ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam (26 page)

The prospect of ISIS supporters carrying out Theo van Gogh–style executions of infidels on Holland’s streets was apparently enough to shake Kortenoeven’s colleague out of a self-satisfied slumber. Unfortunately, other Dutch officials have chosen not only to ignore the ISIS threat but to act as outright apologists for Islamic State jihadists. Pieter Broertjes, the left-wing mayor of an affluent town called Hilversum, told a radio interviewer that Dutch Muslims should be permitted to travel to the Islamic State and join the jihad, comparing them, incredibly, to Jews who left for Israel after World War II. “It comes to adult humans,” he sniffed. “The Dutch [Jews] also went to Israel after the war to fight against the British. We didn’t stop them then either.”
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In other words, Broertjes believes that Jews fighting to establish a pro-Western democracy in their ancient homeland were no different from ISIS jihadists committing genocide to create a caliphate devoted to the West’s destruction. Not to be outdone, Yasmina Haifi, a Dutch security official who worked for a department within the government’s National Coordinator of Anti-Terrorism and Security, tweeted in August 2014 that “ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It is a preconceived plan of Zionists who want to deliberately make Islam look bad.” Haifi, who is of Turkish descent, was suspended from her post because of her anti-Semitic outburst.
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The notion that Israel is a greater threat to world stability than ISIS is not unique to the Netherlands. In fact, it is a commonly held view heard in cafés, newsrooms, and government chambers throughout Western Europe. Any American that is expecting a strong, confident Europe to
stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States in the generational struggle against Islamism is in for a very unpleasant surprise. Uninterested in defense spending, dismissive of Christianity, rife with anti-Semitism, and beholden to their restive and growing Muslim populations, our European allies have passed the point of moral relativism and are well on their way to moral rot.

And jihadists are eagerly waiting in the wings.

In 2004, Princeton historian Bernard Lewis, one of the world’s foremost scholars of Islam, told the German daily
Die Welt
that Europe would be Islamic by the end of the twenty-first century “at the very latest.”
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Lewis’s statement may have come as a shock to Americans who had not been following the demographic trends in Europe during the latter half of the Cold War and during the 1990s. But to native Europeans who have witnessed whole neighborhoods transform into sharia enclaves where non-Muslims—including police—are unwelcome, Lewis was merely stating the obvious. From Spain to Sweden to Italy, towering minarets adorn newly built mosques that are overflowing with worshipers. Europe’s churches, on the other hand, are old, empty, and lifeless; and its Jewish communities, as we’ll see later in this chapter, are under siege and leaving. Further, indigenous Europeans simply do not reproduce; in country after country, their fertility rates are below the needed replacement level of 2.1 children per family. Conversely, Muslims reproduce above replacement levels in nearly every Western European nation. In France, for instance, Muslims have 2.8 children per couple, while non-Muslims have 1.9. In the United Kingdom, it’s 3.0 children per Muslim couple and 1.9 for non-Muslim couples. The trend is the same across the continent.
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As of 2010, over 44 million Muslims lived in Europe, 6 percent of the total population. That number is estimated to rise by nearly one-third, to
over 58 million, or 8 percent of the European population, by 2030.
¹⁷
France, with at least 5.5 million Muslims, or 8 to 10 percent of its total population, leads the way in Western Europe, followed by Germany, with over 4 million Muslims, Great Britain with nearly 3.1 million, Spain with 1.67 million, and Italy with 1.6 million.
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ISIS has found these burgeoning European Muslim communities, which are largely unassimilated and frequently radicalized, to be a sort of jihadi jackpot. As of this writing, at least three thousand European citizens, and counting, have traveled to the Middle East to join the Islamic State.
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Neither Western airstrikes nor the increased scrutiny of European governments seems to have done much to stem the flow of European-born fighters to Syria and Iraq.
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In June 2014, the Soufan Group, a respected global consulting firm, released a report on Syrian foreign fighters that included a comprehensive country-by-country breakdown.
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Here are the numbers for Western Europe—which have undoubtedly increased since the report was published, perhaps significantly, given ISIS’s higher profile and battlefield successes and the establishment of a caliphate in the summer of 2014. Australia and Canada are also included:

          
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France:
The Soufan Group report had the number at 700, but the French interior minister upped that number in September 2014, telling an interviewer, “930 French citizens or foreigners usually resident in France are today involved in jihad in Iraq and Syria.”
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United Kingdom:
The Soufan report had the number at 400. But as we saw in
chapter six
, other estimates range from anywhere between 500 and 1,500 British jihadists in Iraq and Syria.

          
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Germany:
The Soufan report had the number at around 300, but in November 2014 the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service put the number at 550, adding, “About 60 people from Germany have died or killed themselves, at
least nine in suicide attacks.” Some 180 German jihadists have already returned home from Syria and Iraq.
²³

          
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Australia:
Around 250.

          
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Belgium:
Around 250.

