Violent extremists and Islamaphobes both want clear lines of ethnicity, closed doors and high walls.

Good strategy usually means doing the opposite of what the enemy wants. If the rules of conflict apply to jihadis, we should answer atrocities like the bus attack in Berlin by finding better solutions for Syrian refugees and reducing the “us versus them” mentality if we possibly can.

Marisam7 on Reddit wrote an essay offering evidence that fear of Islamic terrorists is out of proportion to the actual risk.

His/her general point is that the violence in Islam is exaggerated. The perception of danger is out of proportion to the actual danger. Also, Marisam argues, the violence is not due to the religion itself, including 1400 year old texts, but is the product of factors dating back no more than 50 to 60 years. Some of the distortion Marisam sees in the perception of Islamic terrorism is due to the nature of the media, some of it due to intentional bias for political reasons, as s/he outlines. What Marisam7 does not adequately address, in my opinion, are the motives of the extremists themselves.

Obviously, the extremists want people in the West (Europe and N. America particularly) to hate Muslims. Al Qaeda under Osama bin Laden was trying to provoke the US into an over reaction by attacking the Twin Towers. Bin Laden succeeded in provoking the completely irrational invasion of Iraq. The chaos and resentment in Iraq allowed Isis to be established.

The short term result of the Iraq invasion was a strategic failure on bin Laden’s part for his own movement, as he wanted to lead the extremist movement himself and take over Saudi Arabia. But he was not wrong to think that an exaggerated response by the US would lead to a growth in jihadism.

Isis could inspire madmen to drive trucks into crowds without controlling Mosul or Raccah. Extremists, from Al Qaeda to Isis, want random maniacs to conduct attacks on innocent civilians for the same reason: to provoke the West and alienate the Muslims. Jihadis say, “It’s us against them.” So, they then have to provoke the West into hurting Muslims to make that statement as true as possible.

Imagine, for the moment, that the response to terrorism in the West were to treat Muslims equally and fairly at all times, to provide Syrian refugees with housing and education and opportunity, and to only blame terrorist acts on the few people involved in the terrorism and those few people who radicalized them from afar. These improvements could be in Turkey, Jordan, other countries, or in Syria itself, to the extent possible.

Some of the refugees could also come to the West. Imagine, as a thought experiment, that the West were to increase the number of refugees accepted into Western countries in response to terrorism.

When the war was over in Syria, to consider that war only for the moment, many people would stay in the West while many would also return to Syria. Millions of Syrians would have connections to North America and Europe and travel back and forth. Syrians in Syria would benefit from more educational opportunities, better access to capital and markets, and Syrians in Europe and America would prosper as free citizens in a free country.

Does that sound like an ideal world in which to recruit terrorists? Extremism would might slowly die away in a cosmopolitan world. If you or someone in your family happens to die in a terrorist attack in the intervening twenty years, that might not be much consolation but as a strategy, but in reality it is true that individually we all have very little to fear from Islamic extremists. On the same day as the Berlin attack, many people in Germany died in car crashes.

If, on the other hand, the West takes the jihadi bait and attacks indiscriminately or recklessly, if American drones kill innocent civilians, if Muslims in the West experience hatred and discrimination, if refugees are trapped in over crowded hell holes in Turkey and Lebanon with no opportunities and no hope… well, that sounds pretty good if you want to create a clash of civilizations and increase the percentage of Muslims who support your extremist “us versus them” mentality.

It’s fairly obvious what the extremists are up to. The more inexplicable and horrible the attack, the better. These terrorists are not like the IRA, PLO or ETA attacking military or strategic targets or their own disidents to achieve limited objectives, national independence for example. Their goal is to increase tension between the West and Islamic countries generally to increase their own influence among the Muslim population. Hopefully, they think, they might be able to bring on a massive billion Muslim versus a billion Christian apocalyptic total war.

What that kind of war might achieve for these people… you got me. I have no idea how this works out well for them. Well, at least they get to feel important for a few years?

