AMSTERDAMNED: ISIS OVER EUROPE
“THE SITUATION HERE IS VERY GRIM.”
Wim Kortenoeven was calling from The Hague, but the urgency in his voice made it seem like he was right beside me. I felt like I was standing next to him at his window, looking out over the carcass of an Islamicized Netherlands.
“We have reached the point of no return,” he said of his country’s struggle with Islamism. “And when you reach the point of no return, you withdraw. People are moving out of cities, leaving the country. And the political elites are ignoring the problem—because they made it happen through their policies.”
Kortenoeven has been grappling with those same left-wing elites for decades, first as a journalist and activist and then as a member of the Dutch Parliament from 2010 to 2012. A longtime leader in Holland’s counter-jihad and pro-Israel movements, he has been a tireless defender of Judeo-Christian values in one of the world’s most liberal societies. Even by the libertine standards of today’s Western Europe, the Netherlands—which in 2001 became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage—is infamously permissive, with marijuana, prostitution, and euthanasia all lawful and laissez-faire immigration policies that have seen its Muslim population approaching 1 million, or 6 percent of the overall population of 17 million.1
But Dutch uber-tolerance has created an atmosphere where the intolerant have run rampant. In July 2014, radical Islamists held Europe’s first public pro-ISIS rallies in The Hague, which is the seat of the Dutch government. Twice—on July 4 and then again on July 24—at least fifty ISIS supporters waved black Islamic State flags amid shouts of “Allahu Akbar” and calls for “death to the Jews” as they marched through the Dutch capital.2 The left-wing mayor of The Hague, Jozias van Aartsen, was on vacation during the rallies, and his deputy apparently saw no need to take action in his absence. The stunning inaction by van Aartsen’s office prompted calls for his resignation. Upon his return from vacation, the mayor responded to the criticism not by taking action against the city’s genocidal ISIS supporters, but by banning a planned anti-ISIS rally, deeming it “too provocative.” Van Aartsen’s decree added insult to injury: an earlier anti-ISIS rally had been broken up by Islamic State supporters who threw stones and punches at the marchers.3
When most Americans think of the Netherlands, they envision windmills and clogs, not burqas and hijabs. You’d think Amsterdam, with its red-light districts and marijuana cafés, would be about as far from sharia law as you can possibly get. But in October 2014, as reports continued to surface about Dutch Muslims either traveling to Syria to join ISIS or agitating for the caliphate on Dutch soil, I reached out to Kortenoeven to get a sense of what was happening on the ground in ultra-liberal Holland. The former Dutch parliamentarian painted a bleak picture.
“The Hague incidents were very serious,” he explained. “Gradually, people are moving from all sorts of Islamist movements to the most successful: ISIS. They will support the only movement that gets things done.”
As of this writing, at least 130 Dutch Muslims have traveled to Syria to join ISIS.4 Kortenoeven pointed out that most of these ISIS recruits were criminals, and that Dutch prisons are filled with Muslim men from Morocco, Egypt, Somalia, and other Islamic countries. His comments echoed those of another former Dutch politician, Mustapha Abbou, who told Dutch Public Radio 1 that many of the Netherlands’ Moroccan youths have “no education, no prospects and are barely supervised. They are a ticking time bomb.”5 Given that the Netherlands is home to nearly four hundred thousand Moroccan immigrants, the Dutch may have a slight problem on their hands. One 2011 study found that in Dutch neighborhoods where Moroccans were a majority, the youth crime rate was 50 percent.6
“The caliphate gives them a chance at success,” Kortenoeven said of the Netherlands’ ever-expanding Muslim population. “With the Islamic State, they can go from being a pauper to a prince. The disenfranchised gain power . . . people will commit unthinkable atrocities because they want to be a part of something successful, something larger.”
One ISIS fighter who goes by the name “Abudurahman” collected welfare benefits from the Dutch government for years before making his way to Syria, where he has appeared in YouTube videos posing proudly in front of severed heads.7 Another Holland-bred jihadist, “Yilmaz,” served in the Dutch army before quitting and relocating to Syria, where he has boasted on social media of training young British ISIS recruits in the finer points of jihad.8
Yilmaz is apparently the charismatic sort. A nineteen-year-old Dutch woman named Aicha who had converted to Islam saw him interviewed on TV and fell in love. She decided to travel to Syria and marry the terrorist, whom she saw “as a sort of Robin Hood.” Quickly discovering that life in the Islamic State was a far cry from Sherwood Forest, Aicha contacted her mother and told her she wanted to come home. In a daring rescue mission straight out of a Hollywood movie (and against the advice of Dutch authorities), the mother donned a burqa and entered Syria to find her daughter.
Thankfully, the pair escaped over the Syrian border into Turkey and made their way back to the Netherlands.9 As we saw in chapter four, however, there is no shortage of young Western women ready and willing to take Aicha’s place in the Islamic State.
