Wilson Briefs

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 December 2015

 

SUMMARY

Worldwide terrorism connected with the jihadist insurgencies in Syria and Iraq emerges disproportionately among second- and third-generation Muslim youth from Western Europe. Many of them identify neither with European society nor with their countries of origin, but find in jihadist propaganda an identity in a transcendent “nation of Islam.” Governments should prepare community leaders to identify and intervene with at-risk youth and should enhance and coordinate efforts to counter jihadist propaganda both online and in local communities.

How to Counter Jihadist Appeal among  Western European Muslims

By Fernando Reinares

Frederic Legrand - COMEO / Shutterstock.com

 

WILSON BRIEFS

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The origin of the worldwide terrorist mobilization related to the jihadist insurgencies in Syria and Iraq lies not only in the Middle East but also in Western Europe. Poignantly, all those suspected of involvement in the November 13, 2015, attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people, were French or Belgian, though most assailants had spent time in Syria. Muslims from Western Europe are overrepresented among the foreign terrorist fighters actually present in Syria and Iraq—exactly 16 times overrepresented. In 2010, the year before civil war erupted in Syria, there were an estimated 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Only about 20 million of them—slightly more than 1 percent—were living in Western Europe. Yet Muslims from Western Europe have accounted for no less than one-fifth of the 25,000 to 30,000 individuals who have traveled to join the Islamic State (also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant [ISIL]), al-Qaeda’s Nusrah Front, and other jihadist organizations in Syria and Iraq over the past four years. This unprecedented expression of jihadist radicalization and recruitment, mostly of young men, presents a crisis to Western Europe.

A second-generation phenomenon

The crisis is not plaguing all Western European countries uniformly. The countries most affected by youth jihadist radicalization have Muslim populations composed predominantly of second- or even third-generation descendants of migrants who left their Islamic homelands in northern and eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia several decades ago. The affected countries include both larger nations such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom and smaller ones like Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden.Spain and Italy, in contrast, which have important Muslim populations largely composed of first-generation immigrants, are experiencing much lower levels of jihadist mobilization. The proportion of youth leaving Spain and Italy to become terrorist fighters in Syria and Iraq resembles that of the United States (where most Muslims are also first-generation immigrants).

 

WILSON BRIEFS

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But even in Spain, the nexus of second-generation status and jihadist mobilization shows up. Some 75 percent of Spanish nationals arrested since 2013 for terrorist offenses related to Syria-based jihadist entities were born in the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, which are actually Maghreb enclaves surrounded by Morocco on the north coast of Africa. These are the only cities in Spain where second-generation populations predominate in large Muslim collectivities.Western European governments have a serious problem in accommodating second- and third-generation Muslims in their heterogeneous and pluralistic societies. Neither a multiculturalist approach, such as the one long pursued in the United Kingdom, nor the pervasive assimilationist policies adopted in France, has succeeded.And socioeconomic and educational background is no key to predicting the appeal of jihadist ideas. Radicalized second-generation Muslims of Pakistani ancestry in the United Kingdom may come from middle-class families and have a university education, while those in France of Algerian or Moroccan ethnic origin are usually from the economically deprived

banlieus 

 and have poor schooling.

An identity crisis

A generalized identity crisis among young, second-generation immigrant Muslims in Western Europe’s wealthiest countries appears to lie behind high levels of jihadist mobilization. Migrant descendants born or socialized in the host country are often caught in an odd balance between cultures and are especially prone to identity tensions connected with a diaspora situation. Among young second-generation Muslims living in Western Europe, too many have developed little affection for the nation in which they were born or raised, even though they show scant attachment to the nation from which their parents or grandparents came. These descendants of migrants face easy and recurrent exposure to today’s jihadist propaganda, not only through the Internet and social media but also in face-to-face interactions with local radicalizing agents. Jihadist propaganda offers a violent solution—certainly not the only possible one, just the most extreme one—to these individuals’ identity conflicts. Al-Qaeda offers underground, combatant-style militancy to those who identify themselves as part of the “nation of Islam,” and the Islamic State additionally provides a sense of empowerment inherent in the exaltation of savagery and integration into the caliphate as a territorialized, sharia-based new society.