Europe vs. Radical Islam - Alarmist Americans have mostly bad advice for Europeans. By Francis Fukuyama

Slate

"Europe vs. Radical Islam
Alarmist Americans have mostly bad advice for Europeans.
By Francis Fukuyama
Posted Monday, Feb. 27, 2006, at 6:27 AM ET

The riots that consumed the French suburbs last November, and now the uproar over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, have underlined for all to see that the ongoing struggle with radical Islamism (aka the 'war on terrorism') is if anything more of a problem for Europe than it is for America. For the United States, with a Muslim population of less than 1 percent of the total, radical Islam is an issue to be dealt with 'over there,' in dysfunctional areas of the Middle East like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. For Europe, however, it is a much more immediate and threatening crisis because it is domestic. In the Netherlands, 6 percent to 7 percent of the population, and as much as half the population of large cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam, are Muslim. In France, the percentage may reach to 12 or 13 percent. Many of the organizers of recent terrorist incidents—including Mohammed Atta, the Sept. 11 ringleader; the March 7 Madrid bombers; Mohammed Bouyeri, assassin of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh; and the July 7 London bombers—were radicalized not in the Middle East, but in Western Europe. Many, like Bouyeri and the London bombers, were second-generation citizens who spoke their adopted country's language fluently."