The Netherlands’ struggle with Islamism is not a new one. In 2004, in an act foreshadowing the “one-man jihad” strategy of ISIS in the West today, an Islamic terrorist named Mohammed Bouyeri murdered filmmaker and TV host Theo van Gogh in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street. Van Gogh had recently directed a short film called Submission that highlighted Islam’s oppression of women. On the morning of November 2, 2004, he was bicycling to work when Bouyeri emerged and shot him several times with a handgun. Van Gogh, seriously wounded, staggered across the street and fell to the ground, pursued by Bouyeri. He reportedly pleaded, “Can’t we talk about this?” before Bouyeri shot him at close range and then slit his throat, nearly decapitating him. Bouyeri then plunged a large knife deep into van Gogh’s chest and attached a note to the filmmaker’s lifeless body threatening Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim and Dutch politician who wrote the script for Submission and is known for her courageous public stand against Islamic supremacism.
Bouyeri, who is serving life in a Dutch prison for slaughtering van Gogh, was part of a terror cell called the Hofstad Network that planned to conduct additional attacks inside the Netherlands. Dutch authorities broke up the cell in 2006 and several of its members were sent to prison like Bouyeri. But according to an eye-opening report released by the Dutch intelligence service, the AIVD, the jihadist movement in the Netherlands is experiencing stunning growth once again today thanks in large part to the inspiration to jihad that is the Syrian Civil War. The report compares Dutch jihadism to a “swarm”—a network of loosely affiliated independent yet like-minded individuals that are all working toward the same end, and to great effect: “The increasing momentum of Dutch jihadism poses an unprecedented threat to the democratic legal order of the Netherlands. . . . Dutch jihadists are convinced that the caliphate is not some utopian dream but an achievable reality for Syria and other Muslim nations—and even for the Netherlands.” Predictably, many are being drawn to the ISIS cause through social media, which the report says, “has changed the structure and cohesions of the jihadist movement.”10
As of December 2014, the AIVD estimated that close to thirty Dutch jihadists had already returned home to Holland from the battlefields of Syria. It’s unlikely that these newly returned veterans of Syria’s hellish killing fields will spend their days lounging at cannabis cafés or paddling amiably along Amsterdam’s canals. It is entirely likely that they will attempt to carry out attacks on Dutch soil. If they are successful, the simmering culture clash in the Netherlands could boil over in a nasty way.
“People are talking about civil war,” Kortenoeven said. “The general population—and I’m not only talking about the Netherlands, but all over Europe—is fed up.”
A major reason for their frustration is the glaring shortage of rational, forthright voices in the European political realm that are willing to take a stand against Islamist encroachment. Those who are, such as Dutch MP Geert Wilders, are branded as bigots and Islamophobes and in some cases even brought to trial for supposed “hate speech” against Islam. Like the rest of the Western world, the Netherlands’ elite class and opinion shapers in government, media, and academia are overwhelmingly leftists who have enshrined politically correct multiculturalism as a virtual religion. This new religion is totalitarian to its core: ultra-secular, atheistic, socialistic, and openly hostile to Judeo-Christian Western civilization, yet fiercely protective of Islam and damning of its critics. Witness the aforementioned pro-ISIS rallies in The Hague getting a pass from the city’s leadership while anti-ISIS rallies were deemed too incendiary.
When average citizens begin to feel like society is slipping out of their grasp—thanks largely to weak, out-of-touch leadership—desperation can creep in. With that sense of desperation comes a hunger for a voice—any voice—that articulates the frustrations of the people. History shows that the rush to embrace a political savior often ends in disaster: witness the rise of Hitler in post-Versailles Germany and the Muslim Brotherhood’s ascension in Egypt in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring. Kortenoeven is concerned that a similar scenario could develop today if European governments, including that of the Netherlands, continue to appease their restless, radicalized Muslim communities.
“If right-wing extremists and Neo-Nazis are the only voices speaking out against Islamism, and the governments won’t, then people will drift towards the extremists,” he told me. “So, we have people who can destroy our countries from two sides—Islamists on one side and neo-Nazis on the other.”
In the meantime, the Islamization of tiny Holland continues unabated, particularly in its largest cities. The Muslim population of Amsterdam is 24 percent, while Rotterdam—Holland’s second-largest city—is 25 percent Islamic. The Hague boasts a Muslim population of 14 percent and Utrecht, 13 percent.11
These communities are fertile ground for ISIS recruitment. One 2014 study found “tremendous support” for the Islamic State among young Dutch Muslims of Turkish background. According to the study, 87 percent of Turkish-Dutch between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five believe that ISIS creates positive change in the Middle East, and 80 percent have no problem with Dutch jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq. Another study reportedly found that three quarters of Dutch Muslims regard those who have gone to fight in Syria as “heroes.” The Dutch minister of social affairs called the results of these studies “alarming.”12
During our conversation, Kortenoeven recounted a meeting he had during his days in Parliament with a former colleague who is now a Dutch government official. Kortenoeven warned him about the growing Islamist threat, only to be waved off as an alarmist. “‘They are just a few idiots,’” Koretenoeven recalled the official saying. “‘We are too strong for them. You are exaggerating.’” But what a difference a caliphate makes. Today, Kortenoeven said, that same politician says ISIS must be destroyed.
