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| Terror Networks |
| Five years later – Are we safer? |
| 2006-09-12 |
| By Abigail R. Esman My cousin Jessica and her family were among the last passengers out of Heathrow before terror alarms turned that airport into chaos last August 10. Within days, over twenty suspected terrorists, accused of planning to blow up as many as ten planes enroute from London to the USA, had been arrested. More remain at large. Now Britain's MI5 has taken into custody sixteen others suspected of terrorist activity unrelated to the airplane plot. Like those alleged to have planned the earlier event, most of these are British citizens. And in all of this, overlooked, somehow, in the chaos surrounding London, two bombs were found on trains traveling out of Cologne, Germany on July 31. Both failed to detonate, but not to create terror throughout the country. Two men are believed to be responsible; one has been arrested – a Lebanese student known as Youssef Mohamad E.H. At the five-year anniversary of the attacks of 9/11, we – the media, the experts, the people in the street – keep asking ourselves: are we any safer now? And the answer comes back, over and over again: no. In fact, we are likely at greater risk than ever; and the foiled London plot – never mind the very real bombs that by some lucky fluke failed to detonate in Germany – only hints at what still may be ahead. September 11 shocked us with the discovery that a distant enemy could reach us here at home. Now, as we are slowly learning, that enemy is a lot closer than we thought. What the 7/7 London bombings, Theo van Gogh's murder, the bombs in Germany, and the latest U.K. threat demonstrate, of course, is that Islamic militancy is no longer an import that can be stopped by closing Western borders. Europe is radicalizing. Or, that is, Europe's Muslims – many of them – are joining the ranks of radical Islamists, Muslims who use Islam as a political tool for theocratic ends. Of the 24 arrested in conjunction with the August plot (fifteen of whom have been charged), most were British-born, and at least three were recent converts to Islam. Mohammed Bouyeri, van Gogh's assassin, was born and raised in Holland, as were most of the members of the terrorist group to which he still belongs. Dutch officials, moreover, estimate a total of at least twenty such groups in the Netherlands. In France, where five thousand of the country's five million Muslims are said to be extremist, according to an interview with French Secret Service director Pierre de Bousquet de Florian that appeared earlier this summer in Le Parisen, Muslim youth – even secularized French citizens – can be converted to extremist thought in only weeks. So acute is the problem that some have even coined the term "Generation Jihad" to describe what Bill Powell, writing in Time magazine, called "Young Muslims living in cities all over Europe – including many who were born and raised in the affluence and openness of the West, products of the very democracies they are determined to attack." Surprising? Not really. Dutch newspaper de Trouw reported earlier this summer on a conference of young Muslim leaders sponsored by the American Society for Muslim Advancement and held in Copenhagen on July 7, the anniversary of the London bombings that left 56 dead (including the bombers) and as many as 700 wounded. Speaking at the conference, British Islam expert Aftab Malik remarked, "It is nonsense that Muslim extremism is the consequence of Western foreign policy; there have been extremist branches of Islam since the beginning." Reports de Trouw: "Pretty much no one reacted [to the statement] – nor did they respond when Malik mentioned how furious he becomes at the sight of Islamic children laughing at beheading videos they download to their mobile telephones." Much of Europe has understood this by now: Peter Clark, who heads up Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, speaking on the BBC, observed, "What we've learned since 9/11 is that the threat is not something that's simply coming from overseas into the United Kingdom. What we've learned, and what we've seen all too murderously, is that we have a threat, which is being generated here within the United Kingdom … The number of people who we have to be interested in are into the thousands. That includes a whole range of people, not just terrorists, not just attackers, but the people who might be tempted to support or encourage or to assist." But in America, we're not paying quite as much attention. And we should be: Earlier this year, Joseph Braude reported in The New Republic, "Many of those recently held out as moderate leaders of the American Muslim community--and embraced as such by American politicians--are anything but. For over a generation, supporters of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah have promoted their views and solicited support in numerous U.S. mosques, Islamic centers, and convention halls …" For many, this is hardly news. What is news is that so many others are just finding out. Where has the US media been all this time? Where have the mainstream media reports been on the abuse of Muslim women in Western Islamic homes? Why so little talk of the honor killings – as many as 15 a year or more in the Netherlands alone? Is there a reason you haven't read the story in your local paper, or watched the report on the nightly news, about the current best-selling books among Muslim communities in Europe like Holland's How To Be A Good Muslim – books that explain in no uncertain terms how homosexuals should be punished (thrown headfirst from tall buildings and then stoned if they manage to survive the fall), and that Jews are to be killed; or books like How to Raise A Muslim Child, which advocate hitting women? Where has the attention been while European Christians are converting to Islam (it's rarely Jews, for obvious reasons), only to find themselves targeted on online messages boards by recruiters for violent jihad? And who is doing anything about it? Anyone? Clearly not enough. Visit many of these sites and you can watch the entire process: the radical guy who comes in now and then with news stories – most propagandistic lies, though not all – about Jews, Americans, infidels; who gets into bulletin board arguments and articulately, persuasively, often dramatically, expresses his opinions on the issues; who gradually, still, forges bonds with other members of the online community, coaxing them, befriending them, in between the tales of how Americans rigged the 