The deadly attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine could prompt Europeans to reconsider their attitude toward ethnic and religious communities in Europe, as well as raise questions as to how European nationals become radicalized, experts told Sputnik.

“The Charlie Hebdo incident – in some ways similar to the 9/11 incident in the US 14 years ago – is thus a wake-up call for Europeans to consider if their laissez-faire attitude is in need of tweaking,” said Kumar Ramakrishna, a head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore.

The expert explained that Europe “has traditionally been very laissez-faire in its attitude toward all cultural communities, including immigrant ones, in a sort of live-and-let-live fashion.” However, this makes “European societies vulnerable to certain fringe elements of certain cultures, immigrant or otherwise, that are animated by religiously supremacist, totalitarian ideologies that may under some conditions possess a latent potential for violence,” he said.