144 Global Ethics for Leadership
fit the stereotype of being Muslim. For example, women in hijab have
been attacked and stabbed, a peaceful Muslim shopkeeper was beaten
and his shop looted, a Moroccan taxi driver was asked by his passenger
if he was a “Pakistani guy” and then was shot in the back, mosques have
been attacked and children in schools with Muslim backgrounds dis-
criminated against. Even a non-Muslim woman of Indo-Jamaican de-
scent, Kayla Gerber, with covered hair in winter in Toronto was attacked
aggressively by a white man who told her over and over again, “You
need to get your f—ing hijab off and get the f— out of the country!” A
non-Muslim Sikh man with a beard was reported to have been attacked
violently in New York.
The growing Islamophobia and the genuine fear among Muslims
who are under a constant threat of attack is forcing the world apart.
Worse still, the spill over of these events impacts the hundreds and thou-
sands of impoverished and desperate Muslim immigrants in Europe.
I interviewed a 17-year-old boy in Sicily called Ahmedu during our
research project, Journey into Europe—he had spent many months es-
caping from violence in his own home country Gambia and after heart-
breaking difficulties had entered Europe through Sicily. His journey of
desperation, starvation and of hope was deeply moving and reflected the
terrible effects of war on children. The Pope has called this growing
violence “World War III”. So where do we go from here? Do we con-
tinue on this path of self-destruction as a world community or do we and
should we work harder to understand the other and to build metaphoric
bridges of peace and mutual acceptance?
The loss of lives on such a large scale in Paris on 13th of November
2015 was yet another reminder that violent extremism affects each one
of us on planet earth. No one can consider himself or herself disconnect-
ed from this problem. In Pakistan, hundreds of young boys were brutally
killed in schools—I visited the homes of those affected in Peshawar. In
one home two sons who left for school one morning never returned,