In the wake of the brutal terrorist attack on a Paris magazine that left 12 journalists and police dead at the hands of Muslim extremists, a former CIA officer has sounded a warning that "lone wolf" jihadist cells in Europe pose a serious threat to the Western world.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Reuel Marc Gerecht, former CIA operative and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that after the 9/11 attacks, radical Islamic cells in Europe were considered more likely to pose a threat to Europe and the U.S. than were home-grown Middle Eastern terrorists.
"The Iraq War added to this widespread anxiety. Many believed that the Anglo-American invasion would provoke a maelstrom of holy warriors against the West," Gerecht wrote.
"It didn’t happen then. But it may be happening now."
The Gatestone Institute, chaired by former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, estimates there are 6.5 million Muslims in France today, or very nearly 10 percent of the country's 6.6 million total population,
the Washington Times reports.
Hundreds of French Muslims, Gerecht notes, have traveled to Syria and joined up with the Islamic State (ISIS), receiving military experience and training, which they could then bring back home to Europe.
"The French bastion against domestic terror appears to be cracking," he told the Journal.
"If the French, who have more policemen and security officers per capita than any other Western country, cannot monitor and check Muslim extremists at home, Islamic radicals in Europe and elsewhere will surely take note," Gerecht wrote.
And without French and British intelligence staying on top of radical cells in Europe, U.S. intelligence will be blind.
"Take away communications intercepts, an American forte, and Washington has effectively no unilateral capacity to monitor Islamic militants on European soil," Gerecht wrote.
Soren Kern, Gatestone analyst, told the Times, "The situation is out of control, and it is not reversible. Islam is a permanent part of France now. It is not going away.
"I think the future looks very bleak. The problem is a lot of these younger-generation Muslims are not integrating into French society. Although they are French citizens, they don’t really have a future in French society. They feel very alienated from France. This is why radical Islam is so attractive, because it gives them a sense of meaning in their life."
The attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo in retaliation for picturing the prophet Muhammed in cartoons and satirizing religions, including Islam, confirms the presence of "native jihadist cells that can act independently of foreign terrorist organizations, like al-Qaida or Islamic State, but may act in concert, and certainly in sympathy, with these groups," Gerecht noted.
"Not that long ago," Gerecht wrote, "Muslims couldn’t have cared less what Europeans thought about them or their prophet. Christians and Jews were infidels, after all, benighted souls not worth bothering with.
"That has changed as Europe’s Muslim population has grown and radicalized, and as traditional Islamic injunctions from the homelands were imported into an ultra-tolerant, increasingly politically correct Europe."
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