WHY ARE EUROPEAN MUSLIMS TURNING TO JIHAD?

While no continent is immune to terror, Europe has very often been the victim of late.  Since September 11, 2001  there have been multiple home-grown terror plots in Europe - the 2004 attack on the Madrid trains (191 dead) by a Spanish-Moroccan gang, the 2005 suicide bombings in London (52 dead) by four British Muslim friends,  2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting, in Paris (12 dead), followed by November 13, 2015 a series of simultaneous attacks again in Paris claimed by ISIS (129 dead in restaurants, the Bataclan theatre and the Stade de France during the France-Germany international friendly football match). On March 22, 2016 Islamic terrorists bombed the Zaventem Airport and a metro station in Brussels, Belgium. And the list is unending! So the question is why are European Muslims angry?

Unlike the United States, where immigrants achieve average socio-economic status and education within a generation, in Europe even after three generations, depending on the country, they’re 5–19 times more likely to be poor or less educated. So the first reason is failure to integrate with the mainstream. France has about 7.5% Muslims but they make up to 60–75% of the prison population. Terrorism breeds in prisons. Terrorists have a history of petty crime that landed them in prison. Stays there often proved seminal experiences on their path to radicalization,  prisoners often come under the influence of — and form lasting bonds with — radical Islamists and terrorist networks.

Almost all European extremists and terrorists are second- and third-generation immigrants, stigmatized, rejected and treated as second-class citizens. Many extremists come from broken families or deprived areas, lack education and are unemployed. But then smaller number are well educated, have held jobs and have middle-class lifestyles. Some are in stable relationships and have young children. The characteristics that extremists seem to share are resentment directed at society and a narcissistic need for recognition that leaves them open to a narrative of violent glory. For them jihad is the only systemic cultural ideology that’s effective, that’s growing, that’s attractive, that's glorious — that basically says to them “Look, you're on the dropouts, nobody cares about you, but look what we can do. We can change the world.” So is this a ready-made population for groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda to recruit from?

Failure to integrate with the society compels them to live in ghettos.  Muslim ghettos in Paris and Brussels are incubators of Islamic extremism where police fear to tread, crime and unemployment are rampant and radical imams aggressively recruit young men to wage jihad.  Those who perpetrated terror strikes in Belgium and France hailed from Molenbeek, a Brussels slum that has long been a hotbed for radical Islam, drugs and lawlessness. The Charlie Hebdo attackers lived in the “banlieues,” or suburbs of Paris, desolate, run-down neighborhoods of shops, mosques, and high-rise apartment buildings built 50 years ago to house waves of immigrants from former French colonies in Africa.

While the recruits come from these backgrounds what about the recruiters? They are much smaller in number and are true “jihad entrepreneurs”. These seasoned, ideologically driven activists are part of transnational terrorist webs linked both to extremist groups throughout Europe and to armed groups in conflict zones of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afganistan and Pakistan. They are the ones who bring structure and organization to the disaffected majority, through recruitment and indoctrination.

I will invite you to read this book ‘Eurojihad: Patterns of Islamist Radicalisation and Terrorism in Europe’ by Angel Rabasa and Cheryl Benard, two writers who, since 9/11, have produced a number of books tracking the al-Qaeda threat. The authors after extensive research have concluded that the three main factors behind Euro-jihad are poverty, religion and cultural alienation. Many terror suspects did not have jobs commensurate with their education and a sense of relative deprivation may have been a contributing factor in their radicalization into violence. Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practice their faith regularly. A typical Euro-jihadist is male, in their twenties or early thirties, with some education, narcissistic, lacking in empathy, lonely, unsuccessful with women, often with a history of petty crime.

Suicide bombing is an act of self-hatred that violently enacts the psychological splitting that has tormented the bombers through their lives. What makes these terrorists different from other bellicose young men is that these individuals have found a cause that validates their anti-social tendencies – a doctrine that teaches them that they are angry, not because there's something wrong with them, but because there's something wrong with everyone else. Their indoctrination is so profound that they are convinced that a glorious and amorous life awaits them after death and that door will only open with the detonation of the suicide belt!  

Like communism, fascism and every other -ism that promises a new dawn, terrorism makes no concessions, either to past tradition or to human nature or even to its own professed religion. It holds out a vision of something so pure that it can, in practice, never be achieved. This purity is precisely what appeals to a certain type of youngster. They call it religious idealism or ‘jihad’ and you and I call it terrorism!