Guest
Column: Europe's Year of the Jihadist
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
December 29, 2014
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 Among the
trends of 2014 – "Gone, Girl," Lena Dunham, and $55,000 potato salad – was another the list-makers seem
to have missed: it was also a very good year for Islamic jihad. And while
this was true on the battlefields of Syria and the cities and villages of
Pakistan, it was true, too, in more subtle ways throughout the West – and
especially in Europe. It was, for instance, the year of Mehdi Nemmouche's slaughter of four Jews at the Jewish Museum in
Brussels.
It was the year that Belgium itself was named a "terrorist recruiting hub" by the Wall
Street Journal. And in Germany, France, England, and the Netherlands, pro-Islamic State demonstrations laid bare the growing
support of terrorism and Islamic jihad among Europe's expanding Muslim
population – all while politicians either stood back or even contributed to
the praise.
Throughout 2014, Europeans faced pro-IS, anti-Jew demonstrations in
Paris, Hamburg, Amsterdam, London and The Hague, and the establishment of "sharia zones" in London, Wupperthal, and elsewhere. True, such zones do not
necessarily delineate areas in which sharia law, rather than state law,
applies. But the term helps them define those largely-Muslim neighborhoods
whose residents tend to be radical and who often support jihadist movements
both at home and abroad.
Combined, these events signal the increasing success of Islamists who
are working to change Europe from within – sometimes through violence, but
more often through strategies known as "stealth jihad" – a way of
applying social and political pressures to transform the current culture.
Take, for instance, the response of Josias van Aartsen, mayor of The
Hague, to radical Muslims who called for the death of Dutch non-Muslims and
Jews during pro-IS rallies in August: then on holiday, Van Aartsen declined
to return home, ignoring even the throwing of stones at non-Muslims and the
police. Only when a counter demonstration against IS was planned in the
same, Muslim-majority neighborhood did Van Aartsen take action: he forbade it. "Too provocative," he said.
Or there are the recently-leaked intelligence briefs in France, as reported by the Gatestone Institute, that "Muslim
students are effectively establishing an Islamic parallel society
completely cut off from non-Muslim students," while "more than
1000 French supermarkets, including major chains such as Carrefour, have
been selling Islamic books that openly call for jihad and the killing of
non-Muslims."
In England, an "Operation Trojan Horse" outlined plans to
Islamize schools in Muslim neighborhoods. According to the Guardian,
a government investigation of the program last summer found a "'sustained, coordinated agenda to impose
segregationist attitudes and practices of a hardline, politicised strain of
Sunni Islam' on children in a number of Birmingham schools." Among
those responsible for the "Operation" were the Association of
Muslim Schools – UK and the Muslim Council of Britain – the same
organization that, in 2011, declared that women who do not veil their faces
"could be guilty of rejecting Islam."
Ironically, it seems to have been England's own culture that allowed the
rise of Islamist teachings in its schools to begin with. Even Britain's
education secretary Nicky Morgan admitted to the New York Times that much of the
operation's success could be attributed to public "fear of being
accused of racism and anti-Islamic views." Not for nothing did former
Obama advisor Lawrence Krauss declare the British "too polite" and
"scared of offending 'vocal and aggressive Muslims.'"
The government's discovery of "Operation Trojan Horse" and
immediate efforts to dismantle it are commendable, but it is difficult to
assess the damage already done to Muslim children in the British schools.
By some accounts, as many as 2,000 Britons have joined the (Sunni-led) jihad in
Syria and Iraq. That includes the man known as "Jihadi John," who
beheaded U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. And, experts
warn, the number of so-called "junior jihadis" – children under 10 who have
become radicalized – is on the rise.
Not that such warnings are likely to do much good: The UK has, until
recently, spent tremendous resources on programs aimed at preventing Muslim
youth from joining militant groups, which have for the most part failed.
"Having undertaken the 'most significant domestic program by any
Western country to foster a moderate version of Islam and prevent
radicalization, the UK has effectively given up trying to stop jihadists
from being created," James Brandon, the former research director at
one such program, told Reuters.
Despite such developments, European lawmakers have had a hard time
figuring out how to deal with Muslim radicals, especially with returnees
from Syria and Iraq. England is hardly the only place where politicians
fear "offending" the sensibilities of Muslim groups. Although an
estimated 450 Germans have joined the jihad in Syria, German Green Party
domestic policy expert Irene Mihalic told the magazine Der Spiegel in September that
tougher counterterrorism laws were unnecessary because "there are
already 'sufficient levers available to impose bans and limitations' on
terrorists and their supporters." Majority parties apparently
disagreed. Later that month, Germany became the first country to fully outlaw IS, along with all expressions of support
for the terrorist group, from banners and graffiti to public demonstrations
and endorsements by local mosques.
Such has hardly been the case in Denmark, though, where unwillingness to
"offend" or "provoke" the country's Muslim community
has translated into a program that seeks to rehabilitate returning jihadists, rather than
imprison them. In the country that boasts the second-largest number (per
capita) of Muslims to join jihadist groups, returnees receive generous
handouts in the form of government assistance in finding homes and jobs, or
tuition aid in order to continue their education. In addition, the rehab
program "does not try to change the fundamentalist beliefs of the returning
fighters – as long as they don't advocate violence," CNN reports.
Evidently pampering jihadists isn't working very well: Danish
intelligence recently warned that returnees from IS and Al Nusra camps now
pose a "significant" threat to the country. One jihadist profiled
by CNN said that he plans to return to Syria to rejoin the caliphate once
he completes his Danish government-funded education.
Other European governments have been reluctant to prosecute those
recruiting for ISIS and other terrorist groups – groups that are in effect
encouraging people to commit murder. In December, Dutch courts declared a 20-year-old woman "not guilty" of
recruiting women to join the jihad in Syria on the grounds that women in IS
are not permitted to fight – and hence cannot be considered terrorists. In
another case, 23-year-old "Imad al-O" was found guilty of helping a 16-year-old girl travel to
Syria via Egypt. His sentence? Three months prison time and 240 hours of
community service.
Through it all, "lone wolf" radicals continue their attacks in
European cities, such as the Dec. 21 attack in Dijon by a man who drove a car into a
crowd of pedestrians, claiming he was "acting for the children of
Palestine."
The attack "for the children of Palestine" occurred just as
French officials determined to join Sweden in recognizing a Palestinian
state – a kind of international version, you might say, of England's
decision to stop trying to keep Muslim youth from radicalizing and becoming
warriors for Islam. Unlike Kickstarter potato salads, it's a trend we can
well leave behind as we move into the new year.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands.
Related Topics: Abigail
R. Esman, Mehdi
Nemmouche, European
Union, Islamic
State, Josias
van Aartsen, Gatestone
Institute, Operation
Trojan Horse, Muslim
Council of Britain, Lawrence
Krauss, Nicky
Morgan, Irene
Mihalic, lone
wolf attacks
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