The horrific Munich attack has left nine dead and several injured as a German-Iranian went on a shooting rampage at the Munich Olympic shopping centre on Friday. With motives unclear and a recorded video of an ambiguous altercation between the attacker and an individual before the attack muddying matters further, it would be premature to comment on the nature of this attack. However, the use of racial slurs in the video does point towards the possibility that this shooting had something to do with the refugee crisis in Germany and Europe at large. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has already convened her security council on Saturday to discuss this unfortunate incident. This comes in the midst of an anti-refugee narrative as Europe after taking in refugees has witnessed a substantial increase in terrorist attacks. Even cases of rape and violence are being attributed to the intake of refugees. Germany in this regard has been one of those countries that has been most accommodating of the refugee crisis, and last year it took in over one million immigrants and refugees. It is indeed highly unfortunate that such a country has to endure terrorist attacks, and if this attack proves to be linked with the refugee crisis then it would further fuel virulence towards refugees and immigrants, and help those who want to close the boundaries of Europe for refugees. The attack took place right next to the Munich Olympic Stadium, where in 1972 a terrorist attack took place in which the Palestinian terrorist group Black September took 11 Israeli athletes hostage and later killed them. Moreover, the day of the attack was also an important one as on this day Norway observed the fifth anniversary of a terrorist attack carried out by a person belonging to a far rightist group, which left 77 people dead. All these instances of violence show that terrorism takes on different forms, and is justified by the perpetrators through different ideologies. This does not mean that the response to these terrorists should be pandering to the same binaries that these terrorists create and discriminating people on their basis. More specifically to the present case, Muslims should not be painted with the same broad brush of a war-mongering and violence perpetrating group, and instead a nuanced approach should be taken that separates the violent from the majority of peace loving Muslims. Finally, it should be realised that closing off borders and making insular communities is not the solution for preventing such attacks. This would only further fuel grievances and reify the propaganda of militant Muslim extremists that the “West” is the enemy for those Muslims whose only hope to flee from their conflict ridden countries is the West. While military action is necessary to break the base of operations of terrorist groups, it must also be realised that these groups are created by the vacuum that is left in the wake of military interventions. Most of the instability in the Middle East is because of flawed interventionist policies that toppled existing governments and dismantled their state structures. Hence, the West needs to adopt a new policy for the Middle East that would buttress the flailing government structures there so that they can effectively counter these militant groups and restrict the space for them to flourish.*