Eurojihad

At the outset of the Syrian refugee crisis, European security agencies publicly aired their fears about the potential for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other terrorist organizations to exploit refugee flows as a means of introducing terrorist operatives into the EU. While the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels have demonstrated that ISIS does indeed have the capacity to strike deep within the heart of Europe, the operatives behind these attacks were almost exclusively Belgian and French citizens. This has raised thorny questions about integration and citizenship throughout Europe, bringing them from the realm of social policy to security. Angela Rabasa and Cheryl Benard's Eurojihad was completed before the Paris and Brussels attacks, but still offers valuable information and insights for policy-makers and researchers. In particular, Rabasa and Benard have compiled detailed data on Muslim populations throughout Europe, showing how groups that are too often portrayed as belonging to a homogenous mass are, in fact, highly diverse in their outlooks and approaches to both Islam and the western societies in which they operate. In the British context, this includes a clear concentration of young males of Pakistani origin on lists of both foiled and successful terrorist plots. Similarly, France's colonial past in North Africa is reflected in the prevalence of Algerians on lists of suspected terrorists. In these and other cases there is a clear legacy of discrimination and cultural and social alienation that has pushed a minority to embrace violence as a means of change

Alienation · Citizenship · Context (archaeology · Criminology · Islam · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Radicalization · Realm · Refugee · Sociology · State (computer science · Terrorism · History · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence