This chapter has focused on how dynamics across the geographic Muslim world, defined by countries or regions with Muslim majority populations, are important for understanding the development and drivers of political Islam. This section now focuses on the unique role played by diaspora and immigrant Muslim communities living in Western Europe and the United States. Islamist mobilization occurs in these
communities for a combination of reasons related to local conditions as well as the transnational dynamics discussed in the previous sections. From an international
counterterrorism perspective Western Muslim communities are of particular importance because of the threat of attacks carried out by local actors as well as because of the promising potential for Muslim communities in the West to act as credible
intermediaries with the larger Muslim world.88
Although there have been Muslims living in the West for centuries the large post-colonial era migrations beginning in the late 1950s and peaking in the 1970s, followed by the second and third generation Muslims who have come of age in the West over the last two decades, account for the majority of Western Muslim populations and are of particular importance to this analysis.89 Estimates of the number of Muslims living in the West vary from 8 to over 20 million in Western Europe and from 2 to 7 million in the United States (making them a small percentage of either the global
of Collective Representation," Annual Review of Sociology 27, 2001. Ignatieff, 1998,
The Warrior's Honor, London, Vintage. Juergensmeyer, 1998, "Christian Violence in America: Americans and Religions in the Twenty-First Century," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 558, July. Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Kaldor, 2001, New and Old Wars, Oxford, Polity, 58. Myers, Whaites and Wilkinson, 2000, "Faith in
Development," Georgetown Journal 1 (1), Winter/Spring. Wilkinson, Terrorism Versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response, 59-62.
88 Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds, 8-9, 241-51, 94-5. Kilcullen, The accidental
guerilla, 246. Leiken, 2005, "Europe's Angry Muslims," Foreign Affairs 84 (4),
July/August. Mackinlay and Al-Baddawy, "Rethinking Counterinsurgency," 25-7, 41-2.
Muslim population or the overall population of the West).90 As with looking at the Muslim world as a whole, it is important to emphasize the diversity within and between Muslim populations across Western Europe and the United States coming from very different countries, at different times, for different reasons, and retaining different approaches to Islam and levels of religiosity, varying degrees of assimilation in their new countries, and varied connections to Muslim communities globally.
Grievances and aspirations typical of immigrant experiences are a significant factor in understanding dynamics and attitudes within Muslim communities in the West today. For many Muslims the challenges of this experience were heightened by
significant language barriers with the general populations of their new countries as well as differences in skin colour, religious practices, and cultural traditions that heightened barriers to integration. These influences also reinforced immigrant ghettoization as newer arrivals tended to settle around specific large urban areas with those who had come earlier. As economic pressures at home drove many of these migrations, Muslim immigrants tended to start from disadvantaged positions at the bottom of the labour chain. These new immigrants often experienced relatively limited prospects for
advancement as well as stalled or failed assimilation efforts, too frequently leaving them “disenfranchised, unemployed, and alienated.”91 Differences between how Western countries have approached Muslim immigration further shapes the challenges and opportunities faced, with European observers emphasizing: France’s particular problems from the interaction of its aggressively secular tradition of laicism with traditional Muslim public displays of religious faith; backlashes and isolation arising
90 Mackinlay and Al-Baddawy, "Rethinking Counterinsurgency," 24. Mandaville,
Global Political Islam, 292. "Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream," 2007a: Pew Research Center, May 22,
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/483/muslim-americans. Obama, 2009, "Remarks by the President on a New Begining," (June 4), The White House Office of the Press
Secretary, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at- Cairo-University-6-04-09/. Ravitz, 2009, "Muslim in America: A 'Voyage of
Discovery'," CNN, February 9,
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/02/09/muslims.america/index.html. Roy, Globalized Islam, 101. Several factors complicate determining the size of the Muslim population in the West, including the post-World War Two reluctance of European nations to register race and religion with respect to public census and the similar lack of religious information compiled by the U.S. census.
