Liberalism and terrorist proliferation

Battling the cancer within
By Prince Turki Al Faisal and Lord George Carey, Gulf News

Much emphasis has been placed on the many "root causes" of terrorism. And today, I have run across two exceptional pieces, intrinsically linked in ideology on that very subject.

The article linked above was co-authored by the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Britain and the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Since 9:11, great strides have been made within Islam itself, as it tenuously seeks the best way to extract it's own links with that of terrorists who murder in the name of their Muslim faith.

Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all Abrahamic faiths with the same core values. Yet facts must be faced.

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In the Middle East, the separation between politics and religion has, by some, been confused, and it is a highly volatile and dangerous confusion that must end.

The fact that the laws of Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, are Islamic laws and that their governance is guided by Islam, does not mean and never has meant that Islam can legitimately be used as a political tool.

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The West also needs to understand the dangers encompassed in the liberal society which it advocates. That liberalism is the very tool used by extremists to foster and spread their twisted ideology.

It will be the natural inclination for Americans to take the erroneous leap, construing the liberal society of "the West" as primarily the US. Something about our superpower status leads us to believe that everything is always "about us". Oddly enough, liberalization and it's link to terrorist prolification is far stronger in Europe than here in the States.

Coming from a source I generally view as conflicted - the Council on Foreign Relations - is a stellar article in Foreign Affairs Magazine, by Robert S. Leiken . Mr. Leiken studiously ties together Europe's rampid inability to assimilate Muslim immigrants within their liberal cultures to the increased proliferation of first and second generation terrorists in Europe. It is an ironic presentation from an organization well known for it's own liberal attitudes.

As a consequence of demography, history, ideology, and policy, western Europe now plays host to often disconsolate Muslim offspring, who are its citizens in name but not culturally or socially. In a fit of absentmindedness, during which its academics discoursed on the obsolescence of the nation-state, western Europe acquired not a colonial empire but something of an internal colony, whose numbers are roughly equivalent to the population of Syria. Many of its members are willing to integrate and try to climb Europe's steep social ladder.

But many younger Muslims reject the minority status to which their parents acquiesced. A volatile mix of European nativism and immigrant dissidence challenges what the Danish sociologist Ole Waever calls "societal security," or national cohesion. To make matters worse, the very isolation of these diaspora communities obscures their inner workings, allowing mujahideen to fundraise, prepare, and recruit for jihad with a freedom available in few Muslim countries.

With the explosion of Muslim immigrants, especially high in Germany, France, Britain and Spain, even the liberal segments of the Euro-public began to see the flaws in their immigration policies as early as the 1990s. The prime example of such social failures is best seen in the Netherlands, Europe's premiere "liberal experiment".

Proud of a legendary tolerance of minorities, the Netherlands welcomed tens of thousands of Muslim asylum seekers allegedly escaping persecution. Immigrants availed themselves of generous welfare and housing benefits, an affirmative-action hiring policy, and free language courses. Dutch taxpayers funded Muslim religious schools and mosques, and public television broadcast programs in Moroccan Arabic. Mohammed Bouyeri was collecting unemployment benefits when he murdered van Gogh.

Denied access to social or financial opportunities, combined with less stable economies than found in the US, Euro-jihadist attitudes are on the rise. Dutch intelligence reports that AQ is exceptionally active in infilterating and luring disenchanted Dutch radicals, recruiting via chat rooms, videos, Islamic readings and summer camps.

At the same time, the Netherlands is a country who, with two assassinations of controversial figures under their belts, is furiously backpedalling on some of their liberal policies. The writing on the wall is finally legible.

This change in attitude has world leaders doing more to address assimilation in their own countries, starting with a reverse religious tolerance.

But now many Europeans have come to see that permissiveness as excessive, even dangerous. A version of religious tolerance allowed the Hamburg cell to flourish and rendered German universities hospitable to radical Islam. Now Europeans are asking Muslims to practice religious tolerance themselves and adjust to the values of their host countries. Tony Blair's government requires that would-be citizens master "Britishness." Likewise, "Dutch values" are central to The Hague's new approach, and similar proposals are being put forward in Berlin, Brussels, and Copenhagen. Patrick Weil, the immigration guru of the French Socialist Party, sees a continental trend in which immigrant "responsibilities" balance immigrant "rights."

