The west accepted Salafist refugees for

decades, now its paying the price

Andrew KorybkoMay 25, 2017, 7:25 pm 1,717
There is no greater structural threat to a secular Muslim-majority country than Salafists, which is
why the West welcomed those fleeing from the political and religious repression in their
homelands in order to weaponize them for future Hybrid War use.

Brits have been struggling to figure out how their government dropped the ball and failed to
prevent the Manchester suicide bombing when the attacker was already on their radar, but what
many people are overlooking is the politically incorrect fact that it should have been obvious
from the first day that the bombers family set foot in the UK that theyd end up being trouble.
Lost amidst the flurry of media reports about this tragic incident is that the attackers family
arrived on British soil as Libyan refugees decades before the 2011 NATO war devastated their
country. Its rather peculiar that theyd seek refuge from Libya because the Jamahiriya had the
highest living standards in all of Africa during the time that they fled and hadnt fought a
conflict within its borders since World War II.

This means that his family didnt leave because of any desperate material or military conditions,
but because of socio-political ones which they disagreed with, namely that Libya was a secular
socialist state that forbade Salafism. To bring the reader up to speed in case theyre not already
aware, Salafism (colloquially called Islamism by many Westerners) is the school of thought
which preaches that Muslims must live by an ultra-conservative interpretation of the Quran. Not
only must they abide by strict socio-cultural and political standards, but Salafists also believe
that it is their God-given duty to proselytize their way of life all across the world, even in the
foreign civilizations which host them as migrants. This is the mindset of the bombers family,
and true to kind, they raised their son the same way. The Manchester suicide bomber wasnt
radicalized on the internet or by Wahhabi imams, he was indoctrinated by his family since birth.

Liberal Double Standards

An individuals religious beliefs are a personal affair, just like what a migrant does in their
homeland, but when permanently relocating to and living in a totally different society than what
theyre used to, people should abide by the socio-cultural standards of their hosts. Salafists, for
example, should keep to themselves and respect that Westerners dont want them to enforce
civilizationally dissimilar practices onto the locals, as doing so will only prompt socio-cultural
strife within the country which will inevitably lead to political tensions. This should all be
common sense for everyone, but its unfortunately not followed by Salafist migrants because
Western governments refuse to dissuade them from their public practices.

In line with the precepts of multiculturalism, the reason for this can be attributed to one of the
many liberal double standards which have been employed the West for years, whereby foreigners
(whether legal or illegal) are granted the freedom of religion to practice their beliefs however
they see fit (especially if its Islam), but locals practicing traditional religions such as
Christianity are pressured to respect everyone elses freedom from religion in keeping the
external display of their faith (ex: crosses) out of public sight. This particular double standard
leads to a dysfunctional society which is either destined for full-scale Salafism or serious civil
conflict, the latter scenario of which can only arise if the locals arent successfully guilt-tripped
into thinking that any peaceful resistance against the imposition of foreign socio-cultural
practices is racist, fascist, or white supremacist.

The state of affairs described above is very dangerous and the cause for heated debate within
Western society right now, but a devils advocate would say that the said governments had no
way to test the religious zeal of the Muslim migrants that they were allowing into their countries,
which is factually true no matter if certain indicators could have obviously suggested the true
level of their personal convictions. Therefore, as some leftist-liberal critics claim, its not fair to
fault Western governments for who they let into their countries because they might not have
known any better, and if anything, theres nothing wrong they say with the large-scale
influx of foreigners who refuse to assimilate and integrate into the host society. After all,
Western society is all about freedom, so everyones free to do as they want, right?

Well, not necessarily, but thats a different discussion for a different day.

The Hybrid War Weaponization Of Salafist Refugees

This article deals with those individuals who were without a doubt Salafists by virtue of them
fleeing from secular and socialist Arab states in order to apply for political/religious refugee
status in Western countries, the governments of which have no excuse in pretending that they
didnt know the level of these migrants religious zeal. Im not inferring that all Salafists, Salafist
migrants, or Salafist political/religious refugees from secular and socialist Arab states are
terrorists, but just that the primary terrorist threat afflicting Western countries nowadays comes
from people who fit one of these three descriptions. The irony, then, is that Western governments
knowingly allowed these Salafists to come to their societies in the first place, especially in the
case of political/religious refugees from secular and socialist Arab states, but theres a cynical
reason behind the short-sighted strategy leading to their civilizational demise apart from the
multicultural explanation.