91 Gerges, Journey of the Jihadist, 235. Kepel, Jihad, 185-202. Mandaville, Global
from Britain’s very different approach of focusing on multi-faith tolerance; as well as, the structural difficulties created by Germany’s legal assumptions that many immigrants are only temporary “guest workers” who will return to their home countries.92
Second and third generation Muslims in the West have also faced similar challenges as previous immigrant communities of rediscovering and shaping their identity, as well as handling adversity and conflict. Constrained by community isolation, and facing reactionary pressures from other populations who often perceive them as culturally and economically threatening, these new generations of Muslims in the West have struggled to overcome obstacles and assert their own sense of community pride, while responding to real and perceived humiliations or experiences of racism.93 Disproportionately in comparison to other populations, and including even those Muslim immigrants who have obtained higher education in their new homes, the new younger generation often suffers from much higher unemployment and perceived limited prospects contributing to social unrest, delinquency, and at the extreme recruitment into radical and militant groups.94 Echoing the experience of populations
across much of the Muslim world, many Muslim diaspora communities in the West experienced the raised hopes and then failures of previous liberal state endorsed solutions. Discussing France as an example, Kepel observes:
The success of Islamist ideology among this new generation also benefited from disappointed hopes in the great cause of the 1980s. In France, the SOS-Racisme movement had sought to bring all young people together, regardless of creed or color, in a great groundswell of protest against racism… but in the end had petered out, leaving memories of spectacular initiatives that had had no real effect on society.95
Congruent with a religious reawakening noted amongst other faiths as well as with the rise of political Islam across the Muslim world, many of these immigrant communities saw resurgence in Islamic identity especially amongst second and third generation Muslims. Frequently this rediscovered, or in significant ways reconstructed Islamic faith is detached from the unique historical and local cultural traditions of their parents’ generation and home countries, creating a more universal Islamic self-identity which
92 Kepel, Jihad, 198-9. Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds, 245-6. Mandaville, Global
Political Islam, 292-3. Roy, Globalized Islam, 100-7.
93 Roy, Globalized Islam, 18.
94 Mandaville, Global Political Islam, 297. Roy, Globalized Islam, 143. 95 Kepel, Jihad, 195.
some suggest is predisposed towards affiliation with transnational Islamic causes and Islamist movements.96
To understand Islamist mobilization, especially amongst Muslim Europeans, it is important to recognize the often-antagonistic connections between countries of origin and destination for specific Muslim immigrant communities. For a variety of reasons related to established patterns of migration and commerce, as well as geography, shared second languages, and inter-government relations many waves of immigration have been between specific nations and their former colonial rulers (for example, from North Africa and the Levant to France; and from Egypt, Palestine, and South Asia to Great Britain). While several of the factors encouraging this phenomenon ease the immigrant experience, the complicated legacy dynamics involved create many stresses driving contentious mobilization. Continued grievances and frustrations experienced by identity communities “back home” serve as an important additional source of conflict. At the same time the distance shrinking or freeing effects of globalization and especially communications technologies – from satellite TV programs which diaspora
communities can watch and call into live to the multitude of connections created by the internet – enable Muslims around the world to remain intimately aware of and
connected to events and communities in their countries of origin.97
The French and Algerian experience exemplifies this dynamic. After gaining independence following a particularly painful war, often studied by counterinsurgents for what not to do, many Algerians migrated to France because of the lack of economic opportunities and continuing violent conflict at home. Lingering resentments on both sides, coupled with the multitude of other challenges faced by immigrants, has
generated continuing discord and undermined assimilation efforts. Pecastaing explains how this mix creates conditions on which militant Islamist groups have fed writing about an al-Qaida affiliated cell of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in France:98
The roots of the GSPC lie in the several million economic immigrants who began to leave northern Africa for Europe when decolonization began in the 1960s. Islamism came to France with this diaspora, but its current virulence
96 Mandaville, Global Political Islam, 294. Roy, Globalized Islam, 118-24, 43, 64-7. 97 Lynch, Voices of the New Arab Public, 30.