Part of the problem of Europe's battle with the WOT is their inherent, long term approach... that of a "crime" problem - a reactionary response - vs the US approach of legislative and security measures in the wake of 9:11. Previous terror attacks were mostly car bombs, none on the scale of flying planes into buildings. Europeans were and, for the most part, *are* of the mind that acquiescent policies will afford a certain amount of protection, keeping the murders small scale and the attacks fewer in number. It is a mentality that is tandamount to paying "protection money" to the mob in exchange for less harrassment.

Needless to say, appeasement of thugs only postpones the inevitable battle to a time where they will be more firmly entrenched, having effectively cowered much of the world into submission by unspeakable, brutal acts that are difficult to curtail. This is historically documented by the increasing number of terrorist attacks since the 60s, scaling up in numbers of high profile targets from embassies to assailing US warships, and finally to the dimensions of 9:11, Madrid and London.

Another surprise in Leiken's informative article is the French rigorous anti-terrorists policies contrasted with Britain and Germany's separatist multiculturism's policies. While the French denied asylum to radical Muslims as far back as the 90s, cracking down on hate speech, detention without access to legal counsel and allowing French police access to places of worship, Britain afforded radical Muslims the ability to openly preach jihad, only increasing surveillance of such individuals as a repercussion.

While stepping up surveillance, the British authorities allowed Islamists refuge and an opportunity to preach openly and disseminate rabid propaganda. Multiculturalism had a dual appeal: it allowed these states to seem tolerant by showering minorities with rights while segregating them from, rather than absorbing them into, the rest of society. Multiculturalism dovetailed with a diminished Western ethos that suited libertarians as well as liberals.

Another problem of Euro's liberal policy and their failure to integrate the Muslim immigrants is society's refusal to accept them in their political and social circles. Unlike the US, where Muslim immigrants can more easily climb the financial and social ladders, the so called "liberal" Euros have failed integration policies due to both economic and cultural reasons.

Can Muslims become Europeans without Europe opening its social and political circles to them? So far, it appears that absolute assimilationism has failed in France, but so has segregation in Germany and multiculturalism in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Could there be another way? The French ban the headscarf in public schools; the Germans ban it among public employees. The British celebrate it. The Americans tolerate it.

Given the United States' comparatively happier record of integrating immigrants, one may wonder whether the mixed U.S. approach -- separating religion from politics without placing a wall between them, helping immigrants slowly adapt but allowing them relative cultural autonomy -- could inspire Europeans to chart a new course between an increasingly hazardous multiculturalism and a naked secularism that estranges Muslims and other believers.

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Indeed, the fissure between liberalism and multiculturalism is opening just as the continent undergoes its most momentous population shift since Asian tribes pushed westward in the first Christian millennium. Immigration obviously hits a national security nerve, but it also raises economic and demographic questions: how to cope with a demonstrably aging population; how to maintain social cohesion as Christianity declines and both secularism and Islam climb; whether the EU should exercise sovereignty over borders and citizenship; and what the accession of Turkey, with its 70 million Muslims, would mean for the EU.

Europe's liberal/multiculturism failures, combined with easy travel between the EU countries, is not only a European problem, but a US problem. While Mr. Leiken's assessment of the US's successful assimilation of Muslims was positive by contrast, he tempered that success by highlighting our country's vunerability on our borders.

Terrorist experts and the 9:11 Commission have asserted that AQ's subsequent attacks on US soil are most likely to come from Euro-mujahdeen entering our borders using the Visa Waiver Program (as did Moussaoui and Richard "the shoe bomber" Reid), and not US sleeper cells. Vigilance on our borders and entry interviews are of utmost import to prevent jihadist entry.

Fox News and CNN's Lou Dobbs worry about terrorists stealing across the United States' border with Mexico concealed among illegal immigrants. The Pentagon wages war in the Middle East to stop terrorist attacks on the United States. But the growing nightmare of officials at the Department of Homeland Security is passport-carrying, visa-exempt mujahideen coming from the United States' western European allies.

Leiken's comprehensive analysis of terrorist recruitment, and it's relationship to immigration/liberalization/multiculturism attitudes is 6 pages long - but highly worthy of your full read. Most importantly, though we recognize what US is doing right to minimize conditions that breed home-grown terrorists on our own soil, it also becomes abundantly clear that our own well-being is intimately bound to flawed Euro immigration and societal policies.