Salafists are the natural enemy of secularists, and this therefore makes them a strategic weapon
to be wielded by the geopolitical opponents of former Libyan leader Gaddafi and Syrian
President Assad, for example, both of whom were (and in the case of the latter, still are) opposed
to the West. There is no greater structural threat to a secular Muslim-majority country than
Salafists, which is why the West welcomed those fleeing from the political and religious
repression in their homelands in order to weaponize them for future Hybrid War use. The
Salafists couldnt proselytize their interpretation of Islam inside of Libya or Syria because those
governments didnt tolerate even the slightest expression of it, though the liberal West had no
such compunctions about their lifestyle owing to the double standard associated with granting
foreigners (especially Muslim ones) the freedom of religion while hypocritically enforcing the
locals freedom from religion when it comes to displays of their traditional Christian faith.
Libyan and other Salafist political/religious refugees quickly became even more comfortable
in their new homes than in their old homelands because Western governments actually
encouraged them to practice their strict lifestyle and proselytize as much as they wanted, though
some of these people still longed to transform their countries of origin into the Salafist
paradise that they constructed in what usually turned out to be Western ghettos. Remember,
these people left their homelands precisely because they couldnt set up a Salafist emirate there,
and they know that there are certain limits to what they can do in expanding their religious
paradise out of the ghetto and throughout the rest of their new country before they encounter
heavy opposition. Therefore, its their dream to return back to Libya or wherever else they came
from and overthrow their dictators so that everyone else can be freed from the evils of
secularism and have a chance to finally build the Salafist state which the pro-democracy
fighters always fantasized about.

Naturally, this aligns with Western geopolitical objectives, which is why these ideological
individuals were allowed into their societies to begin with.

Turning A Blind Eye Always Backfires

Its important at this point to understand that all Western governments could have stopped the
Salafization of their Muslim ghettos but intentionally decided against it, though not all of them
declined solely because they were scared of transgressing some sort of unstated but sacred
liberal belief in permitting civilizationally dissimilar newcomers to aggressively practice their
freedom of religion at the locals expense. Some, like the US and especially the UK, allowed this
process to continue unabated because it was thought to provide valuable administrative training
for the political/religious refugees who they planned to recruit as Hybrid War vanguards.
These fighters would one day run their own nationwide caliphates, it was believed, so the
experience in doing so on a smaller level inside of their Western neighborhoods could come in
handy for the victors sometime in the future, as well as potentially ensure that they remain
friendly to their former Western patrons who gave them the freedom to build a prototype of
their desired society after they first fled from their homelands.

This also explains why so many terrorists nowadays were known to Western intelligence before
they went rogue and attacked their handlers instead of their intended targets abroad. Take the
Manchester suicide bomber, for example. His family reportedly returned back to Libya after the
brutal public assassination of Gaddafi, ostensibly to take the Salafist administrative lessons that
they perfected in their British neighborhood back to their original Libyan one in helping to build
the paradise that they and their co-ideologists so desired. The attacker, however, stayed behind
in Britain and eventually turned against his familys one-time host and the land of his birth. Its
not unexpected that this would happen, which is why the article previously described the strategy
of intentionally accepting Salafist political/religious refugees from secular and socialist Arab
states as short-sighted. As President Assad wisely warned, terrorists cannot be used as a
political card, you cannot put it in your pocket, because its like a scorpion; it will bite you
someday.

Britain tragically found that out the hard way earlier this week.
The policy of actively encouraging Salafist immigration to the West backfired in another way
aside from the expected terrorist blowback thats been incurred, since it also contributed to the
rise of Islamophobia among a broad segment of the native population. Many Westerners dont
have an objective understanding of what Islam is because their perception of the religion is
distorted by the Salafist newcomers who came to their country across the past couple of decades.
This shouldnt be taken to mean that Salafists are the majority of Muslims, most Mideast-
originating immigrants, or the bulk of Muslims living in the West for generations, but just that
this particular groups obnoxious public proselytizing disproportionately inflated their presence
in the Western consciousness and led people to wrongly conflate them and their practices with
all Muslims.

The average Muslim woman doesnt necessarily wear a niqab, burka, or hijab, just as not all
Muslim men have long beards and wear robes, though many Westerners probably wouldnt
believe this because the experience that they have within their own countries testifies to the
opposite, or so they believe because of their perception (whether real, inaccurate, or
manipulated). Its doubtful that Westerners seriously care about whatever thoughts a stranger has
in their head or holds in their heart, but they dont want others acting on them in a way which
disrupts the social standard that theyve become accustomed to. Dressing in an Islamic style is
the personal choice of an individual and doesnt automatically make anyone a Salafist, though
its reasonable that host countries should have the sovereign right to regulate this for legitimate
security reasons if they so choose (e.g. making women take off the niqab for their ID pictures).
Whats not acceptable to the vast majority of people, however, is an aggressive minority of a
minority (the Salafists within the Muslim community) enforcing their religious culture on the
local majority and intimidating them.

