Brussels Airport Explosions

[teknoman2]

 

 

 

Heh, kind of cold to make deals about people like that

It may appear like that but this is a very complicated situation and we need to consider the views of countries directly impacted by the arrival of thousands of refugees

 

the thing is though that, like in the Paris attacks, the perpetrators may prove to be locals and not jihadists that came in among the refugees.

 

Oh dont misunderstand me, you are correct that in some EU countries you already have  established Islamic Extremism ....and that will have to be dealt with. But that is a separate issue to sending the refugees back to Turkey.

 

Also I have asked this numerous times...why cant the Sunni countries in the ME like Saudi Arabia, Qatar or UAE take in fellow Muslims?

 

But the expectation is that Western, primarily Christian countries with completely different values and cultural norms will be able to absorb millions ? 

 

im asking the same thing but apparently this question is considered racist by the mainstream media

and of course i dont think we need to add more extremists to those already in eu

btw i've seen photos of people who in 2014 were holding severed heads under the flag of ISIS on the group's social media pages and in 2015 they had, on their personal fb accounts, photos with their family living as refugees in european countries

Edited March 22, 2016 by teknoman2

[Zoraptor]

Gulf countries don't take in refugees because Bangladeshi/ Pakistani/ Nepali/ Filipino slaves are cheaper, more malleable, easier to chuck out and less likely to revolt or cause problems. Seriously. Plus who is going to put pressure on them to take them, the US? Don't make me laugh.

 

 

 

 

Uh, one of the shooters at the Bataclan theatre was registered as a refugee in august 2015.

 

 

Yeah, one.  The vast majority of these attackers do not need to wait in line with the refugees.  They have the resources to get around that.

 

 

Pretty sure he actually was a local though, using the refugee system to avoid being flagged as a returning jihadi. He wasn't Syrian/ Iraqi/ Afghan, he was French/ Belgian. Once he's in Schengen he doesn't need refugee status and can just go home without triggering anything.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Zoraptor

[Drowsy Emperor]

The primary problem of the refugees is not that terrorists will sneak in alongside them but rather that the many of them are likely to end up poor and potentially steeped in criminality which can only serve to exacerbate the problem of terrorism five, ten or twenty years down the line. Belgium, France, Germany, the UK - all have large Muslim ghettos where most of the terrorists grew up. What is to be gained by enlarging them? Are we presuming that the economic trends, which point to a gradual decline in living standards across the West are going to reverse and improve to the point where everyone in the ghetto (the lowest rung of the social pecking order with least access to resources) becomes a middle class citizen? 

This isn't even just a question of a cultural and religious clash, its basic mathematics. To claim that these people can have a positive economic impact is madness in the light of the continued existence of individuals similar to them, already living in Europe, unemployed or unemployable.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

 

 

 

I see paying off the Turks to keep the masses off your hands as a sign of tremendous weakness. 

 

Now I wonder how many wars were sparked over people's insecurities about how "weak" or "strong" their country will be seen as.

 

 

Many, because its an important metric. How things appear in the international arena is just or even more important than how it actually is. 

 

 

 

I'm not convinced.

 

Could you offer examples where the perception of the appearance of things by outside actors was the source of a conflict, instead of the projection of said perception by insider decision-makers?

 

 

I took the "people's"  as referring to decision makers, not the masses. 

 

 

 

So did I. "Outside actors", in this case, refers to decision-makers in other countries, ready to pounce on any sign of weakness.

 

(The question's asked in good faith, by the way. I'm fairly sure your knowledge of world history is greater than mine, hence asking for examples makes sense.)

 

 

 

Not sure how that relates to my initial comment. Paying millions to Erdogan to keep the refugees in Turkey instead of spending those same millions to secure the border is a move that a strong actor wouldn't make. Simply because:

a. there is no guarantee that Erdogan will keep his word

b. even if he does, why would you empower an Islamist hard liner that cooperated with ISIL by keeping the borders open for their volunteers. A part of the problem can hardly go to sleep and wake up as a solution?

c. it implies that the EU can't control its borders and needs external actors to secure them

 

 

 

The relation is that I take issue with your framing of the deal in terms of appearing "weak" or "strong", instead of "does it produce the result it was meant to produce in an efficient manner?". The latter sounds like a meaningful venue of criticism, the former reeks of nationalistic chest-beating.

[Hurlshort]

The primary problem of the refugees is not that terrorists will sneak in alongside them but rather that the many of them are likely to end up poor and potentially steeped in criminality which can only serve to exacerbate the problem of terrorism five, ten or twenty years down the line. Belgium, France, Germany, the UK - all have large Muslim ghettos where most of the terrorists grew up. What is to be gained by enlarging them? Are we presuming that the economic trends, which point to a gradual decline in living standards across the West are going to reverse and improve to the point where everyone in the ghetto (the lowest rung of the social pecking order with least access to resources) becomes a middle class citizen? 

This isn't even just a question of a cultural and religious clash, its basic mathematics. To claim that these people can have a positive economic impact is madness in the light of the continued existence of individuals similar to them, already living in Europe, unemployed or unemployable.

 

I agree with you on that completely, but that is hardly how most people are approaching this.  

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

 

 

 

 

I see paying off the Turks to keep the masses off your hands as a sign of tremendous weakness. 

 

Now I wonder how many wars were sparked over people's insecurities about how "weak" or "strong" their country will be seen as.

 

 

Many, because its an important metric. How things appear in the international arena is just or even more important than how it actually is. 

 

 

 

I'm not convinced.

 

Could you offer examples where the perception of the appearance of things by outside actors was the source of a conflict, instead of the projection of said perception by insider decision-makers?

 

 

I took the "people's"  as referring to decision makers, not the masses. 

 

 

 

So did I. "Outside actors", in this case, refers to decision-makers in other countries, ready to pounce on any sign of weakness.

 

(The question's asked in good faith, by the way. I'm fairly sure your knowledge of world history is greater than mine, hence asking for examples makes sense.)

 

 

 

Not sure how that relates to my initial comment. Paying millions to Erdogan to keep the refugees in Turkey instead of spending those same millions to secure the border is a move that a strong actor wouldn't make. Simply because:

a. there is no guarantee that Erdogan will keep his word

b. even if he does, why would you empower an Islamist hard liner that cooperated with ISIL by keeping the borders open for their volunteers. A part of the problem can hardly go to sleep and wake up as a solution?

c. it implies that the EU can't control its borders and needs external actors to secure them

 

 

 

The relation is that I take issue with your framing of the deal in terms of appearing "weak" or "strong", instead of "does it produce the result it was meant to produce in an efficient manner?". The latter sounds like a meaningful venue of criticism, the former reeks of nationalistic chest-beating.

 

 

Not everything in politics is adequately resolved by efficiency. However, lets address it.

 

I doubt that this deal will be efficient for two reasons:

a. the Turks will not integrate the refugees (Turkey is not exactly a paradigm economy either) and the problem will persist

b. because the problem persists they will eventually ask for more money, whether it is for reasons of corruption or because money will be needed to keep the camps and other measures going)

 

Back to the first point. Even if it was effective, it implies that one of the largest economies and political alliances (for lack of a better term) in the world cannot, by itself, secure its borders - which is on the top of the list in the baggage that sovereignty comes with. So:

c. This is a message to Erdogan and the like that there is an avenue that can be exploited to force the EU to act in a certain manner. Spurring migrations is one thing that muslim leaders  can do - and they did, as witnessed by the large number of economic migrants that made their way from as far as Afghanistan to Sweden. And you better believe they're going to stimulate it it if the European response remains so flimsy. It rids them of their burgeoning underclass and allows for political concessions from the EU - a pure win-win scenario.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Drowsy Emperor

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

The primary problem of the refugees is not that terrorists will sneak in alongside them but rather that the many of them are likely to end up poor and potentially steeped in criminality which can only serve to exacerbate the problem of terrorism five, ten or twenty years down the line. Belgium, France, Germany, the UK - all have large Muslim ghettos where most of the terrorists grew up. What is to be gained by enlarging them? Are we presuming that the economic trends, which point to a gradual decline in living standards across the West are going to reverse and improve to the point where everyone in the ghetto (the lowest rung of the social pecking order with least access to resources) becomes a middle class citizen? 

