Extremists Orbit Around Islam's Rebirth
[..] Europe's Muslims have undergone a sea change over the past generation. Mostly born in the West, they are coming of age and many are reclaiming a heritage ?- and a faith ?- that they or their immigrant parents let slip away, often to better integrate.
But radical elements have penetrated the fringes of this movement of re-Islamization, as experts call the return to Islam. The July 7 suicide bombings of the London transport system that killed more than 50 people showed that the line between rediscovering Islam and radicalization can, in a tiny minority of cases, be razor-thin.
Three of the four alleged attackers were citizens of Britain whose families had immigrated from Pakistan. Two were known to have turned to religion just a few years ago.
Abdelhak Eddouk, a part-time-cleric at a mosque in the Paris suburb of Grigny, said Muslims also are weighing whether the threat or radicalization lies in Muslims returning to their faith who go too far. "We ask the question, too. It is there?" he said.
[..] Authorities cite various factors to explain why a European Muslim might swing into a radical orbit ?- from foreign clerics who can inflame passions, to penitentiaries that have become a breeding ground for fundamentalism, to the Internet where some sites preach holy war or even carry bomb-making instructions.
However, there are fundamental causes directly linked to Muslims' experience in Europe, such as being victims of racism or losing touch with Islamic culture.
Olivier Roy, a leading authority on the phenomenon, differs from colleagues who blame radicalization on the Middle East conflict, Afghanistan and, now, the war in Iraq.
"Radicalization happens, firstly, among Muslims who have lost contact with the Middle East," among youths "who want to rebuild Islam outside any cultural context," he said. Often, they consider their parents bad Muslims.
"These youths, in a situation of deculturalization, are fascinated by this idea that they will reconstruct a pure Islam," he said.
Eddouk, the prayer leader, agreed with this notion. "What is missing for Muslims in France, and in Europe in general, is knowing the religion well," he said. "It's not studied in families or schools, so the first person who comes wearing a djellaba (robe), they listen" to him.
For Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist who studies Islamic extremists, racism is among the prime factors pushing a fringe of European Muslims to radicalize.
A sense of humiliation is a common cause of the slide into extremism, along with a vague sense that Islam is in danger and an "abstract West" is to blame, said Khosrokhavar, author of "Suicide Bombers: The New Martyrs of Allah."
"They think (all) Muslims are humiliated by the same West that humiliates them," he said.
