Sunday, October 30, 2005

Anti-Terror Raids Target Islamists Across Europe

Today's radical Muslim groups can mostly be traced back to the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in the 1920s. These Muslims consider themselves to be jihadis, in a direct martial continuity with the Prophet Muhammad's battles and those of Muslims throughout history. This war didn't begin with Iraq, and it will not end with Iraq.



Anti-Terror Raids Target Islamists Across Europe

I'm continually impressed by how news item after news item can illustrate the global extent of Islamic terrorism, and yet most in the public sphere still claim that terrorists are a tiny, marginalized minority in the Islamic world. Why, just yesterday I heard about an address on terrorism by an FBI agent in which he emphasized: "Terrorism has nothing to do with Islam." That kind of knee-jerk political correctness leaves us blind to the root causes of the present problem, and thus unable to respond to it properly.

Here is more evidence that radical Islam is an enormous, multinational movement, which germinates in mosques and madrassas: "Police hunting Islamic militants across Europe capped a dramatic series of anti-terror raids in three countries with the arrest of a suspected Algerian extremist in the German port of Hamburg on Friday.

"Abderrazak Mahdjoub, 29, was held at the request of Italian authorities investigating an alleged network involved in recruiting Islamists to carry out suicide attacks in Iraq."

Where do you go to find and recruit "Islamists"? Three guesses.

"A copy of an arrest warrant, obtained by Reuters, showed that one of the recruits was suspected of complicity in an October rocket attack on a Baghdad hotel where U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying.

"Separately, British police were questioning a suspected would-be suicide bomber arrested in southwest England on Thursday. The government has said the 24-year-old Muslim man may have links with al Qaeda.

"The European police operations coincided with the charging of three Kenyans in connection with a previously undisclosed plot to blow up the U.S. embassy in Nairobi -- the same mission that was destroyed by suspected al Qaeda bombers in 1998.

"While described as breakthroughs, the developments highlighted the fact that Islamic radicals and al Qaeda sympathizers, suspected of carrying out deadly suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia and Turkey this month, apparently remain active across a wide variety of other fronts.

"In the latest alert, the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo said on Friday it had stepped up security in response to a 'specific threat' against international organizations in the U.N.-run province.

"Two years into the U.S.-led war on terror, some European security officials are expressing concern that Islamic militants may be drawing new strength from Muslim anger over the U.S.-led war in Iraq."

Maybe they are, but it is just more wishful thinking if the conclusion here is supposed to be: "Then let's withdraw from Iraq, and terrorism would cease." I know that millions believe that, but consider: today's radical Muslim groups can mostly be traced back to the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in the 1920s. These Muslims consider themselves to be jihadis, in a direct martial continuity with the Prophet Muhammad's battles and those of Muslims throughout history. This war didn't begin with Iraq, and it will not end with Iraq. (Thanks to LGF.)

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