This isn't even just a question of a cultural and religious clash, its basic mathematics. To claim that these people can have a positive economic impact is madness in the light of the continued existence of individuals similar to them, already living in Europe, unemployed or unemployable.

 

I agree with you on that completely, but that is hardly how most people are approaching this.  

 

 

The explanations that ring of immediacy are much more useful in politics than a long term outcome discussion. So the right has little use for the soft approach when they can point to the smoking ruins of the Brussels airport and blow the terrorism trumpet - and the incumbent left can't allow itself to admit that this sort of immigration has to be curtailed because that would imply that its social policies have been a failure and that there is a serious structural problem in the society they're supposedly doing a good job of governing.

 

The public debate is simply influenced by and reflects these interests.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Drowsy Emperor

[Guard Dog]

 

The primary problem of the refugees is not that terrorists will sneak in alongside them but rather that the many of them are likely to end up poor and potentially steeped in criminality which can only serve to exacerbate the problem of terrorism five, ten or twenty years down the line. Belgium, France, Germany, the UK - all have large Muslim ghettos where most of the terrorists grew up. What is to be gained by enlarging them? Are we presuming that the economic trends, which point to a gradual decline in living standards across the West are going to reverse and improve to the point where everyone in the ghetto (the lowest rung of the social pecking order with least access to resources) becomes a middle class citizen? 

This isn't even just a question of a cultural and religious clash, its basic mathematics. To claim that these people can have a positive economic impact is madness in the light of the continued existence of individuals similar to them, already living in Europe, unemployed or unemployable.

 

I agree with you on that completely, but that is hardly how most people are approaching this.  

 

You both hit the nail right on the head. USA Today had an editorial warning those in the US to not take this attack as a reason to stop allowing Muslim refugees from the ME into  the country. They went on for about 600 words or so on how assimilating into the american "melting pot" will prevent radicalization etc. etc.... And they are right, it probably would. But refugees do not seem to be interested in doing that. Once the settle they form insular communities where they only associate and do business with their own. A nation within a nation as it were. The the old us vs. them festers. That is what happens in Europe, and it's happening right here particularly in cities like Minneapolis. 

 

You can bring them in but you can't make them assimilate. It does not necessarily mean they will start blowing up things when they don't but that IS where it begins.  

Edited March 22, 2016 by Guard Dog

[Drowsy Emperor]

A better question is why USA Today sees fit to champion the cause of Muslim immigrants on the basis of an ideological assumptions rather than a clear cut analysis on what is actually to be gained by this policy. Supporting something by claiming that "it won't be a problem" doesn't sound very convincing. Isn't there a burden to prove that immigration from ME is somehow beneficial instead of automatically assuming it is?

[Guard Dog]

A better question is why USA Today sees fit to champion the cause of Muslim immigrants on the basis of an ideological assumptions rather than a clear cut analysis on what is actually to be gained by this policy. Supporting something by claiming that "it won't be a problem" doesn't sound very convincing. Isn't there a burden to prove that immigration from ME is somehow beneficial instead of automatically assuming it is?

USA Today champions the cause of the american left. The american left champions the cause of the open door let-them-all-come policy. I can speculate why but you'd have to ask them to know for sure. It's beyond my understanding.  

[Drowsy Emperor]

The more you know the less you understand. True story

[Agiel]

Emphases mine:

 

 

 

Jihadi Cool: Belgium’s New Extremists are as Shallow as They are Deadly

by Kurt Eichenwald

 

Anyone surprised by the murderous attack in Brussels has not been paying attention. On a per capita basis, Belgium has been Europe’s hotbed of young Muslims who travel to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and then return home, often ready to kill. But the world should hesitate before crediting this attack to ISIS, because doing so tends to infuse the group with power that it does not have.

 

These European attackers are not like the Al-Qaeda members of old—the radicalized adherents to fundamentalist Islam. Many of these new age killers were small children when the World Trade Center fell in 2001 and have spent much of their lives watching major wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria. Their knowledge of Islam is quite limited; they are more like jihadi hipsters than dedicated Islamists, or what some experts in the intelligence community call “jihadist cool.” They celebrate what the Dutch coordinator for security and counterterrorism called “pop-jihad as a lifestyle.”

 

These are youths who gather in groups, such as the recently dismantled Sharia4Belgium. They know less about Osama bin Laden than they do about Tupac Shakur; Belgians who travel to Syria to fight often revere the deceased American rapper on social media, identifying themselves with his lyrics about life in the inner cities. But these attackers also have their own rap music, hip clothes popular with young Muslims that are sold by companies like Urban Ummah and slogans akin to what might be found on a bumper sticker (“Work Hard, Pray Hard.”) Their tweets often end with terms like #BeardLife and #HijabLife. While in Syria, they send selfies to their friends showing themselves wearing kohl, a traditional Middle Eastern eye shadow.

 

In other words, these are not intellectual Muslims with long beards and Korans in hand; labeling them jihadis or radical Islamists would be, to them, the highest compliment. In another time or another circumstance, these are young people who would be called losers or narcissistic punks—although they are punks who murder.

 

It’s easy to confuse Belgium’s new extremists with the ones from the previous decade. The murder of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance who was killed just before the 9/11 attacks, was committed by men who plotted their attack in Brussels. A Belgian extremist cell that was part of the Groupe Islamique Marocain Combattant participated in the deadly Madrid train bombings in 2004. The next year, a Belgian named Muriel Degauque blew herself up in an attack in Iraq, making her the first known female suicide bomber from the West. But the old-line extremist networks have no connection to the “jihadist cool” aficionados.

 

These shallow Islamists have proved to be a challenge for European countries that use a traditional de-radicalization program for Muslims lured into the world of radical fundamentalists: It’s hard to re-educate people about Islam when they knew almost nothing to begin with. In what may be the most representative event depicting the nature of these new Islamist extremists, two British Muslims, both 22, purchased copies of Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies in August 2014 just before they boarded a plane on the first leg of their trip to join ISIS fighters in Syria.

 

The numbers of young European Muslims who have traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS is frightening. Recent intelligence estimates peg the number at more than 5,000, with about 470 coming from Belgium alone. While that is the largest number per capita of any country in the European Union, France is the leader in raw numbers, with 1,700 travelers to Syria.

What lures these youths into the brutal culture of radical Islam? The answer, according to intelligence officials, would be laughable if it was not so deadly: peer pressure and what might be called Rambo-envy.

 

“For foreign fighters the religious component in recruitment and radicalization is being replaced by more social elements such as peer pressure and role modelling,’’ said a January 18 report by Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, which deals with militant networks. “Additionally the romantic prospect of being part of an important and exciting development, apart from more private considerations, may play a role.”

 

Here is where things always get politicized. Trying to stop this conversion of young European Muslims into attackers requires understanding what underlies the change. Political blowhards, unable to tell the difference between hard-core Islamic radicals and practitioners of pop-jihad, rage that trying to figure out ways to intercede in that transformation amounts to excusing the attackers, an argument that plays well for the ignorant but that leaves intelligence officials rolling their eyes in frustration. Proclaiming “this was ISIS!”—when it was just punks inspired by the group—grafts the perception of worldwide power onto the organization, making it seem stronger than it actually is, which markets it as even more attractive to young Muslims seeking adventure and attention.

 

Let the blowhards blow. Here is what needs to be understood about the murderous practitioners of jihadi cool. Based on interviews with European Muslims returning from fighting in Syria, foreign intelligence agencies estimate that about 20 percent of them were diagnosed with mental illnesses before they left for the Middle East. A large percentage of them have prior records for both petty and serious crimes. And the vast majority of them come out of urban neighborhoods torn apart by economic hardship.

 

Rik Coolsaet, a professor of international relations at Ghent University in Belgium and a senior associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Relations, recently wrote about the environment that has caused the development of this youth subculture in his country. Young Belgians, faced with a bleak job market, have higher suicide rates and more high school dropouts than most member states of the European Union.

 

“Youth representatives in Belgium recently warned that many young people are depressed and feel hopeless,” Coolsaet wrote.

 

The result, intelligence analysts say, is those European Muslims that become fan-boys for ISIS are taking not a rational stand but an emotional one. “Areas where there are close-knit groups of susceptible youth, often lacking a sense of purpose or belonging outside their own circle, have proved to generate a momentum of recruitment that spreads through personal contacts from group to group,” says a December 2015 report by the Soufan Group, a private intelligence analysis and security company.