The prospect of ISIS supporters carrying out Theo van Gogh–style executions of infidels on Holland’s streets was apparently enough to shake Kortenoeven’s colleague out of a self-satisfied slumber. Unfortunately, other Dutch officials have chosen not only to ignore the ISIS threat but to act as outright apologists for Islamic State jihadists. Pieter Broertjes, the left-wing mayor of an affluent town called Hilversum, told a radio interviewer that Dutch Muslims should be permitted to travel to the Islamic State and join the jihad, comparing them, incredibly, to Jews who left for Israel after World War II. “It comes to adult humans,” he sniffed. “The Dutch [Jews] also went to Israel after the war to fight against the British. We didn’t stop them then either.”13 In other words, Broertjes believes that Jews fighting to establish a pro-Western democracy in their ancient homeland were no different from ISIS jihadists committing genocide to create a caliphate devoted to the West’s destruction. Not to be outdone, Yasmina Haifi, a Dutch security official who worked for a department within the government’s National Coordinator of Anti-Terrorism and Security, tweeted in August 2014 that “ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It is a preconceived plan of Zionists who want to deliberately make Islam look bad.” Haifi, who is of Turkish descent, was suspended from her post because of her anti-Semitic outburst.14
The notion that Israel is a greater threat to world stability than ISIS is not unique to the Netherlands. In fact, it is a commonly held view heard in cafés, newsrooms, and government chambers throughout Western Europe. Any American that is expecting a strong, confident Europe to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States in the generational struggle against Islamism is in for a very unpleasant surprise. Uninterested in defense spending, dismissive of Christianity, rife with anti-Semitism, and beholden to their restive and growing Muslim populations, our European allies have passed the point of moral relativism and are well on their way to moral rot.
And jihadists are eagerly waiting in the wings.
In 2004, Princeton historian Bernard Lewis, one of the world’s foremost scholars of Islam, told the German daily Die Welt that Europe would be Islamic by the end of the twenty-first century “at the very latest.”15 Lewis’s statement may have come as a shock to Americans who had not been following the demographic trends in Europe during the latter half of the Cold War and during the 1990s. But to native Europeans who have witnessed whole neighborhoods transform into sharia enclaves where non-Muslims—including police—are unwelcome, Lewis was merely stating the obvious. From Spain to Sweden to Italy, towering minarets adorn newly built mosques that are overflowing with worshipers. Europe’s churches, on the other hand, are old, empty, and lifeless; and its Jewish communities, as we’ll see later in this chapter, are under siege and leaving. Further, indigenous Europeans simply do not reproduce; in country after country, their fertility rates are below the needed replacement level of 2.1 children per family. Conversely, Muslims reproduce above replacement levels in nearly every Western European nation. In France, for instance, Muslims have 2.8 children per couple, while non-Muslims have 1.9. In the United Kingdom, it’s 3.0 children per Muslim couple and 1.9 for non-Muslim couples. The trend is the same across the continent.16
As of 2010, over 44 million Muslims lived in Europe, 6 percent of the total population. That number is estimated to rise by nearly one-third, to over 58 million, or 8 percent of the European population, by 2030.17 France, with at least 5.5 million Muslims, or 8 to 10 percent of its total population, leads the way in Western Europe, followed by Germany, with over 4 million Muslims, Great Britain with nearly 3.1 million, Spain with 1.67 million, and Italy with 1.6 million.18
ISIS has found these burgeoning European Muslim communities, which are largely unassimilated and frequently radicalized, to be a sort of jihadi jackpot. As of this writing, at least three thousand European citizens, and counting, have traveled to the Middle East to join the Islamic State.19 Neither Western airstrikes nor the increased scrutiny of European governments seems to have done much to stem the flow of European-born fighters to Syria and Iraq.20 In June 2014, the Soufan Group, a respected global consulting firm, released a report on Syrian foreign fighters that included a comprehensive country-by-country breakdown.21 Here are the numbers for Western Europe—which have undoubtedly increased since the report was published, perhaps significantly, given ISIS’s higher profile and battlefield successes and the establishment of a caliphate in the summer of 2014. Australia and Canada are also included:
• France: The Soufan Group report had the number at 700, but the French interior minister upped that number in September 2014, telling an interviewer, “930 French citizens or foreigners usually resident in France are today involved in jihad in Iraq and Syria.”22
• United Kingdom: The Soufan report had the number at 400. But as we saw in chapter six, other estimates range from anywhere between 500 and 1,500 British jihadists in Iraq and Syria.
