrued. “Whereas non-Muslim lone terrorists like Breivik tend to be called mentally ill, Muslim lone terrorists like Merah are seen as embodying ‘Muslim wrath’”, says Roy (Oliver Roy: Loner, Loser, Killer, The New York Times, March 23, 2012).

Merah reportedly told the French police that he wanted to take revenge for Palestinian children who are being killed by Israeli forces and to attack the French army because of its involvement in the NATO-led intervention in Afghanistan. He saw the Muslim soldiers he killed as traitors, because they were fighting fellow Muslims in Afghanistan. Though Merah’s brutal, impulsive and irrational killing spree seems to betray a disturbed mind, it also points to certain harsh realities: the pernicious consequences of the ‘war on terror’ and the unspeakable suffering of the Palestinian people.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose virulent dislike of Muslims is well-known, dealt with the crisis with commendable restraint and statesmanship. In his public statements, he vowed to deal with the threat of terrorism with an iron hand, but steered clear of controversial issues like immigration. He met Jewish and Muslim leaders at the Elysee twice in 24 hours shortly after the incident, amid concerns that France might again be torn apart in consequence of the shocking killings.

France has a large Jewish population, estimated at 488,000, the third largest after Israel and the US. Relations between French Jews and Muslims—who number nearly 6 million—have generally been cordial. There are established channels of communication between the two communities. The city of Toulouse in southwestern France, where Merah was born and brought up and where the horrifying killings took place, has a population of 440,000. Toulouse’s multiethnic population includes around 35,000 Muslims, mostly of North African origin, about 2,500 Jewish families and thousands of Spaniards who fled Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Relations between Muslims and Jews in Toulouse have generally been free from rancor and antagonism. Soon after the killings, Jews and Muslims marched together, hand in hand, to mourn the death of the victims, to show solidarity and to send a message to the wider French society that the dastardly act of a lone terrorist would not be allowed to shatter inter-community peace and harmony.

The Muslim community lost no time in condemning the killings. Mohammed Moussaoui, chairman of the French Council of Muslims (CFCM), said that Muslims in France were offended that the suspect behind the killings in Montauban and Toulouse claimed to be acting in the name of Islam. “These acts are totally against the foundations of our religion,” he declared.

France is in the midst of a highly divisive presidential election campaign. The main contestants are Sarkozy, who is seeking a second term, Francois Hollande of the Socialist Party, and Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front and daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Before the Toulouse killings, Sarkozy was trailing behind Hollande in opinion polls, but the incident and manner in which the culprit was apprehended and executed by the French elite forces have boosted his ratings and have refurbished his image as a “security” president. On March 30, the French police arrested 19 people suspected of belonging to terrorist outfits. With an eye on the presidential elections in April-May this year, Sarkozy has banned the renowned Muslim scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has unequivocally and consistently denounced terrorism, from entering France to participate in an Islamic conference organized by the Union of French Islamic Organisations (UOIF) in April.

Marine Le Pen, on the other hand, openly capitalized on the prevailing anti-Muslim sentiments in the country. She has a virulent dislike for what she calls the “Islamification” of France and dubs the holding of Friday prayers on streets as “occupation.”

At a weekend election rally, Marine Le Pen openly conflated terrorism with immigration and thundered, “Mow many Mohammed Merahs in the boats, the aeroplanes, that arrive each day in France?” But her rhetoric was not only suffused with misrepresentation but was also out of touch with the nation’s mood. Merah was not an immigrant but a French citizen born and raised in the country. Three of the soldiers killed by Merah were of North African origin, two of them Muslim. All were French citizens who served in an elite unit of the French army. Like them, there are thousands of Muslims in the French armed forces who fight under the French flag.