 

In other words, attraction to the ISIS philosophy among European Muslins is like a virus, where proximity to the infected is the most common cause. And the locations where the beliefs are spreading can be just as easy to find as the sites where a disease emerges; in November 2015, Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon identified Molenbeek, a poor immigrant quarter of Brussels, as a hotbed for young Muslims traveling to Syria and back. So it should come as no surprise that the investigation into the Brussels attack immediately tracked suspects to Molenbeek.

 

And this is what’s so frustrating about the new hipster pop-jihadism. Intelligence officials know most everything. Belgium publicly identified the location where potential terrorists were most likely to be living. On January 25, Europol announced that the threat of an attack was at its highest level in a decade, warning that both France and Belgium were at the highest risk of an attack by those attacking soft targets in the heart of a large city. That is almost as specific as it gets.

 

Even with all that knowledge, however, disrupting an attack from this new breed of Islamic fans—rather than religious devotees—is enormously difficult. These are small cells of like-minded young people with operational autonomy, not some organization with top-down leadership like Al-Qaeda. Many of them do travel to Syria to learn tactics from ISIS before heading back home on their own. All it takes is some guns, some homemade bombs and some desire for fame to transform a loser into a hero among his friends and allies. And then the world eagerly attributes the attack to ISIS, which takes a bow for an attack its leaders probably knew nothing about and earns more cred that it uses to attract even more devotees.

 

So here the answer for solving the problem is quite different from the military strategy that was needed to deal with Al-Qaeda. Europe and America can’t simply attack ISIS and expect the problem to be solved, not unless the Western nations want to stop bombing themselves. This time, it is a law enforcement issue, one requiring sources, informants and sting operations, along with economic plans to create some hope for a future among Europe’s youths. 

 

Or the bombastic politicians and talking heads can continue perpetuating ignorance, banging the once-correct drum about a clash of civilizations; riling up the public about a vast, ISIS-controlled network; and ignoring the less-dramatic solutions that need to be pursued. The West is facing a threat from its own residents who want to be Rambo; it should resist the temptation to do the same.

Edited March 23, 2016 by Agiel

[Meshugger]

 

Emphases mine:

 

 

 

Jihadi Cool: Belgium’s New Extremists are as Shallow as They are Deadly

by Kurt Eichenwald

 

Anyone surprised by the murderous attack in Brussels has not been paying attention. On a per capita basis, Belgium has been Europe’s hotbed of young Muslims who travel to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and then return home, often ready to kill. But the world should hesitate before crediting this attack to ISIS, because doing so tends to infuse the group with power that it does not have.

 

These European attackers are not like the Al-Qaeda members of old—the radicalized adherents to fundamentalist Islam. Many of these new age killers were small children when the World Trade Center fell in 2001 and have spent much of their lives watching major wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria. Their knowledge of Islam is quite limited; they are more like jihadi hipsters than dedicated Islamists, or what some experts in the intelligence community call “jihadist cool.” They celebrate what the Dutch coordinator for security and counterterrorism called “pop-jihad as a lifestyle.”

 

These are youths who gather in groups, such as the recently dismantled Sharia4Belgium. They know less about Osama bin Laden than they do about Tupac Shakur; Belgians who travel to Syria to fight often revere the deceased American rapper on social media, identifying themselves with his lyrics about life in the inner cities. But these attackers also have their own rap music, hip clothes popular with young Muslims that are sold by companies like Urban Ummah and slogans akin to what might be found on a bumper sticker (“Work Hard, Pray Hard.”) Their tweets often end with terms like #BeardLife and #HijabLife. While in Syria, they send selfies to their friends showing themselves wearing kohl, a traditional Middle Eastern eye shadow.

 

In other words, these are not intellectual Muslims with long beards and Korans in hand; labeling them jihadis or radical Islamists would be, to them, the highest compliment. In another time or another circumstance, these are young people who would be called losers or narcissistic punks—although they are punks who murder.

 

It’s easy to confuse Belgium’s new extremists with the ones from the previous decade. The murder of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance who was killed just before the 9/11 attacks, was committed by men who plotted their attack in Brussels. A Belgian extremist cell that was part of the Groupe Islamique Marocain Combattant participated in the deadly Madrid train bombings in 2004. The next year, a Belgian named Muriel Degauque blew herself up in an attack in Iraq, making her the first known female suicide bomber from the West. But the old-line extremist networks have no connection to the “jihadist cool” aficionados.

 

These shallow Islamists have proved to be a challenge for European countries that use a traditional de-radicalization program for Muslims lured into the world of radical fundamentalists: It’s hard to re-educate people about Islam when they knew almost nothing to begin with. In what may be the most representative event depicting the nature of these new Islamist extremists, two British Muslims, both 22, purchased copies of Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies in August 2014 just before they boarded a plane on the first leg of their trip to join ISIS fighters in Syria.

 

The numbers of young European Muslims who have traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS is frightening. Recent intelligence estimates peg the number at more than 5,000, with about 470 coming from Belgium alone. While that is the largest number per capita of any country in the European Union, France is the leader in raw numbers, with 1,700 travelers to Syria.

What lures these youths into the brutal culture of radical Islam? The answer, according to intelligence officials, would be laughable if it was not so deadly: peer pressure and what might be called Rambo-envy.

 

“For foreign fighters the religious component in recruitment and radicalization is being replaced by more social elements such as peer pressure and role modelling,’’ said a January 18 report by Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, which deals with militant networks. “Additionally the romantic prospect of being part of an important and exciting development, apart from more private considerations, may play a role.”

 

Here is where things always get politicized. Trying to stop this conversion of young European Muslims into attackers requires understanding what underlies the change. Political blowhards, unable to tell the difference between hard-core Islamic radicals and practitioners of pop-jihad, rage that trying to figure out ways to intercede in that transformation amounts to excusing the attackers, an argument that plays well for the ignorant but that leaves intelligence officials rolling their eyes in frustration. Proclaiming “this was ISIS!”—when it was just punks inspired by the group—grafts the perception of worldwide power onto the organization, making it seem stronger than it actually is, which markets it as even more attractive to young Muslims seeking adventure and attention.

 

Let the blowhards blow. Here is what needs to be understood about the murderous practitioners of jihadi cool. Based on interviews with European Muslims returning from fighting in Syria, foreign intelligence agencies estimate that about 20 percent of them were diagnosed with mental illnesses before they left for the Middle East. A large percentage of them have prior records for both petty and serious crimes. And the vast majority of them come out of urban neighborhoods torn apart by economic hardship.

 

Rik Coolsaet, a professor of international relations at Ghent University in Belgium and a senior associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Relations, recently wrote about the environment that has caused the development of this youth subculture in his country. Young Belgians, faced with a bleak job market, have higher suicide rates and more high school dropouts than most member states of the European Union.

 

“Youth representatives in Belgium recently warned that many young people are depressed and feel hopeless,” Coolsaet wrote.

 

The result, intelligence analysts say, is those European Muslims that become fan-boys for ISIS are taking not a rational stand but an emotional one. “Areas where there are close-knit groups of susceptible youth, often lacking a sense of purpose or belonging outside their own circle, have proved to generate a momentum of recruitment that spreads through personal contacts from group to group,” says a December 2015 report by the Soufan Group, a private intelligence analysis and security company.

 

In other words, attraction to the ISIS philosophy among European Muslins is like a virus, where proximity to the infected is the most common cause. And the locations where the beliefs are spreading can be just as easy to find as the sites where a disease emerges; in November 2015, Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon identified Molenbeek, a poor immigrant quarter of Brussels, as a hotbed for young Muslims traveling to Syria and back. So it should come as no surprise that the investigation into the Brussels attack immediately tracked suspects to Molenbeek.

 

And this is what’s so frustrating about the new hipster pop-jihadism. Intelligence officials know most everything. Belgium publicly identified the location where potential terrorists were most likely to be living. On January 25, Europol announced that the threat of an attack was at its highest level in a decade, warning that both France and Belgium were at the highest risk of an attack by those attacking soft targets in the heart of a large city. That is almost as specific as it gets.

