How terrorism finds root in the West

Alienation and radical European politics are factors.

from the May 23, 2007 edition

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However, many high-profile terrorists on the Western scene were born in the West – Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted for the 9/11 atrocities in the US, for one. Others, such as lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, came as students. Radical political ideas picked up in Europe are often equal in weight to religion in such cases.

British-born Muslims, involved in the July 7, 2005, London terrorist bombings, often train in Afghanistan or Pakistan but don't usually return to their parents' homelands for jihad there.

European-born Muslims and Muslim converts and Middle Eastern and North African Arabs often fight for Muslim causes in other lands: Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, or – since the US invasion of 2003 – Iraq. Thus far, the Islamist Hamas movement in the Israeli-Palesinian conflict has shown little interest in the internationalist ideology of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, which preaches establishment of a global Islamist state. Since terrorist attacks by Palestinians in Europe a generation ago, very few, if any, Palestinians, Afghans, or Iraqis have turned up in violent groups operating in Western Europe. North Africans involved in terrorism in Spain and Italy and those of Pakistani origin or ancestry in Britain are often young people belonging to the second generation of immigrants.

Turks in Germany and France, and the ethnic Turkish minority in northern Greece (whom the Athens government prefers to call Greek Muslims) are exceptions. They have fewer identity problems. They speak Turkish as well as the language of their host country; they're de facto Europeans without divided loyalties.

Islamist radicalism and its stepchild, terrorism, are problems associated with a younger generation of immigrants. Youth was also a feature of European leftist terrorists of the 1970s, who bombed trains and kidnapped bankers and politicians in Germany, Italy, and France.

America's success in integrating the vast majority of Muslim immigrants into its society could serve as an example in Europe. France's President Sarkozy, in partnership with like-minded German Chancellor Angela Merkel, realizes this. More forceful action against poverty and encouraging education and upward social mobility should be main weapons in the so-called war on terror.

• Former Monitor correspondent John K. Cooley covered countries between Morocco and Pakistan for nearly a half-century. One of his books is "Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism."

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