Sunday, March 28, 2004
ajami on the growth of militant islam in europe
see WSJ article here
"(Muslim militants in Europe)...resented the logic of assimilation. They denied their sisters and daughters the right to mix with "strangers." ... the faith became sharpened for battle. We know that life in Hamburg--and the kind of Islam that Hamburg made possible--was decisive in the evolution of Mohammed Atta, who led the "death pilots" of Sept. 11....
"Europe's leaders know Europe's dilemmas. In ways both intended and subliminal, the escape into anti-Americanism is an attempt at false bonding with the peoples of Islam ...
"But the truth is darker. Jacques Chirac may believe that he has spared France Spain's terror by sitting out the Iraq war. But he is deluded. The Islamists do not make fine distinctions in the bilad al kufr..... "
"(Muslim militants in Europe)...resented the logic of assimilation. They denied their sisters and daughters the right to mix with "strangers." ... the faith became sharpened for battle. We know that life in Hamburg--and the kind of Islam that Hamburg made possible--was decisive in the evolution of Mohammed Atta, who led the "death pilots" of Sept. 11....
"Europe's leaders know Europe's dilemmas. In ways both intended and subliminal, the escape into anti-Americanism is an attempt at false bonding with the peoples of Islam ...
"But the truth is darker. Jacques Chirac may believe that he has spared France Spain's terror by sitting out the Iraq war. But he is deluded. The Islamists do not make fine distinctions in the bilad al kufr..... "