 

Even with all that knowledge, however, disrupting an attack from this new breed of Islamic fans—rather than religious devotees—is enormously difficult. These are small cells of like-minded young people with operational autonomy, not some organization with top-down leadership like Al-Qaeda. Many of them do travel to Syria to learn tactics from ISIS before heading back home on their own. All it takes is some guns, some homemade bombs and some desire for fame to transform a loser into a hero among his friends and allies. And then the world eagerly attributes the attack to ISIS, which takes a bow for an attack its leaders probably knew nothing about and earns more cred that it uses to attract even more devotees.

 

So here the answer for solving the problem is quite different from the military strategy that was needed to deal with Al-Qaeda. Europe and America can’t simply attack ISIS and expect the problem to be solved, not unless the Western nations want to stop bombing themselves. This time, it is a law enforcement issue, one requiring sources, informants and sting operations, along with economic plans to create some hope for a future among Europe’s youths. 

 

Or the bombastic politicians and talking heads can continue perpetuating ignorance, banging the once-correct drum about a clash of civilizations; riling up the public about a vast, ISIS-controlled network; and ignoring the less-dramatic solutions that need to be pursued. The West is facing a threat from its own residents who want to be Rambo; it should resist the temptation to do the same.

 

 

That article comos off as more patronizing than what it wishes to be.

 

If a culture or a group of people start to blow up airports and subways, do mass shootings and suicide bomb themselves sporadically because they are simply bored, too stupid, depressed, have high unemployment and think it is cool, then why even bother allow them to Europe to begin with if they are so fragile?

 

But that would require responsibility for failure in policy, of which Drowsy already pointed out that the current establishment will not do. Rather race further down the cliff than admitting that you're wrong, i guess.

[Drowsy Emperor]

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

 

Emphases mine:

 

 

 

Jihadi Cool: Belgium’s New Extremists are as Shallow as They are Deadly

by Kurt Eichenwald

 

Anyone surprised by the murderous attack in Brussels has not been paying attention. On a per capita basis, Belgium has been Europe’s hotbed of young Muslims who travel to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and then return home, often ready to kill. But the world should hesitate before crediting this attack to ISIS, because doing so tends to infuse the group with power that it does not have.

 

These European attackers are not like the Al-Qaeda members of old—the radicalized adherents to fundamentalist Islam. Many of these new age killers were small children when the World Trade Center fell in 2001 and have spent much of their lives watching major wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria. Their knowledge of Islam is quite limited; they are more like jihadi hipsters than dedicated Islamists, or what some experts in the intelligence community call “jihadist cool.” They celebrate what the Dutch coordinator for security and counterterrorism called “pop-jihad as a lifestyle.”

 

These are youths who gather in groups, such as the recently dismantled Sharia4Belgium. They know less about Osama bin Laden than they do about Tupac Shakur; Belgians who travel to Syria to fight often revere the deceased American rapper on social media, identifying themselves with his lyrics about life in the inner cities. But these attackers also have their own rap music, hip clothes popular with young Muslims that are sold by companies like Urban Ummah and slogans akin to what might be found on a bumper sticker (“Work Hard, Pray Hard.”) Their tweets often end with terms like #BeardLife and #HijabLife. While in Syria, they send selfies to their friends showing themselves wearing kohl, a traditional Middle Eastern eye shadow.

 

In other words, these are not intellectual Muslims with long beards and Korans in hand; labeling them jihadis or radical Islamists would be, to them, the highest compliment. In another time or another circumstance, these are young people who would be called losers or narcissistic punks—although they are punks who murder.

 

It’s easy to confuse Belgium’s new extremists with the ones from the previous decade. The murder of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance who was killed just before the 9/11 attacks, was committed by men who plotted their attack in Brussels. A Belgian extremist cell that was part of the Groupe Islamique Marocain Combattant participated in the deadly Madrid train bombings in 2004. The next year, a Belgian named Muriel Degauque blew herself up in an attack in Iraq, making her the first known female suicide bomber from the West. But the old-line extremist networks have no connection to the “jihadist cool” aficionados.

 

These shallow Islamists have proved to be a challenge for European countries that use a traditional de-radicalization program for Muslims lured into the world of radical fundamentalists: It’s hard to re-educate people about Islam when they knew almost nothing to begin with. In what may be the most representative event depicting the nature of these new Islamist extremists, two British Muslims, both 22, purchased copies of Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies in August 2014 just before they boarded a plane on the first leg of their trip to join ISIS fighters in Syria.

 

The numbers of young European Muslims who have traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS is frightening. Recent intelligence estimates peg the number at more than 5,000, with about 470 coming from Belgium alone. While that is the largest number per capita of any country in the European Union, France is the leader in raw numbers, with 1,700 travelers to Syria.

What lures these youths into the brutal culture of radical Islam? The answer, according to intelligence officials, would be laughable if it was not so deadly: peer pressure and what might be called Rambo-envy.

 

“For foreign fighters the religious component in recruitment and radicalization is being replaced by more social elements such as peer pressure and role modelling,’’ said a January 18 report by Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, which deals with militant networks. “Additionally the romantic prospect of being part of an important and exciting development, apart from more private considerations, may play a role.”

 

Here is where things always get politicized. Trying to stop this conversion of young European Muslims into attackers requires understanding what underlies the change. Political blowhards, unable to tell the difference between hard-core Islamic radicals and practitioners of pop-jihad, rage that trying to figure out ways to intercede in that transformation amounts to excusing the attackers, an argument that plays well for the ignorant but that leaves intelligence officials rolling their eyes in frustration. Proclaiming “this was ISIS!”—when it was just punks inspired by the group—grafts the perception of worldwide power onto the organization, making it seem stronger than it actually is, which markets it as even more attractive to young Muslims seeking adventure and attention.

 

Let the blowhards blow. Here is what needs to be understood about the murderous practitioners of jihadi cool. Based on interviews with European Muslims returning from fighting in Syria, foreign intelligence agencies estimate that about 20 percent of them were diagnosed with mental illnesses before they left for the Middle East. A large percentage of them have prior records for both petty and serious crimes. And the vast majority of them come out of urban neighborhoods torn apart by economic hardship.

 

Rik Coolsaet, a professor of international relations at Ghent University in Belgium and a senior associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Relations, recently wrote about the environment that has caused the development of this youth subculture in his country. Young Belgians, faced with a bleak job market, have higher suicide rates and more high school dropouts than most member states of the European Union.

 

“Youth representatives in Belgium recently warned that many young people are depressed and feel hopeless,” Coolsaet wrote.

 

The result, intelligence analysts say, is those European Muslims that become fan-boys for ISIS are taking not a rational stand but an emotional one. “Areas where there are close-knit groups of susceptible youth, often lacking a sense of purpose or belonging outside their own circle, have proved to generate a momentum of recruitment that spreads through personal contacts from group to group,” says a December 2015 report by the Soufan Group, a private intelligence analysis and security company.

 

In other words, attraction to the ISIS philosophy among European Muslins is like a virus, where proximity to the infected is the most common cause. And the locations where the beliefs are spreading can be just as easy to find as the sites where a disease emerges; in November 2015, Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon identified Molenbeek, a poor immigrant quarter of Brussels, as a hotbed for young Muslims traveling to Syria and back. So it should come as no surprise that the investigation into the Brussels attack immediately tracked suspects to Molenbeek.

 

And this is what’s so frustrating about the new hipster pop-jihadism. Intelligence officials know most everything. Belgium publicly identified the location where potential terrorists were most likely to be living. On January 25, Europol announced that the threat of an attack was at its highest level in a decade, warning that both France and Belgium were at the highest risk of an attack by those attacking soft targets in the heart of a large city. That is almost as specific as it gets.

 

Even with all that knowledge, however, disrupting an attack from this new breed of Islamic fans—rather than religious devotees—is enormously difficult. These are small cells of like-minded young people with operational autonomy, not some organization with top-down leadership like Al-Qaeda. Many of them do travel to Syria to learn tactics from ISIS before heading back home on their own. All it takes is some guns, some homemade bombs and some desire for fame to transform a loser into a hero among his friends and allies. And then the world eagerly attributes the attack to ISIS, which takes a bow for an attack its leaders probably knew nothing about and earns more cred that it uses to attract even more devotees.

