Europe’s Naturalized Killers

Europe now seems to be the prime target of Islamist terrorists. The arrest of 21 British Muslims for conspiring to blow up airlines crossing the Atlantic underscored, once again, the growing sense of dread and inevitability that is rooted in the homegrown nature of the threat. But what do we really know about these killers among us?

We know, of course, the broad outline of their of their all-encompassing fundamentalism, and we have some vague ideas about Al Qaeda as a decentralized network of cells in many countries that seeks to acquire chemical, biological, and perhaps even nuclear weapons. We also know their leaders’ long-term goals: seize power in Muslim countries and attack the Western states that support secular regimes in the Islamic world. Finally, we also know that the leaders of this fanatical tide are few, but now have the sympathy of millions of ordinary Muslims.

There have always been fanatical individuals ready to die and kill in the name of their beliefs. But they seem far more dangerous nowadays as a result of technological advances that have “democratized” bomb making. After all, as the London and Madrid bombings demonstrated, a cell phone is all that is needed to time an explosion – or a series of explosions – with deadly efficiency.

https://prosyn.org/N8Xw6Fx