Paris-type attack could happen here
By Tom Maertens
Mankato Free Press
Mankato Free Press
Saturday, December 5, 2015
The recent Paris attacks and the revelation that most of the attackers had fought in Syria has heightened European fears that radicals posing as refugees could infiltrate, raising the specter of an Islamist Trojan Horse.
Thousands of “jihadis” from Europe have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight for the Islamic State, in turn, creating millions of refugees. Germany has publicly warned that certain radical mosques are recruiting immigrants.
French police are following 20,000 radicalized Muslims according to the Washington Post, while CNN counterterrorism analysts estimate there may be hundreds of thousands of radicalized Muslims in Europe.
Shiraz Maher, a former radical who now heads the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College, has found that “some of the foreign fighters are students of martyrdom; they want to die as soon as possible and go directly to paradise,” where they are supposedly rewarded with an eternal orgy with 72 dark-eyed virgins.
Such global jihadist movements are unique to Islam. While the Bible has numerous calls to violence, there are virtually no examples of terrorists citing the Bible as justification for blowing themselves up or flying planes into buildings.
Strangely, killing almost anyone seems to qualify as martyrdom. The majority of the 27,000 Islamist attacks detailed by TheReligionofPeace.com were against other Muslims.
As Voltaire wrote, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
Another absurdity is the belief that Allah wants people dead but somehow can’t manage it himself without jihadis blowing themselves up.
Yet, some continue to assert that Islam is really a peaceful religion hijacked by a few extremists, an assertion I don’t find credible. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written, “Islam is not a religion of peace.... [T]he call to violence and the justification for it are explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam.... People in the West swallow this sort of thing ... for fear of being called racist.”
That fear also affects the media, which has long ignored the anti-Jew prejudice endemic to Islam, and only recently began reporting on Islamist-dominated ghettoes in Europe that incubate terrorists. The mayor of Molenbeek, Belgium, was reportedly given a list of 85 jihadists, including the ringleader, a month before the Paris attack, but the authorities feared going in after them.
The worst-case scenario involves WMD. An ISIS document captured in Syria encourages Muslims to use weapons of mass destruction – “even if it kills all the unbelievers and wipes them and their descendants off the face of the earth.” Should some Islamist death cult obtain a nuclear weapon, there is little prospect of deterring them from using it.
The House Homeland Security Committee reports that at least 250 Americans have traveled overseas to join terrorist groups, including two dozen Somalis from Minnesota who went to fight for al shabaab.
According to Maher, one in nine fighters who return home become involved in terrorist activities – and all of them come back virulently anti-Jew.
The FBI already has 900 active ISIS investigations underway, including in every state in the Union.
A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 54 percent of Americans oppose bringing Syrian refugees into the country, even with background checks.
The skepticism is warranted: reliable background checks in failed states are very difficult.
Further, even with incriminating fingerprints from IEDs, the US somehow allowed a dozen terrorists to infiltrate the Iraqi resettlement program, according to ABC News.
For those wanting to bring in deserving refugees, they should consider the Yazidis. The men have been singled out for extermination by ISIS, and Yazidi girls as young as nine are bought and sold in slave markets. And importantly, they don’t believe that blowing themselves up is a religious act.
Most terrorism analysts believe that a Paris-style attack in the US is inevitable, and in fact, the San Bernardino shooting may be ISIS inspired.
Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations estimates that only 3% of the world’s Muslims understand Islam in militant terms.
That’s not much consolation. That equates to 78,000 potential radicals among the 2.6 million American Muslims. A Pew survey in 2011 found that 180,000 US Muslims thought suicide bombing was justified, suggesting the number might be much higher.
Our greatest vulnerability at present is the 20 million people who enter the US every year without a visa due to the visa waiver program.
Polls show most Muslims oppose ISIS. But if even 3% of Europe’s 44 million Muslims support radical Islamists, that equates to over one million radicals, many of them European citizens who are eligible for visa-free entry to the US -- as all the Paris attackers were.