 

So here the answer for solving the problem is quite different from the military strategy that was needed to deal with Al-Qaeda. Europe and America can’t simply attack ISIS and expect the problem to be solved, not unless the Western nations want to stop bombing themselves. This time, it is a law enforcement issue, one requiring sources, informants and sting operations, along with economic plans to create some hope for a future among Europe’s youths. 

 

Or the bombastic politicians and talking heads can continue perpetuating ignorance, banging the once-correct drum about a clash of civilizations; riling up the public about a vast, ISIS-controlled network; and ignoring the less-dramatic solutions that need to be pursued. The West is facing a threat from its own residents who want to be Rambo; it should resist the temptation to do the same.

 

 

That article comos off as more patronizing than what it wishes to be.

 

If a culture or a group of people start to blow up airports and subways, do mass shootings and suicide bomb themselves sporadically because they are simply bored, too stupid, depressed, have high unemployment and think it is cool, then why even bother allow them to Europe to begin with if they are so fragile?

 

 

*cough* scope insensitivity *cough*

 

Estimated number of Muslims in Belgium: 320.000-450.000

 

Estimated number of young European Muslims who have traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS: 470.

 

"A culture starts to blow up airports and subways", my ass.

Edited March 23, 2016 by aluminiumtrioxid

[Meshugger]

 

 

 

Emphases mine:

 

 

 

Jihadi Cool: Belgium’s New Extremists are as Shallow as They are Deadly

by Kurt Eichenwald

 

Anyone surprised by the murderous attack in Brussels has not been paying attention. On a per capita basis, Belgium has been Europe’s hotbed of young Muslims who travel to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and then return home, often ready to kill. But the world should hesitate before crediting this attack to ISIS, because doing so tends to infuse the group with power that it does not have.

 

These European attackers are not like the Al-Qaeda members of old—the radicalized adherents to fundamentalist Islam. Many of these new age killers were small children when the World Trade Center fell in 2001 and have spent much of their lives watching major wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria. Their knowledge of Islam is quite limited; they are more like jihadi hipsters than dedicated Islamists, or what some experts in the intelligence community call “jihadist cool.” They celebrate what the Dutch coordinator for security and counterterrorism called “pop-jihad as a lifestyle.”

 

These are youths who gather in groups, such as the recently dismantled Sharia4Belgium. They know less about Osama bin Laden than they do about Tupac Shakur; Belgians who travel to Syria to fight often revere the deceased American rapper on social media, identifying themselves with his lyrics about life in the inner cities. But these attackers also have their own rap music, hip clothes popular with young Muslims that are sold by companies like Urban Ummah and slogans akin to what might be found on a bumper sticker (“Work Hard, Pray Hard.”) Their tweets often end with terms like #BeardLife and #HijabLife. While in Syria, they send selfies to their friends showing themselves wearing kohl, a traditional Middle Eastern eye shadow.

 

In other words, these are not intellectual Muslims with long beards and Korans in hand; labeling them jihadis or radical Islamists would be, to them, the highest compliment. In another time or another circumstance, these are young people who would be called losers or narcissistic punks—although they are punks who murder.

 

It’s easy to confuse Belgium’s new extremists with the ones from the previous decade. The murder of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance who was killed just before the 9/11 attacks, was committed by men who plotted their attack in Brussels. A Belgian extremist cell that was part of the Groupe Islamique Marocain Combattant participated in the deadly Madrid train bombings in 2004. The next year, a Belgian named Muriel Degauque blew herself up in an attack in Iraq, making her the first known female suicide bomber from the West. But the old-line extremist networks have no connection to the “jihadist cool” aficionados.

 

These shallow Islamists have proved to be a challenge for European countries that use a traditional de-radicalization program for Muslims lured into the world of radical fundamentalists: It’s hard to re-educate people about Islam when they knew almost nothing to begin with. In what may be the most representative event depicting the nature of these new Islamist extremists, two British Muslims, both 22, purchased copies of Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies in August 2014 just before they boarded a plane on the first leg of their trip to join ISIS fighters in Syria.

 

The numbers of young European Muslims who have traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS is frightening. Recent intelligence estimates peg the number at more than 5,000, with about 470 coming from Belgium alone. While that is the largest number per capita of any country in the European Union, France is the leader in raw numbers, with 1,700 travelers to Syria.

What lures these youths into the brutal culture of radical Islam? The answer, according to intelligence officials, would be laughable if it was not so deadly: peer pressure and what might be called Rambo-envy.

 

“For foreign fighters the religious component in recruitment and radicalization is being replaced by more social elements such as peer pressure and role modelling,’’ said a January 18 report by Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, which deals with militant networks. “Additionally the romantic prospect of being part of an important and exciting development, apart from more private considerations, may play a role.”

 

Here is where things always get politicized. Trying to stop this conversion of young European Muslims into attackers requires understanding what underlies the change. Political blowhards, unable to tell the difference between hard-core Islamic radicals and practitioners of pop-jihad, rage that trying to figure out ways to intercede in that transformation amounts to excusing the attackers, an argument that plays well for the ignorant but that leaves intelligence officials rolling their eyes in frustration. Proclaiming “this was ISIS!”—when it was just punks inspired by the group—grafts the perception of worldwide power onto the organization, making it seem stronger than it actually is, which markets it as even more attractive to young Muslims seeking adventure and attention.

 

Let the blowhards blow. Here is what needs to be understood about the murderous practitioners of jihadi cool. Based on interviews with European Muslims returning from fighting in Syria, foreign intelligence agencies estimate that about 20 percent of them were diagnosed with mental illnesses before they left for the Middle East. A large percentage of them have prior records for both petty and serious crimes. And the vast majority of them come out of urban neighborhoods torn apart by economic hardship.

 

Rik Coolsaet, a professor of international relations at Ghent University in Belgium and a senior associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Relations, recently wrote about the environment that has caused the development of this youth subculture in his country. Young Belgians, faced with a bleak job market, have higher suicide rates and more high school dropouts than most member states of the European Union.

 

“Youth representatives in Belgium recently warned that many young people are depressed and feel hopeless,” Coolsaet wrote.

 

The result, intelligence analysts say, is those European Muslims that become fan-boys for ISIS are taking not a rational stand but an emotional one. “Areas where there are close-knit groups of susceptible youth, often lacking a sense of purpose or belonging outside their own circle, have proved to generate a momentum of recruitment that spreads through personal contacts from group to group,” says a December 2015 report by the Soufan Group, a private intelligence analysis and security company.

 

In other words, attraction to the ISIS philosophy among European Muslins is like a virus, where proximity to the infected is the most common cause. And the locations where the beliefs are spreading can be just as easy to find as the sites where a disease emerges; in November 2015, Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon identified Molenbeek, a poor immigrant quarter of Brussels, as a hotbed for young Muslims traveling to Syria and back. So it should come as no surprise that the investigation into the Brussels attack immediately tracked suspects to Molenbeek.

 

And this is what’s so frustrating about the new hipster pop-jihadism. Intelligence officials know most everything. Belgium publicly identified the location where potential terrorists were most likely to be living. On January 25, Europol announced that the threat of an attack was at its highest level in a decade, warning that both France and Belgium were at the highest risk of an attack by those attacking soft targets in the heart of a large city. That is almost as specific as it gets.

 

Even with all that knowledge, however, disrupting an attack from this new breed of Islamic fans—rather than religious devotees—is enormously difficult. These are small cells of like-minded young people with operational autonomy, not some organization with top-down leadership like Al-Qaeda. Many of them do travel to Syria to learn tactics from ISIS before heading back home on their own. All it takes is some guns, some homemade bombs and some desire for fame to transform a loser into a hero among his friends and allies. And then the world eagerly attributes the attack to ISIS, which takes a bow for an attack its leaders probably knew nothing about and earns more cred that it uses to attract even more devotees.

 

So here the answer for solving the problem is quite different from the military strategy that was needed to deal with Al-Qaeda. Europe and America can’t simply attack ISIS and expect the problem to be solved, not unless the Western nations want to stop bombing themselves. This time, it is a law enforcement issue, one requiring sources, informants and sting operations, along with economic plans to create some hope for a future among Europe’s youths. 

