U.S., European Experts Ponder the Threat of Homegrown Terrorists
9
2,007
By Stew Magnuson and Grace Jean
As Western nations struggle to weed out potential terrorists attempting to pass through their borders or immigration systems to carry out attacks, the threat of so-called “homegrown terrorists” is a rising concern.
Both the United States and Europe have large Muslim immigrant communities where radicalization may take place, but these communities differ in many important aspects, experts note. And while European nations have uncovered a spate of Islamic terrorist cells that rose within their borders, the United States has produced some infamous examples of homegrown terrorists — notably Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph — both non-Muslims.
Lidewijde Ongering, the Dutch deputy national coordinator for counterterrorism, told the House Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that part of the problem in Europe is the relatively low social class of Muslim immigrants. Many Muslims there, especially in the Netherlands, were brought in as “cheap labor” after World War II, she said. She defines homegrown terrorists as “young people who grew up in the Netherlands and became radicalized there.”
“A lack of education, huge cultural differences and difficulties in social integration were some of the most serious problems to beset this group,” she said.
Because of differences in immigration laws, the United States has been better able to “cherry pick” immigrants from a higher social class, who are less likely to resort to terrorism, said Marc Sageman, an expert on al-Qaida and related terrorist organizations.
“The United States allowed Muslim engineers, physicians, university professors and businessmen to immigrate. The result is that the Muslim American community is solidly middle class. On a socio-economic scale, we are dealing with very different communities: middle class in the United States and an unskilled labor pool in Europe.”
His testimony came only days before a group of well-educated doctors became suspects in a spate of attempted car-bombings in the United Kingdom, which points to the difficulty in profiling future terrorists.
Although the U.S. Muslim population is generally well-integrated into society, the growth of Islamophobia after the 9/11 attacks may make some U.S. Muslims more likely to support terrorism, Lynn Martin and Farooq Kathwari, co-chairpersons of the Task Force on Muslim American Civic and Political Engagement, told the committee.
“The present climate of mistrust and the lack of engagement threaten to marginalize and potentially alienate some elements among Muslim Americans,” they said.