THE Paris murderers want one thing above all else - to create fear and division among us.

Make no bones about it, they chose Charlie Hebdo as a target because they wanted to instill fear and to attack those who criticise and satirise.

Many may not agree with the magazine's decision to publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, but no one deserves to die because of a cartoon, or what they write.

The decision on whether to run those cartoons should be a matter of dialogue, a matter of choice. Never a matter of force.

The fact those killers executed a helpless Muslim police officer as he lay on the pavement says everything you need to know about them.

They are murderers. They are terrorists. The fact they carry out these acts using any religion as an excuse should not be used as a stick with which to beat Muslims.

The Muslim family of the murdered police officer Ahmed Merabet are just as horrified as we are. Remember that.

His brother Malek said: “Do not confuse the extremists with Muslims.”

There is, of course, another group of people who would love to create fear and division among us - those who seek to use the horror of Paris to further a far-right agenda.

Those who would capitalise on murder to further their own political ends.

But we have a powerful weapon against the Paris killers and against those far-right activists.

We can refuse to be divided.

We can refuse to give in to the understandable fear following the attacks.

We can be defiant.

The sight of tens of thousands of people gathering in the Place de la Republique in Paris while the terrorists were still at large to tell the world "We are not afraid" was a powerful message to all of us.

We must not allow that fear to rule us.

And I would take that message even further. We must not be afraid of those who seem different to us.

I wrote a column after the London bombings of 2005 which had this message: We have to go on and refuse to allow terror to control our lives. We have to get back on the bus and get back on the tube.

We have to remain true to our values. We - and by that I mean all of us, Muslim, Christian, atheist, and of whatever skin colour - must not allow ourselves to become a dystopian version of society twisted by hatred and fear, and by our actions create a bigger pool of people who are vulnerable to recruitment by extremists.

I still believe it. Now more than ever.

The ideas of those extremists, of whatever religion, ethnicity, whatever politics they espouse, have to be challenged every time we hear them. By all of us. Of whatever faith, or no faith.

I attended the pre-Ramadan meeting of Common, the Council of Mosques and Muslim Organisations, Newport, last year.

I sat in Newport's council chamber alongside police officers, councillors, Assembly Members, Christian ministers, and members of Muslim organisations and heard of the many things being done in mosques and in organisations in our city to combat extremism.

The links being forged here, the work being done here, both are being used as a blueprint for other areas of Wales.

Every part of a community needs to come together to marginalise hatred, to ensure those who are a threat to society are identified and challenged.

Those who incite murder, those who incite violence, have to feel the full weight of the law in our society.

And those who do so from outside should be starved of funds and backing from any country which seeks to be our ally.

It's time we took a long, hard look at western foreign policies which, for economic reasons, have turned a blind eye to regimes which inculcate extremism by repression and torture, and those which quietly sponsor terrorism, or which are too weak to tackle it.