 

Or the bombastic politicians and talking heads can continue perpetuating ignorance, banging the once-correct drum about a clash of civilizations; riling up the public about a vast, ISIS-controlled network; and ignoring the less-dramatic solutions that need to be pursued. The West is facing a threat from its own residents who want to be Rambo; it should resist the temptation to do the same.

 

 

That article comos off as more patronizing than what it wishes to be.

 

If a culture or a group of people start to blow up airports and subways, do mass shootings and suicide bomb themselves sporadically because they are simply bored, too stupid, depressed, have high unemployment and think it is cool, then why even bother allow them to Europe to begin with if they are so fragile?

 

 

*cough* scope insensitivity *cough*

 

Estimated number of Muslims in Belgium: 320.000-450.000

 

Estimated number of young European Muslims who have traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS: 470.

 

"A culture starts to blow up airports and subways", my ass.

 

 

But that's what the article is saying and i took it to it's logical conclusion. Thus highlighting that something is greatly amiss in its reasoning.

Edited March 23, 2016 by Meshugger

[Elerond]

 

 

Emphases mine:

 

 

 

Jihadi Cool: Belgium’s New Extremists are as Shallow as They are Deadly

by Kurt Eichenwald

 

Anyone surprised by the murderous attack in Brussels has not been paying attention. On a per capita basis, Belgium has been Europe’s hotbed of young Muslims who travel to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and then return home, often ready to kill. But the world should hesitate before crediting this attack to ISIS, because doing so tends to infuse the group with power that it does not have.

 

These European attackers are not like the Al-Qaeda members of old—the radicalized adherents to fundamentalist Islam. Many of these new age killers were small children when the World Trade Center fell in 2001 and have spent much of their lives watching major wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria. Their knowledge of Islam is quite limited; they are more like jihadi hipsters than dedicated Islamists, or what some experts in the intelligence community call “jihadist cool.” They celebrate what the Dutch coordinator for security and counterterrorism called “pop-jihad as a lifestyle.”

 

These are youths who gather in groups, such as the recently dismantled Sharia4Belgium. They know less about Osama bin Laden than they do about Tupac Shakur; Belgians who travel to Syria to fight often revere the deceased American rapper on social media, identifying themselves with his lyrics about life in the inner cities. But these attackers also have their own rap music, hip clothes popular with young Muslims that are sold by companies like Urban Ummah and slogans akin to what might be found on a bumper sticker (“Work Hard, Pray Hard.”) Their tweets often end with terms like #BeardLife and #HijabLife. While in Syria, they send selfies to their friends showing themselves wearing kohl, a traditional Middle Eastern eye shadow.

 

In other words, these are not intellectual Muslims with long beards and Korans in hand; labeling them jihadis or radical Islamists would be, to them, the highest compliment. In another time or another circumstance, these are young people who would be called losers or narcissistic punks—although they are punks who murder.

 

It’s easy to confuse Belgium’s new extremists with the ones from the previous decade. The murder of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance who was killed just before the 9/11 attacks, was committed by men who plotted their attack in Brussels. A Belgian extremist cell that was part of the Groupe Islamique Marocain Combattant participated in the deadly Madrid train bombings in 2004. The next year, a Belgian named Muriel Degauque blew herself up in an attack in Iraq, making her the first known female suicide bomber from the West. But the old-line extremist networks have no connection to the “jihadist cool” aficionados.

 

These shallow Islamists have proved to be a challenge for European countries that use a traditional de-radicalization program for Muslims lured into the world of radical fundamentalists: It’s hard to re-educate people about Islam when they knew almost nothing to begin with. In what may be the most representative event depicting the nature of these new Islamist extremists, two British Muslims, both 22, purchased copies of Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies in August 2014 just before they boarded a plane on the first leg of their trip to join ISIS fighters in Syria.

 

The numbers of young European Muslims who have traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS is frightening. Recent intelligence estimates peg the number at more than 5,000, with about 470 coming from Belgium alone. While that is the largest number per capita of any country in the European Union, France is the leader in raw numbers, with 1,700 travelers to Syria.

What lures these youths into the brutal culture of radical Islam? The answer, according to intelligence officials, would be laughable if it was not so deadly: peer pressure and what might be called Rambo-envy.

 

“For foreign fighters the religious component in recruitment and radicalization is being replaced by more social elements such as peer pressure and role modelling,’’ said a January 18 report by Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, which deals with militant networks. “Additionally the romantic prospect of being part of an important and exciting development, apart from more private considerations, may play a role.”

 

Here is where things always get politicized. Trying to stop this conversion of young European Muslims into attackers requires understanding what underlies the change. Political blowhards, unable to tell the difference between hard-core Islamic radicals and practitioners of pop-jihad, rage that trying to figure out ways to intercede in that transformation amounts to excusing the attackers, an argument that plays well for the ignorant but that leaves intelligence officials rolling their eyes in frustration. Proclaiming “this was ISIS!”—when it was just punks inspired by the group—grafts the perception of worldwide power onto the organization, making it seem stronger than it actually is, which markets it as even more attractive to young Muslims seeking adventure and attention.

 

Let the blowhards blow. Here is what needs to be understood about the murderous practitioners of jihadi cool. Based on interviews with European Muslims returning from fighting in Syria, foreign intelligence agencies estimate that about 20 percent of them were diagnosed with mental illnesses before they left for the Middle East. A large percentage of them have prior records for both petty and serious crimes. And the vast majority of them come out of urban neighborhoods torn apart by economic hardship.

 

Rik Coolsaet, a professor of international relations at Ghent University in Belgium and a senior associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Relations, recently wrote about the environment that has caused the development of this youth subculture in his country. Young Belgians, faced with a bleak job market, have higher suicide rates and more high school dropouts than most member states of the European Union.

 

“Youth representatives in Belgium recently warned that many young people are depressed and feel hopeless,” Coolsaet wrote.

 

The result, intelligence analysts say, is those European Muslims that become fan-boys for ISIS are taking not a rational stand but an emotional one. “Areas where there are close-knit groups of susceptible youth, often lacking a sense of purpose or belonging outside their own circle, have proved to generate a momentum of recruitment that spreads through personal contacts from group to group,” says a December 2015 report by the Soufan Group, a private intelligence analysis and security company.

 

In other words, attraction to the ISIS philosophy among European Muslins is like a virus, where proximity to the infected is the most common cause. And the locations where the beliefs are spreading can be just as easy to find as the sites where a disease emerges; in November 2015, Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon identified Molenbeek, a poor immigrant quarter of Brussels, as a hotbed for young Muslims traveling to Syria and back. So it should come as no surprise that the investigation into the Brussels attack immediately tracked suspects to Molenbeek.

 

And this is what’s so frustrating about the new hipster pop-jihadism. Intelligence officials know most everything. Belgium publicly identified the location where potential terrorists were most likely to be living. On January 25, Europol announced that the threat of an attack was at its highest level in a decade, warning that both France and Belgium were at the highest risk of an attack by those attacking soft targets in the heart of a large city. That is almost as specific as it gets.

 

Even with all that knowledge, however, disrupting an attack from this new breed of Islamic fans—rather than religious devotees—is enormously difficult. These are small cells of like-minded young people with operational autonomy, not some organization with top-down leadership like Al-Qaeda. Many of them do travel to Syria to learn tactics from ISIS before heading back home on their own. All it takes is some guns, some homemade bombs and some desire for fame to transform a loser into a hero among his friends and allies. And then the world eagerly attributes the attack to ISIS, which takes a bow for an attack its leaders probably knew nothing about and earns more cred that it uses to attract even more devotees.

 

So here the answer for solving the problem is quite different from the military strategy that was needed to deal with Al-Qaeda. Europe and America can’t simply attack ISIS and expect the problem to be solved, not unless the Western nations want to stop bombing themselves. This time, it is a law enforcement issue, one requiring sources, informants and sting operations, along with economic plans to create some hope for a future among Europe’s youths. 

 

Or the bombastic politicians and talking heads can continue perpetuating ignorance, banging the once-correct drum about a clash of civilizations; riling up the public about a vast, ISIS-controlled network; and ignoring the less-dramatic solutions that need to be pursued. The West is facing a threat from its own residents who want to be Rambo; it should resist the temptation to do the same.

 

 

That article comos off as more patronizing than what it wishes to be.