98 The GSPC renamed itself al-Qaida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in
cannot be explained by uprootedness alone. The GSPC gets its edge from the trauma of the Algerian civil war, which has pitted a repressive military regime against religious radicals and has accounted for more than 100,000 deaths since the early 1990s. Some of those who fled the violence brought its baggage with them. The intolerance they encountered in France fed their rage, while the peaceful majority in their new communities looked the other way and condoned the radicals' tactics. State terror and exile defined the basic matrix that bred Bourti's cell.99
Emphasizing the observation made by others that Islamist doctrine is often an
afterthought for groups like this, she notes that “the militants’ anger seems to have no deeper eschatological root” and that their “ideological chatter” consisted of little more than “gossip about Osama bin Laden and sound bites from Ibn Taymiyya and
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, radical Muslim theologians from ages past” caring more about shallow symbolism than ideological depth.100
Political Islam has a more direct relationship with many more recent arrivals to Muslim diaspora communities in the West. While the failure of previous movements and government solutions across the Muslim world often contributed to the economic and security conditions driving much immigration, later immigrants were often part of the Islamic revival in their home countries who were then effectively exiled by
subsequent authoritarian repression of threatening Islamist movements. These more politicized immigrants, well versed in Islamist ideology and motivated to continue pursuing their cause, found conditions in many Muslim diaspora communities ripe for mobilization and receptive to the sense of pride as well as aspirations for a better future created by a rediscovery of an Islamic identity and mission.101 While these activists
reinforce a Muslim-first self-identity and focus on grievances tied to the geographic Muslim world, they also transplanted the Islamist explanation that many of the problems of immigrant communities stemmed from a failure to follow a pure form of Islam which was particularly amenable to the deterritorialized and reconstructed faith
99 Pecastaing, 2004, "The Secret Agents: Life Inside an al Qaeda Cell," Foreign Affairs
(January/February), http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/59553/camille- pecastaing/the-secret-agents-life-inside-an-al-qaeda-cell.
100 Ibid.
101 Gerges, Journey of the Jihadist, 235. Kepel, Jihad, 195. Mackinlay and Al-Baddawy,
that many second and third generation Muslims were already embracing.102 While many of the movements that took hold were non-violent, especially with respect to the
Western countries in which they lived, some of the Islamist activists were associated with militant groups with an evolving transnational focus.103
The potential militant Islamist mobilization of Muslims living in Europe and the United States poses a number of significant dangers – while these communities also often play vital roles for countering such threats – which can be described in three sets including: conflicts in other parts of the world; terrorist attacks at home; and, the role played by radicalized Western militants returning after participating in foreign
conflicts.104 For conflicts around the world, including those in which Western states are directly involved, diaspora communities can be important sources of funding,
recruitment, technical assistance, and popular support for insurgents. Alternatively, they may be a source of legitimacy for state actors and encouragement for local populations to exercise patience waiting for reforms and other initiatives to take hold. Building on the technological advancements that facilitate communication, commerce, and travel disparate distant communities can enable smaller militant groups to persist longer with greater effect (or discourage them) as well as amplify (or counter) propaganda and ideological efforts to gain the support of other vital populations. Activists recruited from Western communities often bring advantages of better education, relatively greater financial resources, as well as better access to and expertise with global media and communication technologies, while at the same time the involvement of individuals
102 Fukuyama, 2005, "A Year of Living Dangerously: Remember Theo van Gogh, and
Shudder for the Future," Wall Street Journal, November 2,
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007491. Roy, Globalized Islam.
103 Mackinlay and Al-Baddawy, "Rethinking Counterinsurgency," 22-3.
104 Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds, 250-1. Kilcullen, The accidental guerilla, 246.