• Germany: The Soufan report had the number at around 300, but in November 2014 the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service put the number at 550, adding, “About 60 people from Germany have died or killed themselves, at least nine in suicide attacks.” Some 180 German jihadists have already returned home from Syria and Iraq.23
• Australia: Around 250.
• Belgium: Around 250.
• The Netherlands: 120 (upped to 130 by Dutch intelligence).24
• Austria: No approximate number given in the Soufan report, but Austrian authorities put the number around 130.25
• Denmark: 100.
• Spain: 51.
• Italy: No approximate number given in the Soufan report, but Italian media reports put the number at 50, with Italy’s interior minister confirming that “tens” of Italians have left for the Middle East to fight alongside ISIS.26
• Norway: Between 40 and 50.
• Finland: More than 30.
• Canada: The Soufan report put the number at 30, but more recent estimates have placed the number at 130 Canadian foreign fighters.27
• Sweden: Around 30.
• Ireland: Between 25 and 30.
• Portugal: No approximate number given in the Soufan report, but Portuguese authorities put the number at 12.28
• Switzerland: Around 10.
• Luxembourg: No approximate number.
These Euro-jihadis not only pose a threat to their home countries if and when they return from the Middle East. They can also enter the United States without a visa as part of a waiver program that the U.S. shares with its Western European allies. This Visa Waiver Program creates a much greater chance that Mohammed from Germany, on his way back from his adventures with the caliphate, will decide to bypass Berlin or Hamburg and make an unpleasant little pit stop in New York City or Chicago, instead.
While jihadists from Western Europe pose the greatest threat to the United States, thanks mainly to the Visa Waiver Program, the Soufan Group report shows that no corner of Europe has been untouched by the gravitational pull of ISIS. Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia, and Ukraine have all seen Muslim citizens travel to the Islamic State, and the Russian Federation (including jihadist hotbeds Chechnya and Dagestan) has sent some 800 jihadists into ISIS’s ranks.29
Texas Congressman Michael McCaul, a Republican who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, has described the pipeline from Europe to the Islamic State and back again as a “jihadi superhighway.” In an op-ed for Time, he called out Turkey, the main transit point for foreign fighters looking to enter the Islamic State, for not doing enough to stem the flow of European jihadis. He added, “European Union security gaps are also a problem”:
EU law forbids member states from automatically running EU citizens against terror watch lists when they return to the continent’s 26-country Schengen Area, a large swath of Europe in which its citizens can travel freely without border checks. As a result, only a fraction of EU citizens are screened against terror databases when they re-enter Europe. This vulnerability may allow European foreign fighters—many of whom can travel visa-free to the United States—to make it back to the West without drawing attention.
Other EU security deficiencies can also make it easier for American extremists to travel back from the conflict zone, including the lack of an advanced EU-wide air passenger information screening system and inadequate fraudulent document detection capabilities.30
McCaul went on to note, “In all too many ways, Europe is in a pre-9/11 counterterrorism posture,” citing barriers to cooperation between European law enforcement and intelligence agencies and the difficulties EU member states face in prosecuting foreign fighters. McCaul’s observation that America’s closest allies in the world outside of Canada and Israel continue to have a pre-9/11 mindset—despite numerous Islamic terror attacks and foiled plots on European soil over the past decade, plus the ongoing ISIS foreign fighter bonanza—should be disquieting to every American. And according to Soeren Kern, one of the world’s foremost experts on the Islamization of Europe, things aren’t likely to improve any time soon.
I caught up with Kern as he visited the United States in September 2014. He’s a Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute—an international policy think tank chaired by former UN ambassador John Bolton—and a Senior Analyst for the influential Strategic Studies Group in Spain, where’s he’s based. Kern travels widely, and no one has a better on-the-ground feel for what’s happening in Europe.
STAKELBECK: How strong is ISIS in Europe?
KERN: They are strong in Europe and becoming stronger. Everything took on a new dimension after June [2014], when ISIS declared a caliphate . . . ISIS is creating a new state and that has strong appeal. A lot of European Muslims want to support it financially—they may not travel there, but they will support the caliphate financially and logistically. I’m concerned that we could see an audacious attack by ISIS or its supporters on European soil. . . . The Salafists are fearless—they have absolutely no respect for the West. They hate the West and they hate democracy. They are becoming more bold and assertive—and as the Muslim population grows in Europe, we’ll see more of that.
STAKELBECK: Talk about the assimilation problems in Europe’s Muslim communities.
KERN: Most of the Islamists are second or third generation immigrants who have not been accepted into European society. There is a lot of prejudice. If your name is Mohammed, it isn’t easy getting a job. Many Muslims don’t feel like they have a home in Europe, yet many have never even been to their native lands like Algeria or Morocco. They are frustrated and angry and susceptible to the Salafist propaganda of [radical UK preacher] Anjem Choudary and other people. They have no hope—Salafist preachers give them new meaning in life. They can become jihadists in this world and secure life in the next world. There is no guarantee of salvation in Islam. Martyrdom is the only guarantee. Unlike Christianity, where belief in Jesus gets you to heaven, a Muslim is never quite sure. That is why jihad is so appealing.
