The New York Times Magazine has a very provocative and interesting piece by Christopher Caldwell today on “Islam on the Outskirts of the Welfare State.” Mauricio Rojas is quoted in the piece.
The New York Times Magazine has a very provocative and interesting piece by Christopher Caldwell today on “Islam on the Outskirts of the Welfare State.” Mauricio Rojas is quoted in the piece.
This is an interesting article and it raises number of questions. I will just comment considering a young Swede of Bosnian origins and his willingness to engage himself in supporting terrorist ideas and activities.
In one of the papers that we were required to write while interning at Cato, I pointed out a well-known opinion among analysts-that the next stage in terrorist activity might be a recruitment of Balkan-born Muslims, who have typical European features and cannot be “racially profiled” (I oppose racial profiling, but whether one wants to admit it or not-it is used in some European countries and in the U.S. as one of the means in alleged “war on terror”). It is most likely that they will be recruited from Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country that in the years following the civil war became a safe haven for terrorists. Many of the foreign mujahedin fighters who fought on the side of Muslim population during the war were in someway connected to Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. After the war, they were given Bosnian citizenship and many of them married Bosnian women, but it is likely that they continued their activity and are now spreading radical Islamic ideas among native Bosnian Muslims.
What surprises me is that western countries very easily “allowed” late Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic to bring mujahedins during war and that are still not paying enough attention to the problems of terrorist activity both in Bosnia and Kosovo. U.S.-led NATO forces even bombarded Serbia, forcing legitimate Serbian military to leave Kosovo and stop the fight against Albanian terrorists, practically making Kosovo a backdoor for terrorists and criminal groups through which they can easily “commute” between Europe and other parts of the world. It is no secret that the way through Kosovo province is one of the main “channels” for the trafficking of human beings, smuggling of weapons and drugs and other illegal activities.
I don’t know, but it seems to me that the world will not seriously enough consider the problem of raising Islamic radicalism among European-born Muslims, until the first blond-haired, blue-eyed recruit blows himself up. I thought that the odds for that to happen were very low , but with the news of young Bosnian man being caught with suicide-bomb vests, I am not so sure anymoreÃ?Â?Ã?¢Ã?¢?Ã?¬Ã?Â?Ã?¦
Best regards, Dr.Palmer!
Jasna