In the long term, obviously, the extremists can’t really win. Their dream scenario still has them losing. The West could shut the door to more Muslims coming into the West and try to isolate the populations in the West from extremism as best they can without trying to make things better for millions. This strategy lets the mass of Muslims stew in this sea of irrational extremism back in Syria and Libya.

It is very clear that the United States has achieved absolutely nothing by military actions in Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and very little to nothing in Afganistan. Getting out as much as possible, politically and miltarily seems more responsible. Turkey and Russia strikes deals without us. The US cannot broker a deal in Palestine-Israel conflict. The Sunni-Shiite conflict has nothing to do with us.

Strategically, as a thought experiment, the West could let in 100,000 refugees and provide them with education, housing and loans to start businesses for every Westerner killed by a terrorist attack. This seems counter intuitive but in the long run, opening up to more people from Muslim countries might reduce the incentives for the jihadis to kill us. Increasing connections between Muslim and Western countries might help isolate the extremists. They don’t want those connections. By killing us, they would be creating more moderates who can stand up to them.

This “open the door” formula is incredibly hard to promote politically. If every 100,000 refugees might include one committed terrorist, that would make the greater good argument almost impossible to hear. You’d be hard pressed to convince a population that they should increase their risk of death in order to achieve a long term strategic goal of undermining extremists around the world at some time in the future.

In a democracy, or even a pseudo-democracy/oligarchy like the US, you need to convince something of a majority to go along with a “respect them to undermine them” strategy, while the extremists only have to convince 1 in 100,000 of their people potential refugees, promise a few they will be “maryts.” The logic of “loving thy enemy” is pretty compelling strategically but would require the moral discipline of Gandhi.

We do share one planet. There are problems in the Islamic world: apostasy as a capital offense is terrifying and common. Islam may largely be propped up by coercion. People are afraid to say, “I don’t believe.” Even secular people from Muslim countries now living in the West, who drink wine and wear bikinis, have trouble saying “I’m not a Muslim.” When they do, they might not always want the folks back home to find out about it where you can’t say something like that. If you can be a Muslim like that, great. That’ll work. There are reformed Jews and all kinds of Christians. Why not Muslims?

Unless you reach critical mass of varying degress of skeptics in a given country you can’t really have religious freedom. I respect anyone’s right to practice his or her religion in an environment of free choice. But in many or most or almost all Muslim countries, no such free choice exists.

I have to admit, I don’t much care for orthodox anything. I would like to see all organized religions that use social and legal pressure to maintain their positions in retreat. In the world of ideas, force and intimidation should not be allowed and religions are simply ideas. I also admire religion and wrote a book set in ancient Rome about early Christians, for the record.

One response to terrorism, instead of a wall, as Trump would suggest, is to invite the “other” in and offer him a meal. Welcoming Muslim refugees might be what brings the Islam house of cards crashing down, if that’s what you want.

The wall thing didn’t work for ancient Rome or China. Rome had an attractive culture/political system. The Germans barbarians didn’t want to destroy the Empire but move in and get a piece of it.

Today thousands die each year trying to get from the Middle East and Africa to Europe. Everyone can’t move to Europe, obviously, but some kind of extension of the system that is working in some places to places that have no comparable system might have to occurr if we want to avoid the fate of Rome. The best insurance for the survival of a civilization may be to keep expanding until everyone is inside… then there can be no Barbarians at the gate.

I may have overplayed the analogy to Rome. Emigration to the West cannot be the only solution for millions and millions of people in refugee camps in Turkey or Somalia. But some immigrants moving back and forth between the Muslim and Western world might be important to undermining the “us versus them” mentality.

The vast majority in both the West and in the Muslim world do not think of themselves as just cogs in a civilization that is competing or in opposition to another civilization. That’s good. We need more ways to not belong to respective camps.

We should be aware of why extremists commit horrible crimes that seem to have no strategic purpose. They are not insisting on any peace terms or achievable goals because they want to provoke the West in order to polarize the world. Islamophobes and Islamic extremists agree on that goal and both sides prefer to eliminate gray areas and make people define themselves as part of a mass entity in opposition to the “other”.