The Obama administration ordered the visa waiver program tightened just this month, but Congress needs to do more.
The recent Paris attacks and the revelation that most of the attackers had fought in Syria has heightened European fears that radicals posing as refugees could infiltrate, raising the specter of an Islamist Trojan Horse.
Thousands of “jihadis” from Europe have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight for the Islamic State, in turn, creating millions of refugees. Germany has publicly warned that certain radical mosques are recruiting immigrants.
French police are following 20,000 radicalized Muslims according to the Washington Post, while CNN counterterrorism analysts estimate there may be hundreds of thousands of radicalized Muslims in Europe.
Shiraz Maher, a former radical who now heads the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College, has found that “some of the foreign fighters are students of martyrdom; they want to die as soon as possible and go directly to paradise,” where they are supposedly rewarded with an eternal orgy with 72 dark-eyed virgins.
Such global jihadist movements are unique to Islam. While the Bible has numerous calls to violence, there are virtually no examples of terrorists citing the Bible as justification for blowing themselves up or flying planes into buildings.
Strangely, killing almost anyone seems to qualify as martyrdom. The majority of the 27,000 Islamist attacks detailed by TheReligionofPeace.com were against other Muslims.
As Voltaire wrote, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
Another absurdity is the belief that Allah wants people dead but somehow can’t manage it himself without jihadis blowing themselves up.
Yet, some continue to assert that Islam is really a peaceful religion hijacked by a few extremists, an assertion I don’t find credible. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written, “Islam is not a religion of peace.... [T]he call to violence and the justification for it are explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam.... People in the West swallow this sort of thing ... for fear of being called racist.”
That fear also affects the media, which has long ignored the anti-Jew prejudice endemic to Islam, and only recently began reporting on Islamist-dominated ghettoes in Europe that incubate terrorists. The mayor of Molenbeek, Belgium, was reportedly given a list of 85 jihadists, including the ringleader, a month before the Paris attack, but the authorities feared going in after them.
The worst-case scenario involves WMD. An ISIS document captured in Syria encourages Muslims to use weapons of mass destruction – “even if it kills all the unbelievers and wipes them and their descendants off the face of the earth.” Should some Islamist death cult obtain a nuclear weapon, there is little prospect of deterring them from using it.
The House Homeland Security Committee reports that at least 250 Americans have traveled overseas to join terrorist groups, including two dozen Somalis from Minnesota who went to fight for al shabaab.
According to Maher, one in nine fighters who return home become involved in terrorist activities – and all of them come back virulently anti-Jew.
The FBI already has 900 active ISIS investigations underway, including in every state in the Union.
A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 54 percent of Americans oppose bringing Syrian refugees into the country, even with background checks.
The skepticism is warranted: reliable background checks in failed states are very difficult.
Further, even with incriminating fingerprints from IEDs, the US somehow allowed a dozen terrorists to infiltrate the Iraqi resettlement program, according to ABC News.
For those wanting to bring in deserving refugees, they should consider the Yazidis. The men have been singled out for extermination by ISIS, and Yazidi girls as young as nine are bought and sold in slave markets. And importantly, they don’t believe that blowing themselves up is a religious act.
Most terrorism analysts believe that a Paris-style attack in the US is inevitable, and in fact, the San Bernardino shooting may be ISIS inspired.
Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations estimates that only 3% of the world’s Muslims understand Islam in militant terms.
That’s not much consolation. That equates to 78,000 potential radicals among the 2.6 million American Muslims. A Pew survey in 2011 found that 180,000 US Muslims thought suicide bombing was justified, suggesting the number might be much higher.
Our greatest vulnerability at present is the 20 million people who enter the US every year without a visa due to the visa waiver program.
Polls show most Muslims oppose ISIS. But if even 3% of Europe’s 44 million Muslims support radical Islamists, that equates to over one million radicals, many of them European citizens who are eligible for visa-free entry to the US -- as all the Paris attackers were.
The Obama administration ordered the visa waiver program tightened just this month, but Congress needs to do more.
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