Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon - Chapter Eight Podcast Three

In the Name of Humanity This is the Syria of 2015, where anyone who is upwardly mobile is now also westwardly mobile.               Many Westerners were moved by the human dimension of the migration crisis. Commercial and social media captured some of the pain. A Swedish journalist found a love poem, protected in a plastic bag and washed up on the shore of a Greek island. Many rickety boats coming from the Middle East capsized, and the poem may have been part of the flotsam. Translated from Arabic, some lines read, “My Rose, I promise you, I will love you till the last minute of my life . . . will not let anything separate us . . . I promise you.” The fates of the author and his beloved Rose are unknown as of this writing.               Particularly stirring was a photograph of a drowned little boy washed up on a Turkish shore in September 2014. This image touched the heartstrings of the world. Alan (sometimes spelled Ayan) Kurdi was three years old and dressed in Western clothing. Some of the boy’s family drowned with him. His father, Abdullah, pleaded to the world, “My message is I’d like the whole world to open its doors to Syrians.” His voice opened the doors of Europe.               European celebrities and intellectuals tended to be more sympathetic to migrants than others. Academy Award-winning actress Emma Thompson blamed racism, saying that if the refugees were white, the British would feel “quite differently about it.” In London, after the curtain fell on a performance of Hamlet, Benedict Cumberbatch, who played the Dane, delivered an impassioned soliloquy against the “utter disgrace of the British government!”   Festung Europa   The Belgians, like the British security services before 7/7, believed that if they allowed Islamism to gestate at home, the terrorists would spare the country that had given them sanctuary. That fallacy now lies on the scrapheap of ideas where it always belonged.   Editorial from the Spectator               Attitudinal surveys reveal growing European panic about the Islamic State and concern about the rising tide of migration. By June 2016, three out of four respondents to a survey viewed migrants as a “significant” threat. Self-identified conservatives tended to see migration as a greater crisis than self-identified liberals.   While many in Europe’s chattering classes have welcomed Middle Easterners to their continent, others are less hospitable. Tabloid journalists and ordinary Europeans are not persuaded that there is a human right to move to a particular country and become a citizen. This was, in part, reflected in the British vote to leave the European Union.               Many Europeans do not want any more Middle Eastern refugees. Katie Hopkins of the British Daily Mail proposed launching a fleet of “gun ships” to stop the armada of refugees from reaching British shores. In that spirit, Rod Liddie of the Sun mocks “lefties” who bleat, “They [the migrants] are human beings! Let them in.” But Liddie rejoins that there are “7 billion people in the world. They would not all fit in Britain.”               With resignation, Hungarian Nobel laureate Imre Kertész, a survivor of Auschwitz, predicted Europe’s end because of liberalism, which he called “childish and suicidal.” Having lived through the Nazi era, he lamented and feared the end of democracy. He bemoaned the idea that “the doors are wide open for Islam.” Former Briton Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor, said Europe had “opened its gates to outsiders who have coveted its wealth without renouncing their ancestral faith” and whose views are “not easily reconciled with the principles of our liberal democracies.” Former Prime Minister David Cameron claimed that British voters backed a vote to leave the European Union because people believe the country has “no control” over its borders.               France, home to persistent and spectacular attacks, saw national concern about Islamic extremism more than double between 2005 and 2015. There was a surge in concern in other Western countries, probably reflecting the rise in Islamist-driven attacks. Interestingly, Russia saw a significant decline in concern about Islamic extremism.             According to a different poll, conducted by Pew Polling in spring 2016, there was a significant increase in “unfavorable views of Muslims.”               The Washington-based Pew Research Center found that the share of people who believed “refugees will increase the likelihood of terrorism in our country” was 46 percent in France, 52 percent in Britain, 61 percent in Germany, 71 percent in Poland, and 76 percent in Hungary.   “Raqqa Scatter,” Refugees, and Infiltrators               Many European security and intelligence personnel agree that it is easy for the State to infiltrate its forces into Europe. As elements of the State are driven from large towns and cities, such as Raqqa, its soldiers scatter and, often, desperately seek to leave the Middle East. They can buy Syrian identity documents that allow them to hide among refugees. Anecdotes highlight the dangers of accommodating those who crawl ashore, including Ahmad al Mohammad. He was fed and clothed by French Médecins Sans Frontières volunteers, who wished him bon voyage on his trip to Paris. In November 2015, al Mohammad detonated himself as a suicide bomber in that city while his coconspirators killed targets in a nightclub and on the streets.   European leaders have tightened security at transportation and public venues. However, determined Caliphate militants remain effective, as demonstrated by the June 2016 attack on Istanbul. By international standards, that airport was well protected. However, there were glaring vulnerabilities in both physical protective measures—such as barriers, gates, and fences—and in the human security element. Vetting guards, many of whom are foreign-born and most of whom earn meager wages, has proved very difficult. In France, eighty-two of the people hired for security posts during the soccer championship were on French terror watch lists. One of the men responsible for beheading a French priest in 2016 had worked at a French airport as a luggage handler. He “easily” passed employment security checks.