from http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/opinion/27FRIE.html, on Belgium's
"two domes". interesting piece ,certainly for the Belgian reader I am...
"Many of the terrorists we are now confronting are a Western phenomenon,
existing inside the Islamic diaspora in the U.S. and Europe," wrote Adrian
Karatnycky, the president of Freedom House, in a highly original essay in
National Review. These men are not "sleepers" planted within Europe years in
advance by bin Laden, he argues; instead, they are minted right there, when
they encounter the West.
"Like the leaders of America's Weather Underground, Germany's Baader-Meinhof
Gang, Italy's Red Brigades, and Japan's Red Army Faction, the Islamic
terrorists were university-educated converts to an all-encompassing
neo-totalitarian ideology," Mr. Karatnycky argues. "For them, Islamism is
the new universal revolutionary creed, and bin Laden is Sheikh Guevara."
(?)
Mr. Karatnycky is right: the real challenge of the West is to understand
what is happening not just in Iraq or Saudi Arabia, but also in its own
backyard, in the chemical reaction between Western societies and their own
mosques and Muslim diasporas. That's where the killer pilots were conceived,
and that's where they must be tracked ? but in a way that respects the fact
that 99.9 percent of the Muslims in Europe or America are good citizens, not
militants.
Belgium is a microcosm of the whole story. There are 300 mosques in Belgium
today, with 300 domes. But there is another famous dome here: the huge radar
dome at NATO headquarters in Mons. Somewhere in the cultural encounter
between these two domes of Belgium ? the dome of NATO and the dome of the
mosques ? lies the key to this Sept. 11 and maybe the next.
from: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/opinion/27FRIE.html
"two domes". interesting piece ,certainly for the Belgian reader I am...
"Many of the terrorists we are now confronting are a Western phenomenon,
existing inside the Islamic diaspora in the U.S. and Europe," wrote Adrian
Karatnycky, the president of Freedom House, in a highly original essay in
National Review. These men are not "sleepers" planted within Europe years in
advance by bin Laden, he argues; instead, they are minted right there, when
they encounter the West.
"Like the leaders of America's Weather Underground, Germany's Baader-Meinhof
Gang, Italy's Red Brigades, and Japan's Red Army Faction, the Islamic
terrorists were university-educated converts to an all-encompassing
neo-totalitarian ideology," Mr. Karatnycky argues. "For them, Islamism is
the new universal revolutionary creed, and bin Laden is Sheikh Guevara."
(?)
Mr. Karatnycky is right: the real challenge of the West is to understand
what is happening not just in Iraq or Saudi Arabia, but also in its own
backyard, in the chemical reaction between Western societies and their own
mosques and Muslim diasporas. That's where the killer pilots were conceived,
and that's where they must be tracked ? but in a way that respects the fact
that 99.9 percent of the Muslims in Europe or America are good citizens, not
militants.
Belgium is a microcosm of the whole story. There are 300 mosques in Belgium
today, with 300 domes. But there is another famous dome here: the huge radar
dome at NATO headquarters in Mons. Somewhere in the cultural encounter
between these two domes of Belgium ? the dome of NATO and the dome of the
mosques ? lies the key to this Sept. 11 and maybe the next.
from: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/opinion/27FRIE.html