Leiken, "Europe's Angry Muslims.". Mackinlay and Al-Baddawy, "Rethinking Counterinsurgency," 25-6. Mandaville, Global Political Islam, 261. Roy, Globalized Islam, 302-4. Several commentators have suggested that Muslim immigrants in the United States are better integrated and assimilated than Muslim immigrants in Europe, and therefore that Europe faces a significantly greater threat of domestic Islamist terrorism than the United States. Leiken, "Europe's Angry Muslims.". Roy, Globalized Islam, 100. This is supported by polling such as Pew’s 2007 efforts which found that American Muslims were more concerned about the dangers of Islamic extremism and less likely to be supportive of the use of suicide bombings under any conditions than European Muslims. "Muslim Americans," 52-4.
from these communities in counterinsurgent and counterterrorism efforts can bring greater cultural familiarity, crucial language skills, and a more recognizable “in-group face” to help promote official efforts.105
At home militants mobilized from Western Muslim communities pose a particularly dangerous threat for conducting domestic terrorist attacks.106 As native or long-time residents they generally speak Western languages, arouse much less suspicion knowing how to culturally pass, and can move between Western countries without concerns for visas or other more extensive identity checks. Militants recruited or
radicalized from Western Muslim communities are more familiar with security practices and potential vulnerabilities, and may be able to take longer to prepare for attacks without arousing suspicion. Homegrown terrorists who have not had direct connections with transnational groups are harder for counterterrorism agencies to discover, as they have not raised suspicions because of their travel to visit or other communication contacts with known terrorist networks. Whereas radicalized militants who have made contact with transnational networks pose greater dangers in terms of the potential training they have received, improved access to information about how to better carry out an attack, potential guidance for overcoming the mistakes learned from previous attempts, connections to key enablers or others willing to assist in an attack, and possible financial or other resource support.107 Offsetting the danger of domestic Islamist terrorist attacks, many threats and planned attacks over the last several years have been disrupted by the actions of members of Muslim communities who discovered plots or identified suspicious behaviour and then worked with authorities. Proactively the most credible influences discouraging radicalization or encouraging individuals to disengage from militant groups are other members of the same community bound by kinship and friendship, or exercising the authority of parents and respected community or religious leaders.108
105 Kilcullen, The accidental guerilla, 244-61. Londono and DeYoung, 2008, "Al-Qaeda
in Iraq Figure Was a Swedish Citizen," The Washington Post, October 17, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603615.html.
106 Mackinlay and Al-Baddawy, "Rethinking Counterinsurgency," 25-6. 107 Kilcullen, The accidental guerilla, 246.
Radicalized Westerners who participated in distant conflicts, including those who travelled to fight against Coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, pose a final unique threat upon their return having gained experience and knowledge as well as making transnational connections to militant groups.109 Based upon the experiences of previous generations of foreign fighters some of these individuals may return more radicalized to a cause, inspired by a belief that violent tactics can bring about local change, and better able to either carry out attacks themselves or perhaps even more dangerous having prestige and credibility within radical networks based upon their foreign experience enabling them to become leaders and recruiters creating an expanded terrorist threat.110 Alternatively, the negative experiences of disillusioned foreign
fighters who discovered that jihadist propaganda did not accurately portray conditions or grievances may be especially convincing intermediaries as they more intimately know and understand the thinking and language of radicalized groups, and have the credibility of someone whose been there and done that.
Although most of the concern about immigrant Muslim communities in the West has focused on the potential threat violent radicalization may pose as well as how to counter that threat often with the help of these communities, less work has discussed the positive potential for Western Muslim communities to play as credible communicators between the West and the larger Muslim world. Discussing this potential Kepel writes: The most important battle in the war for Muslim minds during the next decade will be fought not in Palestine or Iraq but in these communities of believers on the outskirts of London, Paris, and other European cities, where Islam is already a growing part of the West. If European societies are able to integrate these Muslim populations, handicapped as they are by dispossession, and steer them toward prosperity, this new generation of Muslims may become the Islamic vanguard of the next decade, offering their co-religionists a new vision of the faith and a way out of the dead-end politics that has paralyzed their countries of origin.111
109 Leiken, "Europe's Angry Muslims."
110 Kilcullen, The accidental guerilla, 244-61. It is worth emphasizing that this training
effect of foreign jihads is part of al-Qaida’s core strategy. In Knights Under the
Prophet’s Banner Ayman al-Zawahiri writes: “A Jihadist movement needs an arena that would act like an incubator where its seeds would grow and where it can acquire