Threat of Islamic extremism that stretches across Europe
By Anthony Browne
The successful integration of Muslims across the continent is vital if we
are to stop the militants
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AFTER each Islamist attack comes the investigation. While the attacks arouse
anger, it is often the investigation itself - and what it reveals about the
rise of Islamic extremism in Europe - that can provoke a lasting sense of
alarm.
Security analysts, particularly in France and the United States, say that
Europe has let itself become a breeding ground of Islamist terrorism. Events
in Britain and the Netherlands have made it clear that it is not only a
question of foreign extremists coming to Europe, but also that the problem
is now home-grown.
Robert Leiken, director of national security at the Nixon Centre, wrote in
the latest issue of the influential journal Foreign Affairs: "Jihadists'
networks span Europe. In smoky coffee houses in Rotterdam and Copenhagen,
makeshift prayer halls in Hamburg and Brussels, Islamic bookstalls in
Birmingham and Londonistan, and the prisons of Madrid, Milan and Marseilles,
immigrants or their descendants are volunteering for jihad."
A study by Leiken of 373 jihadists in Europe and America found that a
quarter were EU citizens. Matthew Levitt, director of terrorism studies at
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in recent testimony to
the US House of Representatives: "The rise of jihadist movements in Europe
is alarming, not only because of the threat such movements pose to our
European allies but because Europe has served as a launching pad for
terrorists plotting attacks elsewhere."
There are about 15 million Muslims in Europe, or 3 per cent of the
population, with the communities generally arriving in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Muslim population is still growing fast - by more than 7 per cent a year
in Austria, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Denmark - and the US National
Intelligence Council projects that Europe's Muslim population will double by
2025.
The first to confront its Islamic terrorist threat was France, home to
Europe's largest Muslim community, which faced a series of bomb attacks in
Paris in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of France's five million Muslims are
Arabs from its former colonies in North Africa, particularly Algeria. The
attacks on Paris were seen as revenge both for the past colonisation of
Algeria and for supporting the present military regime.
The French Government clamped down on radical Islam in a way that no other
country has. No mosque or Islamic prayer hall is off limits to police. Imams
preaching hate are regularly deported. France stopped giving asylum to
Islamic extremists wanted in their home country, and was disgusted when many
of them were given refuge in Britain. As a result of France's draconian
anti- terror laws, the country is thought to be comparatively free of
terrorist networks.
Germany has Europe's second-largest Muslim population, but they are
predominantly from Turkey, a more secular and Westernised country.
German Turks, as with Turks elsewhere, have integrated better and been less
tempted by religious extremism than the Muslims of Arab descent living in
ghettoes in France.
Instead, concern about Islamic extremism in Germany has focused on its tiny
Arab community, many of whom were Muslim activists who arrived as refugees.
Attracted by Hitler's anti-semitism, many Islamic radicals in the Middle
East were supporters of the Nazi regime and sought refuge in Germany after
the end of the Second World War.
The Hamburg cell that plotted the September 11 attacks on the US comprised
Saudi and Egyptian students. The Netherlands' largest Muslim group are of
Turkish origin, but again it is the North African community, particularly
Moroccan, that has fuelled home-grown jihad. The murder of Theo van Gogh
last year by the Dutch-Moroccan Mohammed Bouyeri led police to discover the
so-called Hofstad group of Muslim extremists of North African origin.
The group, 15 members of which face trial on terrorism charges, is alleged
to have plotted to blow up a nuclear power station and is thought to have
connections to terrorist groups in Spain. Dutch intelligence services
caution that there are hundreds of Islamic radicals in the Netherlands
prepared to wage holy war. The Spanish Government paid little attention to
the threat from Islamists because it was confronting other terrorists.
Spain's Moroccan community made it easy for the terrorists who planted the
March 11, 2004, train bombs to operate. It acts as a trunk route for North
Africans entering Europe. Many pass on to Italy, whose small Muslim
community based around Milan is renowned for its forging abilities,
providing jihadists with visas and funding before they head off to Iraq.
In Britain, the Muslim community is different from anywhere else in Europe,
mainly South Asian in origin - particularly Pakistani, Indian and
Bangladeshi - with very few North Africans. Indian and Bangladeshi Muslims,
like Turks, have been little tempted by extremism. Although many Arab
extremists have been given refuge in Britain, it does not have France's and
Spain's alienated underclass of Arab and North African youths.
However, many young British Pakistani men, who often maintain close contact
with their parents' country, have been influenced by the rise of Islamic
militancy in Pakistan.
Despite the different backgrounds of Europe's Muslims, they have often
presented their governments with the same problems of ghettoisation, poverty
and radicalisation.
David Masci, of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said: "The
successful integration of Muslims is crucial to the future of Europe."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1708389,00.html
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