When al Qaeda struck at the United States in 2001, its targets were hard symbols of American power and decision-making: the Pentagon, the Capitol, and the financial capital. When ISIS struck Paris on Friday, its targets were soft symbols of Western lifestyle: sport, restaurants, a secular concert. People eating, drinking, and laughing at night for their own pleasure.

ISIS knows our thinking. It knows how to make us afraid.

In response, so many in the West seem to have an easy solution to our renewed terrorism problem. Just hold our Sunni-state allies accountable and demand that they don’t fund ISIS and other terrorist groups. Or just get better at integrating Muslims into the European community. Or just stop admitting Syrian refugees into the U.S. Or just expel the Islamists from Europe. Or just admit it, Islam itself is the problem.

We reach for “just [something]” solutions like these because we are appalled and, let’s be honest, frightened. These solutions seem comforting. But none are satisfying.

If we lash out in Syria, or against Muslims here at home, we simply prove the extremists’ argument correct, that we are wicked infidels who hate all Muslims, and that we must be stopped by any means necessary.

Read the article “The Intractable, Insidious Conflict between Islamism and the West” on theweek.com.