Recently, there’s been a lot of hysteria over Syrian refugees and the idea that groups like ISIS could sneak operatives into the U.S. and Europe with them. There are those who would have you believe that every Muslim coming to the west from Syria is a terrorist and should be denied entry. The thing is, not all terrorists are complete outsiders. Too many of them are coming from much closer to home.
Syrian refugees crowding onto a train in Budapest, Hungary. Source: AP/Frank Augstein.
For instance, a number of the attackers in Paris were French and Belgian citizens who became radicalized at some point and went off to war, a war they decided to bring back home. These aren’t the only Muslims in the west to be turned against the countries of their birth, either by propaganda, a desire for glory or other motivations. “Jihadi John”, the infamous ISIS spokesman, was a middle-class British citizen. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, is American and was a member of our military, but that didn’t stop him from betraying the men and women he served with. He was supposedly influenced by the preaching of Anwar al-Awlaki, also an American citizen, who was later killed in a drone strike. More recently, Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters in San Bernardino, California, was a US citizen and an employee of San Bernardino County. He met his wife and accomplice, Tashfeen Malik, online and brought her to America from Pakistan on a “fiancée” (K-1) visa. It’s unclear which of them had been radicalized first, but that hardly matters in light of the number of lives taken in their hands. ISIS and Al-Qaeda don’t need to deal with the logistics of infiltrating a country for a large-scale attack if they can inspire numerous smaller-scale attacks by people already in the targeted nations. A million lone-wolf killers scattered throughout the country maybe can't do as much damage as an army, but they can certainly cause a lot of chaos and confusion.
Suspects in the November 17th attacks in Paris, France. Qatar Scoop.
Banning all Muslim immigrants and tourists is not a solution. Neither is putting American Muslims in internment camps, like was done to Japanese-Americans during World War II, “just in case” any one of them was a spy. To do either could influence the disenfranchisement and radicalization that leads some Muslims to commit acts of terror. We can carry out airstrikes, or even deploy troops to Syria and Iraq, but these efforts are not enough to stop terrorist groups from recruiting martyrs to their cause. The governments of the world, including our own, need to step up their strategies to counter, if not prevent, ISIS' propaganda campaign. While I'll leave the particulars to someone more qualified, I will state the utmost importance of stripping away the appeal of jihad to angered, disaffected Muslims.
Or we could continue to promote a "Keep Out" sign society and see how quickly things turn South.
