God’s own continent

Europeans understand Muslims better than the Americans do

The BBC in its programme, Panorama, telecast in May 2004 had depicted an imaginary terrorist incident of simultaneous bomb explosions on three underground lines and the explosion of a chemical tanker. July 7 was strikingly similar. Since then there has been far too much chatter on the TV about London On Alert. Beyond a point, this kind of incessant coverage of a terrorist incident on TV is counterproductive for it actually angers quite a few and frightens others. More than that, it tells every one that the reach of the terrorist is truly global and they can strike any one, any where, any time. Just what the doctor ordered for the terrorists.

The British are coming around to the view that those foreigners who misuse British freedoms and values to preach hatred will have to leave and those who have accepted British nationality will have to conform – to the will of the majority. The minorities must assimilate with the majority ethos but do not have to submerge.


One certainly cannot have foreigners acquire British nationality and then go around bombing innocent Brits for actions of the British government with which the victims may not even agree. Maybe the British should also take a hard look at the activities of organisations like the Tabligh Jamaat whose representatives are known to preach hatred and violence in the garb of preaching Islam on occasions.

Across the Channel, they are worried too. There must be the genuine fear of a similar attack or a repeat of the Paris Metro bombings in 1995 or the Moscow Metro bombings. There is another danger that now threatens life. The Internet provides the perfect means of indoctrination by Arab and Islamic websites and the jehadi libraries. Online military training, data for biological and chemical weapons, toxins and poisons is available. The net also works as a virtually untraceable communication system linked to cell phones, satellite phones, INMARSAT and the latest in the West called the WI-FI phone. This has led to the concern among intelligence agencies of solo attempts or “individual jehad”, which would be virtually impossible to locate and prevent. There is no knowing what system will be used by the terrorist and when. This remains a major headache for the intelligence services and the counter-terrorist.

Professor David Martin Jones of Tasmania University was right when he said in 2003 that Islamism’s more active nodes and cells were not located in Arab countries but were evolving elsewhere, including SE Asia, but the most dangerous networks were located in the West. The dar al-Islam was no longer a geographical concept; the virtual world of the potential “cybercaliphate” had no conventional boundaries. Jones goes on to say “Truth be told, it is ‘hideously schizophrenic’ to maintain political and ideological tolerance against the intolerant at home while practicing pre-emption against their foot-soldiers abroad.”

Not only this, there is the distinct possibility that many of those from all over Europe who had gone to Iraq to help their Muslim brothers may have returned, fresh with combat experience particularly in urban warfare, fighting the best equipped army in the world and full of renewed religious zeal. These jehadis may or may not be from the same groups who fled Afghanistan in anticipation or during the US operations in 2001-2002 and fanned out into other countries, including in Europe. In fact, they may not have fled but may have been simply relocated. Terrorism analysts in Europe assess that Al Qaeda activists may have located their headqurters in the Benelux region, with Moroccans, who have a large presence in Belgium and the Netherlands, playing a prominent role.

France has tightened border restrictions within the Schenzen area but not all countries have done so. The French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy announced on July 29 that a dozen Islamists from Algeria would be expelled by the end of August for their radical activites in France and one of them was to be sent by the end of July. France has been particularly strict about the minorities adhering to majority norms and that is why the insistence that religious symbols of separateness like the head scarf of Muslim girls or the turban of the Sikhs, or even Christian symbols are not permissible in schools. It is business as usual or appears so, which is more important, at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport. The immigration desk is not rude or aggressive or suspicious, there is no fingerprinting of visitors, no eye scanning, no strip searches, the Customs are relaxed and the armed police teams inside the terminal building are not intrusive.

The contrast in the attitudes in continental Europe with that in US is all too evident. Europe has not experienced the terrorism of September 11, 2001, the defining moment of punitive terrorism, but it has seen terrorism in vicious forms from groups like the Action Directe, the Bader-Meinhof, the Red Brigades, from the Algerians and the IRA, the Basques and the Corsicans. Europeans possibly understand their Muslim countrymen better than the Americans do. 300 years before America was discovered, the Europeans were leading Crusades against the Muslim rulers in Palestine. Later, the Moors had reached Spain and the Ottomans had reached Budapest and Vienna.

The Europeans fought each other and for their Empires all over the world; they fought two bitter and brutal world wars on their soil. All of Europe has seen violence, hunger and deprivation. The Americans have not seen anything like this on their soil for 140 years after their Civil War. Their heroism has been by their soldiers away from their land; it is about Iwo Jima, Anzio and Normandy; it is about battles on distant lands. The common American has seen want only during the days of the Depression. That is why the European reaction to adversity is more stoic and measured. In the US, it is more and more based on fear – fear of the unknown bordering on paranoia with new laws minimising basic freedoms only re-confirming this.

The gap between tightening restrictions at home, co-operating globally and addressing grievances remains. Meanwhile, terrorism in its most vicious form has taken root. Globalisation has come to terrorism in a big way. The Afghan jehad ended the State’s monopoly over means of violence and privatised it. The jehadists are now outsourcing terror by using resident Muslims in the West for their purposes. It has also become convenient in the West to attribute all terrorist actions to Al Qaeda even though there is not enough proof and it is more likely that a number of autonomous cells are now operating. It is equally convenient for the terrorists to give credit to Al Qaeda because this is acceptable to the antagonist. Both sides are now feeding on fear and hatred.

Muslim insistence that theirs is a religion of peace clearly contradicts actions when they themselves are killing fellow Muslims by the thousands from Kashmir to Morocco. No religion is under threat if it conforms to civil behaviour in the modern world. It is under threat only from its self-styled guardians who preach this for fear of loss of power and importance as a consequence of modernity and conformity. Yet, when Ayman al-Zawahiri in his latest post-London threat invokes the name of Allah and threatens tens of thousands will die and very few Muslims condemn this, then the world has got a major worry. For there are many who believe in Zawahiri.

Source ; Hindustan times 13th Aug 2005