Europe’s Angry Muslims

While Americans worry about terrorists crossing the Mexican border, the newest mujahideen can take an easier route: armed with European passports, they are able to pass through US Customs unchallenged. Radical Islam is gaining in popularity among the disenfranchised and underprivileged second-generation European Muslims. According to writer Robert S. Leiken, Western Europe "never learned to integrate newcomers," instead isolating Muslim immigrants into closed ethnic communities that have produced a generation of Europeans who "are its citizens in name but not culturally or socially." Introduce these discontents to radical clerics from the Middle East, and what emerges is a recipe for disaster: violent marginal groups with a social base. Today, European governments are beginning to crack down on radical Islam, but Leiken questions whether government reforms will suffice in the absence of a change in social attitudes: "If only for the sake of counterterrorism, Europe needs to develop an integration policy that works." – YaleGlobal