STAKELBECK: Why aren’t Europeans more resistant to the growth of Islamism in their midst?
KERN: I think it has something to do with the social welfare state. Europeans are provided for, from cradle to grave. People would rather enjoy today than plan for tomorrow. They don’t want to have children, and the culture is very hedonistic. That attitude contributes to the atmosphere of Islamization. By rejecting the Judeo-Christian worldview, Europeans have created a huge spiritual vacuum—and Islam is filling it. Islam is very black and white—for people who are lost it is very appealing. It tells you what you can and can’t do and provides clear direction.
STAKELBECK: Is there any way Europe can turn this around?
KERN: Multiculturalism is so ingrained in the European psyche that it is very difficult to reverse. Even if Europe’s political class were made up entirely of conservative parties, it would still be very difficult to reverse because it is so ingrained.
ISIS actually owes Europe’s craven political class a debt of gratitude. Think about it: without the suicidal policies enacted by European governments over the past half-century or so, particularly in regards to mass Muslim immigration, the Islamic State would not have thousands of ruthless, fanatical European fighters bolstering its ranks today.
Perhaps more important, it would not possess such a strong foothold on European soil.
Islam has a long track record of aggression in Europe. At various points throughout Islamic history, Muslims conquered and ruled over Spain, Sicily, the Balkans, Greece, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Muslim armies raided southern Italy, attacked Rome, and reached the gates of Vienna twice before being turned back. Had a Frankish army led by Charles Martel not defeated an invading Muslim force at the Battle of Tours in central France in 732 AD, all of Western Europe might have come under Islamic dominion.
Today, every jihadist group, including ISIS, wants to reclaim those European territories and reintegrate them into a revived caliphate. Ironically enough, Islam has indeed established a firm foothold in Europe once again, but not through the kind of military conquest favored by ISIS and the jihadist armies of centuries past. In a 1995 speech in Ohio, the Muslim Brotherhood’s global spiritual leader, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi—who has since been banned from entering the United States—declared, “We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through [the] sword but through Da’wa [proselytization].”31
In the twenty-first century, Islamists—led by the Muslim Brotherhood—are putting al-Qaradawi’s words into action, employing a sort of demographic jihad (the Brotherhood calls it “settlement jihad”) that invariably includes the following steps: 1) Large numbers of Muslims migrate to a given European country. 2) Once settled in Europe, Muslims reproduce at higher rates than the indigenous, non-Muslim population. Additionally, native Europeans convert to Islam in small but steadily growing numbers. 3) Mosques are built at a rapid pace. Saudi, Qatari, and other Persian Gulf funding, as well as Turkish government money, flows into European Muslim communities and organizations, enabling the construction of sprawling “mega-mosques.” 4) Muslims form self-segregating enclaves—cut off from the broader society at large and often centered on mosques—where non-Muslims are not welcome and European laws and culture are not respected. Many residents of these enclaves receive welfare benefits. They become an increasingly important constituency that is pandered to by liberal politicians. 5) Islamist pressure groups, working hand in glove with liberal governments and the mainstream media, attempt to silence critics of Islamism by tarring them as right-wing bigots, fascists, and “Nazis.” Every new act of terrorism or foiled terror plot is dismissed by this triumvirate as having nothing to do with Islam. 6) Islamic anti-Semitism becomes more open and prevalent, particularly whenever Israel engages in military actions against Islamic terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. 7) Culture clashes increase, whole communities change, and average Europeans are left feeling angry, frustrated, and powerless to halt the transformation of their countries.
Does any of this sound familiar? It should. From immigration to mega-mosques to the government-media-Islamo-pressure group troika (the Council on American-Islamic Relations, anyone?), this seven-step process is already being repeated in the United States, albeit at a much slower pace than in Europe—no thanks to the Obama administration’s full-on embrace of all things Islamic.
ISIS, for its part, is reaping the benefits of years of meticulous settlement jihad by the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe that dates back to the 1950s. Before the Islamic State even emerged, Europe already had plenty of radicalized mosques and immigrant communities filled with disenfranchised young Muslims looking for meaning and a cause. Then along came ISIS, conquering vast amounts of territory in the heart of the Middle East, declaring the return of the caliphate, chopping off head after head and chronicling it all on Twitter and Instagram. Scores of European Muslims in their teens and twenties were instantly smitten, and the great jihadi pipeline from Europe to Syria was open for business. Those who didn’t join the exodus to the new caliphate simply chose to stay put and advance its cause in their own backyards.