Sharing The Blame

Unfortunately, the Salafists are largely responsible for why ordinary Westerns might hold a
suspicious view about Muslims. Thats not at all to excuse those who are genuine Islamophobes
and harbor nothing but fascist hatred for all Muslims, but to explain that the public and media
aura which has been built around Western-based Salafists has created the perception whether
intentional or not, though nonetheless totally inaccurate that all Muslims are cut from this same
ideological cloth, and therefore a pressing security threat in the sense that they might resort to
violence or even terrorism to enforce their strict socio-cultural standards on the majority non-
Muslim population. It doesnt matter if these Muslims are citizens born in a Western country or
recent arrivals from overseas, what disturbs the masses and feeds into actual Islamophobia is that
Salafist standards have become commonplace in some Muslim communities, and their co-
confessionals arent doing enough to keep the aggressive proselytizers at bay.

Ultimately, however, the blame needs to be broadened from passive believers who turn a blind
eye to the more radical elements of their communities and to the multicultural-brainwashed
host governments themselves that actively recruited Salafist political/religious refugees from
secular and socialist Arab states with the partial intent of one day dispatching them back to their
homelands as Hybrid War weapons. Its not a coincidence that it almost always turns out to be
the case that Western intelligence knew about a terrorist before they went rogue and carried
out an attack in Europe or North America, since these very same agencies usually worked with
those individuals at one time or another, whether while training them in freedom fighter
militancy or receiving briefings from them when they either (re)entered the country or informed
on their co-confessionalists. Its not suggested that the deep state tasked each and every one of
them with carrying out their eventual attacks as false flags, but just that the permanent
bureaucracy cant control all of the Salafists within their country and lost track of monitoring the
most dangerous ones as closely as they should have.

The unfortunate outcome of this decades-long failed policy is Salafist terrorism and
Islamophobia, two evils which feed off of one another and further the Clash of Civilizations
narrative within Western society. The public prominence of Salafists adds fuel to the
Islamophobes exploitation of the populist zeitgeist favoring state sovereignty and a return to
border-immigration controls within the EU, redirecting it towards actual hate speech and
sabotaging its noble political goals. Relatedly, the Salafists exploit these minority viewpoints to
paint all non-Muslims opposed to open borders and unregulated immigration as racists,
fascists, white supremacists, and Islamophobes, which riles up the otherwise peaceful non-
Salafist Muslim community. All in all, extremists from both the Muslim and non-Muslim camps
try to hijack control of their respective communities narrative in order to militarize them against
the other, thereby contributing to the self-perpetuating cycle of violence thats broken out within
Western society as of late.

Is There A Solution?

Its difficult to prescribe the perfect solution for dealing with these interconnected problems
because of how far theyve already progressed, and theres not much that the guilty governments
can do in making up for the damage that their decades-long policies have wrought in instigating
the Clash of Civilizations which is wreaking so much havoc within their societies. No peaceful
minority group should ever be discriminated against or made to feel uncomfortable, but nor
should any peaceful member of the majority either. Salafists shouldnt infringe on the rights of
their majority non-Muslim hosts, just as the latter shouldnt take out their Salafist-inspired stress
on regular Muslims.

Ideally, the most effective and sustainable way to deal with the existing tension which has built
up over the years is for the state to promulgate and enforce legislation mandating strict anti-
Salafist migration controls and ending the policy of offering political/religious asylum to those
fleeing from the remaining secular Arab states of Algeria, Egypt, and Syria. The state also
needs to crack down on Salafist hate speech, including within mosques. Just as equally, however,
the government needs to keep an eye on the rising fascist sentiment within society and make
moves to mitigate its growth and counteract its hateful narratives. However, this shouldnt be
abused to suppress pro-sovereignty populism and the peaceful expression of free speech.

Controlling fascism is just as important as controlling Salafism because each contributes to the
spread of the other and foments a larger conflict which inevitably harms many more innocent
people than it does any of its culprits. Its nave to pin all of ones hope in the state, however,
since time and again this has proven to be misplaced. Western governments either ignore both of
these problems or selectively target troublemakers from each camp and never deal with the real
underlying issues at hand, so the most realistic solution to the rising Salafism in the Western
Muslim community and the reactionary trend of outright fascist Islamophobia in its populist
counterpart is for both of their core constituencies to band together in policing their own and
purging the ideological riffraff from their ranks.

Even so, it will probably still take a generation or two to successfully remove these destructive
strains of thought from their communities, though the recent rise of reactionary fascism will
probably be comparatively easier to contain than its primary trigger cause of Salafism, which has
been strengthened over the decades and ironically aided by the very same host governments that
are now threatened by it. If theres a lesson to be learned from the Manchester suicide bombing,
then its that the pro-Salafist immigration and refugee policies practiced by Western
governments for years have utterly failed in their stated multiculturalist goals and clandestine
Hybrid War ones, and that the resultant change of perception that many locals now have about
the Muslim community at large is feeding into the rise of fascism and the literal Clash of
Civilizations thats unfolding across Europe.

DISCLAIMER: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity which is
unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing
written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any
other media outlet or institution.