France Stands Firm, World Stands with France
AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program. And we are at the Place de le Republique in central Paris where people going to work are still coming to pay their respects, to lay flowers and to relight candles after the overnight and early morning downpour. Now the French crackdown after Friday's deadly attacks is growing stronger. Overnight, French police carried out 128 new anti-terrorist searches. That's according to the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve. And French war planes have also launched more air strikes against the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa in Syria. The jet flew from bases in the UAE and Jordan as they did the first night and they say they targeted a command base and recruitment center. Now here in Europe, police are looking for the man believed to be an eighth attacker during Friday's rampage. He is 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, a citizen of France. One of his brothers killed himself while carrying out one of the attacks. But another brother said his family is shocked at both men's involvement.</s>MOHAMMED ABDESLAM, BROTHER OF SALAH ABDESLAM (through translation): You also need to understand that in spite of the tragedy, my parents are in shock. We do not realize yet what has happened. My family and I are affected by what happened. We found out by TV just like many of you. We did not think for a moment that one of our brothers was related to these attacks.</s>AMANPOUR: Around the world, Muslims are saying, Not in my name," and they are condemning Friday's attacks. Even the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has vowed retaliation for the Beirut bombings and he's offered his condolences to the victims of the Paris massacres.</s>HASSAN NASRALLAH, HEZBOLLAH LEADER (through translation): People of the region of Arab countries living under Daesh, including Lebanon, which suffered a few days ago from it, are the most aware and sympathetic of what hit the French nation last night. We offer our deep condolences, solidarity, sympathy, moral and humanitarian stand to those innocents who were invaded by the barbaric criminal management of Daesh.</s>AMANPOUR: Quite extraordinary comments from the leader of Hezbollah. And here in France, the words of the director of the Grand Mosque in Lyon.</s>KAMEL KABTANE, DIRECTOR, GRAND MOSQUE, LYON: It falls on France and it also falls on Muslims because will have to pay. We are going to pay for what these people did Friday in Paris or what they did in January. We are the ones who have to explain to justify ourselves and to apologize for what we didn't do. We are the ones who have to suffer people looking at us. This is why, today, with all religious people, we have to be strong and go forward.</s>AMANPOUR: And worryingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, indeed, this morning, there are reports of an upsurge in Islamophobic attacks here in France since Friday. I spoke to Daisy Khan. She founder and executive director of WISE, a non-profit organization in the United States dedicated to equality and justice for Muslims around the world.</s>DAISY KHAN, FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WISE: Well, just at the top of the hour, you've seen that so many -- these ISIS people kill indiscriminately. They are enemies of humanity. Even if Nasrallah comes out and religious leaders are coming out and speaking out against this, it's an indication that many people now worldwide believe that ISIS is a threat to all of humanity. There is nothing Islamic in anything that they say. They are psychopaths, and they have created a huge problem for the Muslim community because all their actions set the Muslim community back by decades. The event that happened in Paris now has to be -- the Parisians, the Muslims, who are integrated and invested in Paris and in France, have to now, you know, double their efforts. And it affects institutional building. It affects our ability to have a trajectory to restate ourselves in Western countries, like in our case when, as you know very well, we proposed the ground zero, what was called the ground zero community center as a way of creating a counter momentum to extremism. It was our way of amplifying the voice of the Muslim community and, yet, we were set back because people misunderstood our intentions.</s>AMANPOUR: So how do you struggle to overcome this? Because, obviously, it's Muslims who are being killed as well by these extremists, and you and others like you are being caught up in the global backlash. We're hearing in the United States some states are saying no Syrian refugees in our state, for instance. This is just going to ramp up, particularly in a political year. How do you try to combat this?</s>KHAN: I think what has to happen is the politicians have to stop, you know, portraying the Muslim community as a national security threat. We've already heard the drum beat of, you know, Muslims need to be treated differently or there have to be more spying programs. All it does is it really feeds into the hands of ISIS. All they do is they take these quotes that are said by Trump or Rubio and they just put them on their recruiting manifesto to recruit more people from the West. So, yeah, we Muslims are caught in the middle. We have the best of intentions to be law-abiding citizens, but yet the events that unfold overseas really set us back. And what is need is a different rhetoric. And the rhetoric is one of peace and national unity. That's what's needed most.</s>AMANPOUR: Daisy, the president, President Obama, speaking in Antalya at the G20 summit today, said we're not waging a war against Muslims, but I'm asking you, do you not think Muslims are waging a war against the collective us. And how does that reality -- these extremist Muslims, I'm talking about, the ISIS types -- how does that reality stand up to scrutiny? And how do you basically use the book, the holy book to try to stop it and to try to, you know, separate the mainstream from the extremists? Because this keeps -- this nexus just keeps coming up again.</s>KHAN: Yeah. Christiane, the thing that really needs to happen is we need to actively delink the religion of Islam, which, you know, 1.6 million people practice, from the actions of the terrorists. And this is the problem that we have, because even the media, even CNN sometimes makes the error and mistake by calling them Islamic terrorists or Islamist terrorists. This linking -- this delinking has to happen because is and Daesh and al Qaeda, they have used Islam as a way of legitimizing their actions. And they are anything but Islamic. This is the most important work that needs to be done and it can be done by the community. That's why I welcome the recent remarks of President Obama when he said the Muslim community needs to step up and get more active. And we are active. The difficulty is we've not really been at the table since 9/11. Most of the efforts to counterterrorism have been kinetic efforts, military, intelligence and law enforcement. The Muslim community has not been actively invited to partake in this. So what we're doing right now --</s>KHAN: -- and I was very happy to hear -- Yes?</s>AMANPOUR: Sorry to interrupt you. But I want to ask you, because many Muslims are very concerned the actions of extremists like ISIS, Daesh, they are desperately trying to drag their Salifism, their extremism, whatever you want to say, into the mainstream and get it accepted as the mainstream. So again, the mainstream has to put up some kind of dam against that.</s>KHAN: Yeah, so we have to cast the doubt into people's minds. And this is what -- I will be rolling out a project very soon with 30 contributors, and that's exactly what our aim is, to look at this ideology and to see how they take core concepts of Koran and Islam and how they distort them. I have to tell you that there has been a lot of people that welcome this kind of initiative because its community led and meant for parents and it's meant for your friends. It's meant to educate and empower Muslims so they can actively discredit this ideology within the communities. That is the work that really needs to be ramped up globally as well as locally.</s>AMANPOUR: Daisy Khan, thank you so much for joining us.</s>AMANPOUR: Among just one of the many conversations I've had as CNN continues its ongoing live coverage of these terror attacks. And coming up, another one, the ISIS hostage who had a lucky escape. French journalist, Didier Francois, was captured by the terror group and held for 10 months in Syria. He gave us rare firsthand insight into life under the Islamic State. That's next.