Daily Inspiration Quote by Otto Schily

Schily’s line is doing the careful work of a post-9/11 European statesman: it tries to explain rage without excusing it, and to locate ideology in the messy soil of geopolitics rather than in some supposedly timeless civilizational clash. The verb choice matters. “Feeds on” frames extremist hatred as opportunistic and parasitic, something that grows by consuming available grievances. That’s a political move: it shifts attention from an abstract “they hate our freedom” story to a more actionable diagnosis - if conflicts supply fuel, policy can, at least in theory, reduce the supply.

The phrasing also draws a boundary. It’s “Muslim extremists,” not Muslims, a deliberate narrowing that signals Schily’s awareness of the domestic stakes: Germany’s integration debates, surveillance laws, and the risk of turning counterterrorism into a broad-brush suspicion of immigrants. As a public servant, he is speaking into a policy ecosystem where language can either inflame social fracture or keep it governable.

The subtext is a double message to two audiences. To Western publics: don’t treat terrorism as random evil; recognize how Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia - pick your catalogue - become propaganda assets. To militants and their sympathizers: your “hatred” is not noble resistance but a reaction that can be manipulated and “fed.”

It’s also strategically incomplete. “Certain conflicts” stays vague, avoiding the politically costly step of naming specific Western actions. That ambiguity is the tell: Schily wants the analytical leverage of causality without the domestic blowback of culpability.