 

If a culture or a group of people start to blow up airports and subways, do mass shootings and suicide bomb themselves sporadically because they are simply bored, too stupid, depressed, have high unemployment and think it is cool, then why even bother allow them to Europe to begin with if they are so fragile?

 

But that would require responsibility for failure in policy, of which Drowsy already pointed out that the current establishment will not do. Rather race further down the cliff than admitting that you're wrong, i guess.

 

 

Article uses assumption that this attackers are European born and grown. Which means that nobody allowed them in Europe in first place.

[Malcador]

Jihadi hipsters is something I never thought I would read. Does make some sense that these idiots need something to do and can't all be lazy sods.

[Meshugger]

 

 

 

Emphases mine:

 

 

 

Jihadi Cool: Belgium’s New Extremists are as Shallow as They are Deadly

by Kurt Eichenwald

 

Anyone surprised by the murderous attack in Brussels has not been paying attention. On a per capita basis, Belgium has been Europe’s hotbed of young Muslims who travel to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and then return home, often ready to kill. But the world should hesitate before crediting this attack to ISIS, because doing so tends to infuse the group with power that it does not have.

 

These European attackers are not like the Al-Qaeda members of old—the radicalized adherents to fundamentalist Islam. Many of these new age killers were small children when the World Trade Center fell in 2001 and have spent much of their lives watching major wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria. Their knowledge of Islam is quite limited; they are more like jihadi hipsters than dedicated Islamists, or what some experts in the intelligence community call “jihadist cool.” They celebrate what the Dutch coordinator for security and counterterrorism called “pop-jihad as a lifestyle.”

 

These are youths who gather in groups, such as the recently dismantled Sharia4Belgium. They know less about Osama bin Laden than they do about Tupac Shakur; Belgians who travel to Syria to fight often revere the deceased American rapper on social media, identifying themselves with his lyrics about life in the inner cities. But these attackers also have their own rap music, hip clothes popular with young Muslims that are sold by companies like Urban Ummah and slogans akin to what might be found on a bumper sticker (“Work Hard, Pray Hard.”) Their tweets often end with terms like #BeardLife and #HijabLife. While in Syria, they send selfies to their friends showing themselves wearing kohl, a traditional Middle Eastern eye shadow.

 

In other words, these are not intellectual Muslims with long beards and Korans in hand; labeling them jihadis or radical Islamists would be, to them, the highest compliment. In another time or another circumstance, these are young people who would be called losers or narcissistic punks—although they are punks who murder.

 

It’s easy to confuse Belgium’s new extremists with the ones from the previous decade. The murder of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance who was killed just before the 9/11 attacks, was committed by men who plotted their attack in Brussels. A Belgian extremist cell that was part of the Groupe Islamique Marocain Combattant participated in the deadly Madrid train bombings in 2004. The next year, a Belgian named Muriel Degauque blew herself up in an attack in Iraq, making her the first known female suicide bomber from the West. But the old-line extremist networks have no connection to the “jihadist cool” aficionados.

 

These shallow Islamists have proved to be a challenge for European countries that use a traditional de-radicalization program for Muslims lured into the world of radical fundamentalists: It’s hard to re-educate people about Islam when they knew almost nothing to begin with. In what may be the most representative event depicting the nature of these new Islamist extremists, two British Muslims, both 22, purchased copies of Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies in August 2014 just before they boarded a plane on the first leg of their trip to join ISIS fighters in Syria.

 

The numbers of young European Muslims who have traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS is frightening. Recent intelligence estimates peg the number at more than 5,000, with about 470 coming from Belgium alone. While that is the largest number per capita of any country in the European Union, France is the leader in raw numbers, with 1,700 travelers to Syria.

What lures these youths into the brutal culture of radical Islam? The answer, according to intelligence officials, would be laughable if it was not so deadly: peer pressure and what might be called Rambo-envy.

 

“For foreign fighters the religious component in recruitment and radicalization is being replaced by more social elements such as peer pressure and role modelling,’’ said a January 18 report by Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, which deals with militant networks. “Additionally the romantic prospect of being part of an important and exciting development, apart from more private considerations, may play a role.”

 

Here is where things always get politicized. Trying to stop this conversion of young European Muslims into attackers requires understanding what underlies the change. Political blowhards, unable to tell the difference between hard-core Islamic radicals and practitioners of pop-jihad, rage that trying to figure out ways to intercede in that transformation amounts to excusing the attackers, an argument that plays well for the ignorant but that leaves intelligence officials rolling their eyes in frustration. Proclaiming “this was ISIS!”—when it was just punks inspired by the group—grafts the perception of worldwide power onto the organization, making it seem stronger than it actually is, which markets it as even more attractive to young Muslims seeking adventure and attention.

 

Let the blowhards blow. Here is what needs to be understood about the murderous practitioners of jihadi cool. Based on interviews with European Muslims returning from fighting in Syria, foreign intelligence agencies estimate that about 20 percent of them were diagnosed with mental illnesses before they left for the Middle East. A large percentage of them have prior records for both petty and serious crimes. And the vast majority of them come out of urban neighborhoods torn apart by economic hardship.

 

Rik Coolsaet, a professor of international relations at Ghent University in Belgium and a senior associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Relations, recently wrote about the environment that has caused the development of this youth subculture in his country. Young Belgians, faced with a bleak job market, have higher suicide rates and more high school dropouts than most member states of the European Union.

 

“Youth representatives in Belgium recently warned that many young people are depressed and feel hopeless,” Coolsaet wrote.

 

The result, intelligence analysts say, is those European Muslims that become fan-boys for ISIS are taking not a rational stand but an emotional one. “Areas where there are close-knit groups of susceptible youth, often lacking a sense of purpose or belonging outside their own circle, have proved to generate a momentum of recruitment that spreads through personal contacts from group to group,” says a December 2015 report by the Soufan Group, a private intelligence analysis and security company.

 

In other words, attraction to the ISIS philosophy among European Muslins is like a virus, where proximity to the infected is the most common cause. And the locations where the beliefs are spreading can be just as easy to find as the sites where a disease emerges; in November 2015, Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon identified Molenbeek, a poor immigrant quarter of Brussels, as a hotbed for young Muslims traveling to Syria and back. So it should come as no surprise that the investigation into the Brussels attack immediately tracked suspects to Molenbeek.

 

And this is what’s so frustrating about the new hipster pop-jihadism. Intelligence officials know most everything. Belgium publicly identified the location where potential terrorists were most likely to be living. On January 25, Europol announced that the threat of an attack was at its highest level in a decade, warning that both France and Belgium were at the highest risk of an attack by those attacking soft targets in the heart of a large city. That is almost as specific as it gets.

 

Even with all that knowledge, however, disrupting an attack from this new breed of Islamic fans—rather than religious devotees—is enormously difficult. These are small cells of like-minded young people with operational autonomy, not some organization with top-down leadership like Al-Qaeda. Many of them do travel to Syria to learn tactics from ISIS before heading back home on their own. All it takes is some guns, some homemade bombs and some desire for fame to transform a loser into a hero among his friends and allies. And then the world eagerly attributes the attack to ISIS, which takes a bow for an attack its leaders probably knew nothing about and earns more cred that it uses to attract even more devotees.

 

So here the answer for solving the problem is quite different from the military strategy that was needed to deal with Al-Qaeda. Europe and America can’t simply attack ISIS and expect the problem to be solved, not unless the Western nations want to stop bombing themselves. This time, it is a law enforcement issue, one requiring sources, informants and sting operations, along with economic plans to create some hope for a future among Europe’s youths. 

 

Or the bombastic politicians and talking heads can continue perpetuating ignorance, banging the once-correct drum about a clash of civilizations; riling up the public about a vast, ISIS-controlled network; and ignoring the less-dramatic solutions that need to be pursued. The West is facing a threat from its own residents who want to be Rambo; it should resist the temptation to do the same.

 

 

That article comos off as more patronizing than what it wishes to be.

 

If a culture or a group of people start to blow up airports and subways, do mass shootings and suicide bomb themselves sporadically because they are simply bored, too stupid, depressed, have high unemployment and think it is cool, then why even bother allow them to Europe to begin with if they are so fragile?

 

But that would require responsibility for failure in policy, of which Drowsy already pointed out that the current establishment will not do. Rather race further down the cliff than admitting that you're wrong, i guess.

