Jihad and the West - Black Flag over Babylon - Chapter Nine Podcast Four

.In this excerpt from Chapter Nine, we examine the response of  French leaders to the upsurge in killings and turn to the growing influence of Islam in France and Belgium.   Foreign Fighters   French foreign fighters, along with other Westerners, are reeling from a series of military setbacks in Syria and Iraq and have been battered by multiple airstrikes. The Caliphate is hemorrhaging foreign volunteer fighters, keeping intelligence services on edge. By June 2016, at least 248 French Jihadis had returned to France, while 666 were still in the Middle East. Other seasoned, dedicated fighters have also returned.   The proportion of French women in the State has increased to 35 percent of French members. Observers speculate that women in the Caliphate are being groomed for more violent activities in the Middle East and in France. Already active in domestic operations, logistics, and recruiting, they are likely to become more violent.   French counterterrorism leaders anticipate further attacks by individuals who detonate powerful bombs concealed in vests. Individuals would attend crowded events and shopping areas and detonate the explosives. The goal is to immobilize France. Islamic State is likely to use car bombs and other explosive devices as it seeks to carry out more atrocities in France.   Profile Thirty-Six: French-Speaking Political Leaders   Marion Maréchal-Le Pen—“Either We Kill Islamism or It Will Kill Us”   She has been described as a combination of Joan of Arc and Brigitte Bardot. French Member of Parliament Marion Maréchal-Le Pen assumed office at age 22, becoming the youngest parliamentarian since 1791. Four years later, she is one of the NF’s most promising politicians. Heir to a two-generation conservative family tradition, she is the niece of NF leader Marine Le Pen and shares many of her aunt’s views—respect for Western, particularly French, civilization; a strong Catholic identity; and a conviction that France is in a life-and-death struggle with political Islam. “Either we kill Islamism or it will kill us again and again. You are with us and against Islamism, or you are against us and for Islamism.” Her fan base is largely composed of young, traditional Catholic men, who compare Le Pen alternately to Joan of Arc and Brigitte Bardot.   Tall, blonde, and attractive, she is more popular than ever and, like Aunt Marine, has distanced herself from her grandfather’s anti-Semitic barbs. After a French priest was murdered in his Norman church, she joined the army reserves in her constituency and invited her countrymen to join her. She enlisted to take the war to the Islamic State and intends to do so in a military uniform and, if need be, with arms.   Some Europeans are concerned about an emerging dynasty. One writer spoke of the “Poison le Pens.” “Maréchal-Le Pen, like many on the far right, slipped in under the radar. Would it be enough to hope the voters will swiftly push her back again at the next available opportunity?” She may be voted out, but that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Too many of her countrymen look to the “golden girl of the right” for national leadership.   Belgium’s Yves Goldstein—No Chagalls, Dalis, Warhols, or Dreams   Yves Goldstein is a council member from the Belgian town of Schaerbeek and chief of staff to the minister-president of the Brussels Capital Region. He does not share Le Pen's political pedigree, but he faces similar challenges. Belgium and France face unprecedented and increasingly frequent outbursts of Islamic radicalism and violence. However, unlike Le Pen, he largely blames Europeans, not Muslims, for the tinderbox. If Marion Le Pen embodies an invigorated pushback against the mounting Islamic presence in Europe, Goldstein exemplifies the multicultural bridge builder.   The council member insists his country’s young Muslim rage is driven by ethnic alienation and poverty. The attacks have little to do with true Islam. Radicals cherry-pick violent verses to militarize the unemployed young. But, according to Goldstein, the real driver of radicalization is alienation. As for the terrorists, “religion for them is a pretext.”   The youth have no connection to the larger society because that society has excluded them and encouraged them to ghettoize. “We failed!” he said. “We failed in Molenbeek and Schaerbeek, too, to ensure the mixing of populations.” This failure, in turn, bred anger, crime, and radicalization. “We have neighborhoods where people only see the same people, go to school with the same people.” The youth of Molenbeek, he said, live “in a little box” that needs to be opened up.   This, he explains, is why there is such support for the Caliphate among Muslim communities in Belgian cities. According to his estimates, 90 percent of the high school seniors in Molenbeek and Schaerbeek described the Brussels attackers as “heroes.” Goldstein’s parents were Holocaust survivors who found refuge in Belgium, but all the Jews have now left Schaerbeek, and the last two synagogues are being sold and may be converted into mosques. In his 2012 election campaign to Schaerbeek, the Socialist Goldstein was accused of “stabbing Palestinians in the back.”   But Goldstein wants, above all, to integrate Muslims. For Goldstein, the most powerful antidote to narrowness and intolerance is liberalism. Western literature and art can draw alienated Muslims out of their cultural islands. He further argues that just as the West can draw inspiration from the classics of Islam’s Golden Age, so can Belgium’s Muslims find cultural enrichment in the West. Goldstein laments, “These young people will never go to museums until 18 or 20—they never saw Chagall, they never saw Dalí, they never saw Warhol, they don’t know what it is to dream.”