In short, things couldn’t have lined up any better for ISIS. It took advantage of already well-established jihad-friendly communities in Europe that were just waiting for a strong horse they could rally behind. ISIS has also benefited from the enthusiasm of European converts to Islam who are frequently drawn by what French scholar Dr. Mathieu Guidère calls “revolutionary appeal” rather than religious ideology: “There are people fighting with the Islamic State who don’t even know how to correctly recite the Shahada,” he says, referring to the Islamic declaration of faith. “They just want to fight the system, and to them jihadi groups have the same kind of appeal that radical left-wing terrorism used to have in the 1970s.”32
We saw in chapter four how ISIS has appealed to men, women, blacks, whites, freaks, geeks, and every demographic in between, resonating with Westerners in a manner that is unprecedented for an Islamic terrorist group. For instance, it’s estimated that converts to Islam make up some 60 percent of the French citizens fighting for the Islamic State, and 80 percent of ISIS’s Italian mujahideen.33
An August 2014 poll found that 16 percent—or one out of every six—French citizens supports the Islamic State. The number rose to 27 percent for those between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four.34 Given that France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe and has seen more of its citizens join the Islamic State than any other European nation (with the possible exception of Great Britain), these poll results should come as no shock.
ISIS sees France as a gold mine of potential recruits and is making a concerted effort to woo more French citizens to its ranks. An increasing number of French fighters have appeared in ISIS propaganda videos, including one self-described former French paratrooper, a white convert who calls himself “Abu Qatada.” In an April 2014 video, Qatada said, “I am French, of French origin, with French parents, and I used to be a paratrooper in the French army. . . . I have disavowed that army of tyrants, and now I am here in an army that is [the] opposite [of the French army]. . . . Now I do not have comrades-in-arms, I have brothers. It is not the French flag that unites us, but rather Allah. . . .”35
In another video, released in November 2014, three French ISIS fighters burned their passports and called on French Muslims to either conduct attacks inside France or migrate to the Islamic State. That same month, two French citizens, both converts, appeared in a gruesome video featuring a beheaded U.S. aid worker, Peter Kassig.36
As of this writing, at least 118 French ISIS fighters have already returned home—including one who was clearly not ready to abandon jihad: twenty-nine-year-old Mehdi Nemmouche, whom we have already met.37 European intelligence services had their ultimate nightmare realized in May 2014, when Nemmouche, recently returned from Syria, gunned down four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels. How many more like Mehdi Nemmouche will return—or already have returned—to Europe after their jihadi apprenticeships inside the caliphate?
Then again, how many homegrown French radicals who have never even been to the Middle East are hell-bent on carrying out attacks on French soil? Consider the carnage in France during one horrific three-day span in December 2014: 1) A man stabbed and wounded three police officers in central France while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” 2) Another man rammed his car into a crowd of people in the eastern city of Dijon, injuring thirteen, while screaming, you guessed it, “Allahu Akbar.” 3) Yet another man drove a van into a crowd of people at a Christmas market in the city of Nantes in western France, injuring at least ten people, one critically. An initial report claimed that the man screamed “Allahu Akbar” while mowing down pedestrians, but witnesses apparently said that he did not in fact use the infamous Islamic war cry.38
As we saw in chapter three, the steadily increasing number of jihadist attacks in France culminated in three days of horrific bloodshed between January 7 and 9 in and around Paris. Said and Cherif Kouachi, two brothers who had trained with al Qaeda in Yemen, stormed the Paris office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and slaughtered twelve people, including two police officers. Meanwhile, Amedy Coulibaly, an acquaintance of the Kouachis who had pledged allegiance to ISIS, murdered a French police officer and then slaughtered four more people after taking hostages at a Jewish deli in Paris. The Kouachis and Coulibaly were eventually killed by French security forces. Following the attacks, ten thousand French soldiers fanned out across the country, protecting “sensitive sites,” including Jewish schools, synagogues, and businesses.39
I recounted in The Brotherhood how I was struck by the large number of hardcore Salafist Muslims, including many white converts, that I encountered on the streets of Cologne and Bonn during a June 2012 visit to Germany to investigate the country’s growing Salafi scene. One German journalist described to me the steady flow of German Muslims to jihadi hotspots like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia and said that the problem was only going to get worse. Unfortunately, he was right. Germany’s intelligence service, the BfV, believes that the number of radical Salafists in Germany practically doubled between 2011 and the end of 2014, to a total of nearly seven thousand.