9/11 bombings (or Israel did, or both), of how Hitler (and I am not making this up – I've seen it posted) deliberately created the Holocaust at the request of the Jews, who wanted to found Israel and wipe the Palestinians from their land and knew that this was a good way to make it happen. But you don't hear other voices. You don't see the posts of wiser, respected, so-called "moderate Muslims," never mind the voices of Muslim heretics. I don't mean the confrontational ones, the Ayaan Hirsi Ali's; I mean those – most of them unknown – who can as deftly manipulate the conversations, the ideas, the principles, being fostered in these venues as do those who use them to recruit their armies for jihad. In a war of ideas, where is the army for our side? Where are our "thousands" who "might be tempted to support or encourage or to assist" in spreading Enlightenment ideas, encouraging freedom, not "submission"? Over the past year, I've written from time-to-time about various endeavors to counteract the efforts of Islamic militants to hijack the hearts and minds of (mostly younger) Muslims in the West: Faysal Ramsis, who has created web sites for young Muslims opposed to violence and terror; Senay Ozdemir, who embraces Muslim women in a magazine supportive both of their religion and of their right to liberty, to the advantages non-Muslim women ordinarily enjoy. Farhana Ali, a Pakistani-American anti-terrorism expert at the Rand Corporation, a Washington, DC-based think tank, points to British-Pakistani Raza Jaffrey, who runs a Muslim youth hotline in the U.K. Of course, there are others. And if readers know of any of them, I hope you'll write in and tell me. We need such efforts desperately – and we will need to give them all the attention and support we can – both to safeguard younger Muslim hearts and lives, and to protect our own. Abigail R. Esman is an award-winning author-journalist who divides her time between New York and The Netherlands. In addition to her column in World Defense Review, her work has appeared in Foreign Policy, Salon.com, Esquire, Vogue, Glamour, Town & Country, The Christian Science Monitor, The New Republic and many others. She is currently working on a book about Muslim extremism and democracy in the West. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #8 The UN as a terminal PC disease is now being challenged(Five years after 9/11 the UN is still unable to define terrorism!) Darn good! |
| Posted by: Duh! 2006-09-12 15:39 |
| #7 We should make public knowledge our targeting of Iran in the event of the non-test related discharge of a nuclear device anywhere in the world. We should present the whole migillah to the UN, let them know this is the Iranian portion of the plan only and that there will be aditional areas targeted that will remain secret and send the USAF over Iran to leaflet target areas to inform residents of their status as a target together with the target map for all of Iran. We should provide information on their chances of survival, instructions for building a Great Leap Forward bomb shelter, goods they may wish to store in the unlikely event they survive, iodine pills, and pictures of Ali Khameni, with his cell phone number and e-mail address. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-09-12 13:51 |
| #6 These simple turds believe having a nuclear bomb of any sort makes them a big player on the world stage. They don't comprehend the power of weapons currently in our arsenal now. Makes the Nagasaki weapon look like a firecracker. They also can't realize the awful scenario of coordinated blasts delivered by the MIRV's which would create real armageddon over hundreds of square miles. Really, nothing would survive. May live for a few days, but the radiation levels would make life impossible. Knowing this, we have been restrained, but as we all have said here, if there is a follow on attack here in the homeland, this restraint may evaporate over night. |
| Posted by: SOP35/Rat 2006-09-12 13:23 |
| #5 If someone wants to get to you badly enough, they will. The key is to stop them before they get the chance. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. So, America, never entertain for one moment, that pathetic and stupid pacifist LLL line of, "Why do they hate us?", ever again. They cannot be appeased. You have to defeat 'em. Humiliating evil is necessary. |
| Posted by: Duh! 2006-09-12 13:15 |
| #4 I'm not particularly worried about my safety. I'm more concerned that we are not causing enough of those murderous bastards in the middle east to worry about THEIR SAFETY! Amen. Who cares if we're safer? I'd rather be free than safe. Safety is an illusion, anyway. Of course the government should take prudent steps to defend the homeland, and to protect it's citizenry. But many are deluding themselves into thinking we can be made safe. If someone wants to get to you badly enough, they will. The key is to stop them before they get the chance. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, for a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty, nor Safety." ----Ben Franklin |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2006-09-12 12:28 |
| #3 This question of whether or not we are safer after 911 is like asking for apples and getting oranges. Pre 911, I'm willing to bet that like me, 99% of Americans had absolutely no concern about Islamists, terrorists, or even all the bombings they were doing to us. We even wrote off the Cole. I considered myself a "news junkie" but will admit, the name bin Laden meant nothing to me. Can't say I had ever heard of his name. Oh, I knew about Mogadishu, the embassy bombings, Kobor Towers, cause they all got at least a day's coverage. But I remained one of those 99% Americans, that went on about my daily life, not considering that any of this was about me. Did grumble some about wanting Clinton to do something -- but still, never fear. Why should I have felt unsafe? So yes, I was safer before 911, in my mind at least. As my 88 years old Mother has been known to say, "I didn't know no better." |
| Posted by: Sherry 2006-09-12 11:11 |
| #2 I'm not particularly worried about my safety. I'm more concerned that we are not causing enough of those murderous bastards in the middle east to worry about THEIR SAFETY! |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-09-12 10:26 |
| #1 We may BE safer than we were on 9/10/01 but there's no way we FEEL safer now than we FELT then. And as you know, it's all about 'feelings' (sarc). |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2006-09-12 09:59 |