          
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The Netherlands:
120 (upped to 130 by Dutch intelligence).
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Austria:
No approximate number given in the Soufan report, but Austrian authorities put the number around 130.
²⁵

          
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Denmark:
100.

          
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Spain:
51.

          
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Italy:
No approximate number given in the Soufan report, but Italian media reports put the number at 50, with Italy’s interior minister confirming that “tens” of Italians have left for the Middle East to fight alongside ISIS.
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Norway:
Between 40 and 50.

          
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Finland:
More than 30.

          
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Canada:
The Soufan report put the number at 30, but more recent estimates have placed the number at 130 Canadian foreign fighters.
²⁷

          
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Sweden:
Around 30.

          
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Ireland:
Between 25 and 30.

          
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Portugal:
No approximate number given in the Soufan report, but Portuguese authorities put the number at 12.
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Switzerland:
Around 10.

          
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Luxembourg:
No approximate number.

These Euro-jihadis not only pose a threat to their home countries if and when they return from the Middle East. They can also enter the United States without a visa as part of a waiver program that the U.S.
shares with its Western European allies. This Visa Waiver Program creates a much greater chance that Mohammed from Germany, on his way back from his adventures with the caliphate, will decide to bypass Berlin or Hamburg and make an unpleasant little pit stop in New York City or Chicago, instead.

While jihadists from Western Europe pose the greatest threat to the United States, thanks mainly to the Visa Waiver Program, the Soufan Group report shows that no corner of Europe has been untouched by the gravitational pull of ISIS. Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia, and Ukraine have all seen Muslim citizens travel to the Islamic State, and the Russian Federation (including jihadist hotbeds Chechnya and Dagestan) has sent some 800 jihadists into ISIS’s ranks.
²⁹

Texas Congressman Michael McCaul, a Republican who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, has described the pipeline from Europe to the Islamic State and back again as a “jihadi superhighway.” In an op-ed for
Time,
he called out Turkey, the main transit point for foreign fighters looking to enter the Islamic State, for not doing enough to stem the flow of European jihadis. He added, “European Union security gaps are also a problem”:

          
EU law forbids member states from automatically running EU citizens against terror watch lists when they return to the continent’s 26-country Schengen Area, a large swath of Europe in which its citizens can travel freely without border checks. As a result, only a fraction of EU citizens are screened against terror databases when they re-enter Europe. This vulnerability may allow European foreign fighters—many of whom can travel visa-free to the United States—to make it back to the West without drawing attention.

                
Other EU security deficiencies can also make it easier for American extremists to travel back from the conflict zone,
including the lack of an advanced EU-wide air passenger information screening system and inadequate fraudulent document detection capabilities.
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McCaul went on to note, “In all too many ways, Europe is in a pre-9/11 counterterrorism posture,” citing barriers to cooperation between European law enforcement and intelligence agencies and the difficulties EU member states face in prosecuting foreign fighters. McCaul’s observation that America’s closest allies in the world outside of Canada and Israel continue to have a pre-9/11 mindset—despite numerous Islamic terror attacks and foiled plots on European soil over the past decade, plus the ongoing ISIS foreign fighter bonanza—should be disquieting to every American. And according to Soeren Kern, one of the world’s foremost experts on the Islamization of Europe, things aren’t likely to improve any time soon.

I caught up with Kern as he visited the United States in September 2014. He’s a Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute—an international policy think tank chaired by former UN ambassador John Bolton—and a Senior Analyst for the influential Strategic Studies Group in Spain, where’s he’s based. Kern travels widely, and no one has a better on-the-ground feel for what’s happening in Europe.

          
STAKELBECK: How strong is ISIS in Europe?

          
KERN: They are strong in Europe and becoming stronger. Everything took on a new dimension after June [2014], when ISIS declared a caliphate . . . ISIS is creating a new state and that has strong appeal. A lot of European Muslims want to support it financially—they may not travel there, but they will support the caliphate financially and logistically. I’m concerned that we could see an audacious attack by ISIS or its supporters on European soil. . . . The Salafists are fearless—they have absolutely no respect for the West. They
hate the West and they hate democracy. They are becoming more bold and assertive—and as the Muslim population grows in Europe, we’ll see more of that.

          
STAKELBECK: Talk about the assimilation problems in Europe’s Muslim communities.

          
KERN: Most of the Islamists are second or third generation immigrants who have not been accepted into European society. There is a lot of prejudice. If your name is Mohammed, it isn’t easy getting a job. Many Muslims don’t feel like they have a home in Europe, yet many have never even been to their native lands like Algeria or Morocco. They are frustrated and angry and susceptible to the Salafist propaganda of [radical UK preacher] Anjem Choudary and other people. They have no hope—Salafist preachers give them new meaning in life. They can become jihadists in this world and secure life in the next world. There is no guarantee of salvation in Islam. Martyrdom is the only guarantee. Unlike Christianity, where belief in Jesus gets you to heaven, a Muslim is never quite sure. That is why jihad is so appealing.