Salafists are ultra-fundamentalist and frequently violent—they comprise ISIS’s base. It’s no wonder Germany’s interior minister has warned that the terrorist threat in his country “is critical. The number of threatening individuals has never been as high as now.”40
In the western German city of Wuppertal, Salafists led by a radicalized white convert named Sven Lau have dubbed themselves “Sharia Police” and taken to patrolling city streets at night to curb drinking and gambling, which are “un-Islamic” activities.41 Predictably, Germany’s growing ISIS problem, combined with incitement by Lau and other Salafi extremists, has created a backlash. Rival groups of German soccer hooligans have put aside their differences to start a new movement called “Hooligans Against Salafists.” On October 26, 2014, close to five thousand hooligans gathered in Cologne to march against radical Islam. The protest began peacefully but soon descended into violence, with demonstrators battling German police.42
A few weeks before the hooligan rally, supporters of ISIS engaged in violent clashes with Kurdish opponents of the Islamic State on the streets of Hamburg, bringing a violent Middle East conflict to the heart of Europe.43 Those clashes were a major reason behind the formation of a mass movement called Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (PEGIDA) that has drawn thousands of protestors to weekly anti-Islamization rallies in the city of Dresden in eastern Germany (including seventeen thousand at one pre-Christmas event in December 2014).44 German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in typical Euro-PC fashion, has condemned the rallies, saying PEGIDA leaders’ “hearts are cold and often full of prejudice, and even hate.”45 Yet one poll showed that nearly one out of three Germans believed the marches were justified and one out of eight Germans would attend a PEGIDA march if one were held in their hometown.46
The growing popularity of PEGIDA and the hostilities in Cologne and Hamburg are merely harbingers of culture clashes to come. As of November 2014, a whopping three hundred ISIS supporters were facing trial in Germany.47
For most Americans, Scandinavia conjures images of blond-haired, blue-eyed Swedish bikini babes and Viking longships. Yet the most popular name for men and baby boys in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, is not Sven or Olaf, but Mohammed.48 Meanwhile, in Sweden’s third-largest city, Malmo, which is 20 percent Muslim, “Large enclaves . . . have earned the dread label ‘no-go zone.’ They are unsafe for non-Muslims, particularly women who do not conform to Islamist conventions of dress and social interaction. They are especially perilous for police, firefighters, and emergency-medical technicians.”49
Denmark may be the smallest Scandinavian country, but when it comes to producing ISIS jihadists, the Danes punch well above their weight. Among Western nations, Denmark has sent the second-highest rate of foreign fighters per capita to the Islamic State, trailing only Belgium. At least twenty-eight of those Danish jihadists reportedly received welfare benefits from the Danish government—while they were still waging jihad on behalf of ISIS in Syria. But never fear: fifteen of them have been ordered to pay the government back.50 I’m sure they’ll hop right on it, being loyal Danish citizens and all.
That’s precisely the attitude that Denmark, somewhat quixotically, seems to be counting on its wayward jihadi sons to adopt. Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city, has chosen to treat its returning ISIS fighters not to prison time but to counseling sessions. According to the Washington Post,
In Denmark, not one returned fighter has been locked up. Instead, taking the view that discrimination at home is as criminal as Islamic State recruiting, officials here are providing free psychological counseling while finding returnees jobs and spots in schools and universities. Officials credit a new effort to reach out to a radical mosque with stanching the flow of recruits.
Some progressives say [the Danish city of] Aarhus should become a model for other communities in the United States and Europe that are trying to cope with the question of what to do when the jihad generation comes back to town.51
Please Aarhus, don’t give the Obama administration any more brilliant ideas.
While the Danish government—via Danish taxpayer dollars—is busy helping returning jihadists get in touch with their feelings, Aarhus’s Grimhojvej mosque (which the Washington Post article described, charitably, as “one of the most polarizing houses of worship in Europe”) is busy “openly back[ing] a caliphate in the Middle East” and “refus[ing] to offer a blanket denunciation of the Islamic State.” And why would it? Danish authorities believe the “vast majority” of the some thirty Aarhus residents who left Denmark for the Islamic State had links to the mosque. It’s easy to see why. A mosque spokesman told a Danish newspaper: “An Islamic state will always be what we Muslims yearn for, therefore we can not help but support the Islamic State, even though it comes with errors, so we must wait and see.”52
While they’re waiting, Aarhus officials will no doubt be more than happy to recommend a good shrink.
If anyone should have their heads examined, it’s European government officials, who’ve created an atmosphere where returning ISIS terrorists are coddled while Jews are openly harassed in the streets in a vicious manner not seen since Hitler’s heyday.
First, some background. One of the major stories of the summer of 2014 was Israel’s fifty-day military operation against Hamas terrorists in Gaza. The Israeli military launched Operation Protective Edge to put a stop to the endless barrage of rocket fire by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists against Israeli civilian centers. The Israelis also aimed to dismantle an extensive network of heavily fortified underground tunnels dug by Hamas beneath the Gaza border and into Israeli territory. The Isralis learned from prisoners that they captured in this operation that Hamas was planning to use at least some of the tunnels to infiltrate Israeli communities and kill and kidnap Israeli civilians.53
In short, Israel was battling to eliminate a Palestinian jihadist threat competitive with ISIS in its remorseless desire to slaughter innocent men, women, and children. Like ISIS, Hamas despises the West and openly calls for its demise. And like ISIS, Hamas wishes to see the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate ruled by sharia law. Given these facts, it should have been a no-brainer for European governments to stand strong with Israel and support its efforts to vanquish a shared radical Islamic enemy. Only it didn’t work out that way.