 

 

Article uses assumption that this attackers are European born and grown. Which means that nobody allowed them in Europe in first place.

 

 

"European" as second or third generation North Africans and Middle Easterners. The result of an ongoing policy since the end of WWII.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Its really no different from the Baader Meinhof group and other leftist terrorist organizations of the 70s. They were mostly middle class students who did not have a discernible reason to do the things they do, other than ideology. Every generation needs a flag to fight under and Islamic fundamentalism is this new flag.

 

Unfortunately, the way these things pass (other than police and intelligence activity) is on their own. The idea loses its luster and all of a sudden its as though it never existed. Fundamentally the execution of terrorism is in the hands of the terrorists - its hard for anyone else to have input in the process. So to defeat them, it is necessary to win the battle without stepping on the battlefield - by crushing the idea that causes them to act as they do.

 

How to crush an idea? Well, leftist terrorist organizations never recovered from the fall of the Soviet Union. Without the beacon of socialism as a guiding principle the idea lost its basis (and the organizations were left without outside support) and withered away.

 

Now you would think that this means the Islamic State should be destroyed. But that is not the case, the IS is just the current manifestation of this ideology and is doomed to fail as a state project regardless. The point is - it is not the core. The core is Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries. They're the principal sponsors of the idea even though they're not the role model of the terrorists themselves (a strange combination but that's how it is). Most Islamic terrorists despise the Saudi monarchy. Yet the terrorists are fundamentally their ideological project. 

 

To invade and destroy the gulf countries wouldn't achieve the goal. They would be seen as just another victim of imperialism and it would encourage more terrorism. However cutting off Saudi tentacles abroad would go a long way: shutting down Wahhabi mosques, Islamic schools, expelling and imprisoning the worst members, banning local sharia patrols. That is what the EU can do and it can do so gradually and without pomp so as not to inspire resistance.

 

That said, the US holds all the keys in this. They can exert the most influence on the Saudis and the gulf states and wring their necks if necessary. But as long as policymakers in Washington see KSA as a regional ally its not going to happen and funds will be channeled to organizations that ultimately produce terrorists. The US sees itself capable of using jihadis across the world as useful idiots - to topple regimes and such because repercussions of their acts rarely come back to the United States (although September 11 was a spectacular example of that). But this policy is destabilizing the EU and the EU leaders, if there is such a thing, should make it clear that KSA's, Kuwaiti, Qatar's etc. activities need to cease and that it is in the best interest of the continued US-EU alliance that they do.

 

None of this is likely to happen, but that would probably be the best political solution. 

[Elerond]

 

 

 

That article comos off as more patronizing than what it wishes to be.

 

If a culture or a group of people start to blow up airports and subways, do mass shootings and suicide bomb themselves sporadically because they are simply bored, too stupid, depressed, have high unemployment and think it is cool, then why even bother allow them to Europe to begin with if they are so fragile?

 

But that would require responsibility for failure in policy, of which Drowsy already pointed out that the current establishment will not do. Rather race further down the cliff than admitting that you're wrong, i guess.

 

 

Article uses assumption that this attackers are European born and grown. Which means that nobody allowed them in Europe in first place.

 

 

"European" as second or third generation North Africans and Middle Easterners. The result of an ongoing policy since the end of WWII.

 

 

 

You can't come to Europe because your children or your children's children may grow to become terrorists because of things that have happened yet. Sounds reasonable policy, too bad that our politicians didn't understood need for such caution decades ago.

[BruceVC]

 

 

 

 

That article comos off as more patronizing than what it wishes to be.

 

If a culture or a group of people start to blow up airports and subways, do mass shootings and suicide bomb themselves sporadically because they are simply bored, too stupid, depressed, have high unemployment and think it is cool, then why even bother allow them to Europe to begin with if they are so fragile?

 

But that would require responsibility for failure in policy, of which Drowsy already pointed out that the current establishment will not do. Rather race further down the cliff than admitting that you're wrong, i guess.

 

 

Article uses assumption that this attackers are European born and grown. Which means that nobody allowed them in Europe in first place.

 

 

"European" as second or third generation North Africans and Middle Easterners. The result of an ongoing policy since the end of WWII.

 

 

 

You can't come to Europe because your children or your children's children may grow to become terrorists because of things that have happened yet. Sounds reasonable policy, too bad that our politicians didn't understood need for such caution decades ago.

 

Elerond what do you expect your politicians to do?

 

I am interested

[Meshugger]

 

 

 

 

That article comos off as more patronizing than what it wishes to be.

 

If a culture or a group of people start to blow up airports and subways, do mass shootings and suicide bomb themselves sporadically because they are simply bored, too stupid, depressed, have high unemployment and think it is cool, then why even bother allow them to Europe to begin with if they are so fragile?

 

But that would require responsibility for failure in policy, of which Drowsy already pointed out that the current establishment will not do. Rather race further down the cliff than admitting that you're wrong, i guess.

 

 

Article uses assumption that this attackers are European born and grown. Which means that nobody allowed them in Europe in first place.

 

 

"European" as second or third generation North Africans and Middle Easterners. The result of an ongoing policy since the end of WWII.

 

 

 

You can't come to Europe because your children or your children's children may grow to become terrorists because of things that have happened yet. Sounds reasonable policy, too bad that our politicians didn't understood need for such caution decades ago.

 

 

The article being dumb aside, creating a policy where middle eastern and north african muslims become ghettofied over the generations and not part of society is the reason why we are here we are. I see little reason to continue with the same.

[BruceVC]

 

 

 

 

 

That article comos off as more patronizing than what it wishes to be.

 

If a culture or a group of people start to blow up airports and subways, do mass shootings and suicide bomb themselves sporadically because they are simply bored, too stupid, depressed, have high unemployment and think it is cool, then why even bother allow them to Europe to begin with if they are so fragile?

 

But that would require responsibility for failure in policy, of which Drowsy already pointed out that the current establishment will not do. Rather race further down the cliff than admitting that you're wrong, i guess.

 

 

Article uses assumption that this attackers are European born and grown. Which means that nobody allowed them in Europe in first place.

 

 

"European" as second or third generation North Africans and Middle Easterners. The result of an ongoing policy since the end of WWII.

 

 

 

You can't come to Europe because your children or your children's children may grow to become terrorists because of things that have happened yet. Sounds reasonable policy, too bad that our politicians didn't understood need for such caution decades ago.

 

 

The article being dumb aside, creating a policy where middle eastern and north african muslims become ghettofied over the generations and not part of society is the reason why we are here we are. I see little reason to continue with the same.

 

Really? I thought we were here because of ISIS and all the refugees arriving in Europe

 

Since I have been on this forum which is 3 years or so I have never seen such active  discussion about the Muslim world 

 

And there have been ghettos for years in the EU....how come this wasn't raised before?

[Elerond]

 

 

 

 

 

That article comos off as more patronizing than what it wishes to be.

 

If a culture or a group of people start to blow up airports and subways, do mass shootings and suicide bomb themselves sporadically because they are simply bored, too stupid, depressed, have high unemployment and think it is cool, then why even bother allow them to Europe to begin with if they are so fragile?

 

But that would require responsibility for failure in policy, of which Drowsy already pointed out that the current establishment will not do. Rather race further down the cliff than admitting that you're wrong, i guess.

 

 

Article uses assumption that this attackers are European born and grown. Which means that nobody allowed them in Europe in first place.

 

 

"European" as second or third generation North Africans and Middle Easterners. The result of an ongoing policy since the end of WWII.

 

 

 

You can't come to Europe because your children or your children's children may grow to become terrorists because of things that have happened yet. Sounds reasonable policy, too bad that our politicians didn't understood need for such caution decades ago.

 

 

The article being dumb aside, creating a policy where middle eastern and north african muslims become ghettofied over the generations and not part of society is the reason why we are here we are. I see little reason to continue with the same.

 

 

It isn't good policy to let any population group secede from general population. But I see fault to be more in housing, schooling, and employment policies than in immigration policies of past. But of course if we can't make our domestic policies work then adding more stress to system that don't work isn't solid policy either.

 

BruceVC: I am sorry that I have failed in my attempt of sarcasm. I tried my best to make it so over the top that nobody would take it serious.