From Britain to Norway, from Spain to Italy to Belgium, European government officials blasted Israel’s supposed use of “disproportionate force” in Gaza, with Britain’s deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, going so far as to say that Israel’s “response appears to be deliberately disproportionate. It is amounting now to a disproportionate form of collective punishment.”54
The fact that Hamas was using Palestinian civilians as human shields, leading to countless Palestinian deaths, didn’t matter. Nor did the fact that Israel went to such extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties that the former commander of Britain’s forces in Afghanistan said, “No army in the world acts with as much discretion and great care as the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] in order to minimize [civilian] damage.”55 Despite all the international hand-wringing about civilian deaths, an exhaustive Israeli study showed that the majority of Palestinians killed during Operation Protective Edge were, in fact, terrorists.56 But Europe’s elites had long since made up their minds. From the meeting rooms of Brussels to the newsrooms of the BBC, Israel was cast as a militarized, oppressive bully and the Palestinians as noble, helpless victims.
Not surprisingly, the increasingly hostile, condemnatory view held by European politicians and media outlets toward Israel has trickled down to the European public, culminating in large, widespread anti-Israel rallies across the continent during Operation Protective Edge. Tens of thousands of anti-Israel protestors, composed mostly of an unholy alliance of Islamists, pro-Palestinian activists, and hard leftists, took to the streets of European capitals to castigate not just the Jewish State but the Jewish people—in some of the most audacious displays of anti-Semitism that Europe had seen in decades. Here is just a small sampling:
On July 26, 2014, Metropolitan Police estimated that as many as forty-five thousand demonstrators gathered outside the Israeli embassy in London to protest against Israel’s operation against Hamas.57 The rhetoric at that march and similar ones around the country was replete with calls to genocide:
In Britain, peaceful protests against the violence have been marred by vile placards including one declaring: “Hitler you were right!”
At a Central London march, protesters confronted a Jewish woman with her two young children and told them: “Burn in hell.” . . .
Activists and supporters of the Palestinian cause gathered outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington, west London, before marching towards Parliament Square.
Carrying Palestinian flags and placards with slogans such as Stop the Killing and Free Palestine, the protesters chanted “Israel is a terror state”, “Gaza don’t you cry, we will never let you die” and “Allahu Akbar” (god is great).58
Over one hundred hate crimes were committed against Jews in Great Britain in July 2014, more than double the usual number.59
A modern-day pogrom broke out in the “Little Jerusalem” section of Paris on July 27, 2014. Protestors chanted, “Gas the Jews” and “Kill the Jews” while attacking Jewish-owned businesses and torching cars.60 Similarly, in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, a “400-strong mob” firebombed a synagogue and “smashed and looted” kosher stores. Chants of “Death to the Jews” and “Slit Jews’ throats” filled the air, and similar murderous epithets adorned banners waved by members of the mob.61 This type of Kristallnacht-like violence exploded across France, with no less than eight synagogues attacked throughout the country in the span of one week in July 2014.62 France currently has Europe’s largest Jewish population, at an estimated five hundred thousand. But Jews are now leaving France in droves thanks to rampant Muslim-driven anti-Semitism, with many making their way to Israel.63
You’d think that Germany, the country where Kristallnacht and the Holocaust were perpetrated not so long ago, would be especially vigilant in guarding against open displays of anti-Semitism. Yet during a series of large pro-Palestinian protests across Germany in July 2014, Israelis were compared to Nazis and Operation Protective Edge to the Holocaust. That was some of the tamer rhetoric. At one rally in Berlin, Muslim protestors pumped their fists in the air and chanted, “Jew, Jew, cowardly swine, come out and fight on your own!” Cries of “Hamas Hamas Jews to the gas!” were heard at demonstrations in Dortmund and Frankfurt, and one Berlin imam called on Allah to “destroy the Zionist Jews. . . . Count them and kill them, to the very last one.”64 These Hitler-esque outbursts set off alarm bells in Germany’s Jewish community. Dieter Graumann, president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, told the Guardian, “These are the worst times [for Germany’s Jews] since the Nazi era.”65
European Muslims were the most sizable and vocal group at all of the above-mentioned anti-Semitic hatefests—including, no doubt, a high percentage of ISIS sympathizers. Anyone who watched the mass continent-wide rallies had to realize that Islam was in Europe to stay—and not a moderate, rational, Westernized Islam. No, this was radical Islamism: raw, unadulterated, and in-your-face. The recent emergence of ISIS has only intensified this troubling trend, which had been percolating in Europe for years.
In early 2009, as an earlier round of violent anti-Israel protests erupted in Europe during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza (an operation meant to—you guessed it—stop sustained barrages of Hamas rocket fire at Israeli civilian centers), I interviewed Cliff May, a former New York Times correspondent who is now president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.
“It’s unclear whether there is a future for Jews in Europe—I would go that far,” May told me. “But it’s unclear whether there is a future for Europeans in Europe as well.”
The future is looking quite bright, however, for ISIS and its radical adherents, who are multiplying daily across Europe.