{"id":1189,"date":"2007-05-01T18:36:46","date_gmt":"2007-05-01T23:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2009-04-12T18:39:25","modified_gmt":"2009-04-12T23:39:25","slug":"the-menace-of-islamic-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2007\/05\/01\/the-menace-of-islamic-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"The menace of Islamic terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nDon’t believe the hype<\/a>. Reading the recent Europol report<\/a> (PDF) on terrorism within Europe in 2006 it’s easy to see socalled Islamic terrorism is as much hype as reality:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nAltogether 498 attacks were carried out in the EU in 2006.The vast majority of them resulted in
\nlimited material damage and were not intended to kill. However, the failed attack in Germany and the foiled London plot demonstrate that Islamist terrorists also aim at mass casualties.\n<\/p>\n

\nA total of 706 individuals suspected of terrorism offences were arrested in 15 Member States in
\n2006. Investigations into Islamist terrorism are clearly a priority for Member States\u2019 law enforcement as demonstrated by the number of arrested suspects reported by Member States.\n<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

\nAlong with the failed terrorist attack that took place in Germany, Denmark and the UK each
\nreported one attempted terrorist attack in 2006. No further information on prevented or
\ndisrupted Islamist terrorist attacks was made available by the Member States\u2019 law enforcement
\nauthorities.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe London airplane plot and the trolley bomb case of Germany targeted civilians and transportation infrastructure in Member States. The radicalisation process of the suspects in these cases is reported to have been rapid.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe weapon of choice of Islamist terrorists are Improvised Explosive Devices made with homemade explosives. The cases reported by the UK and Denmark involved the use of Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP), a highly volatile explosive the use of which requires a certain degree of
\nexpertise.\n<\/p>\n

\nHalf of all the terrorism arrests were related to Islamist terrorism. France, Spain, Italy and the
\nNetherlands had the highest number of arrests of Islamist terrorist suspects. The majority of the
\narrested suspects were born in Algeria,Morocco and Tunisia and had loose affiliations to North
\nAfrican terrorist groups, such as the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group and the Salafist Group
\nfor Preaching and Combat.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nYet as the report says, Islamic terrorism is much more of a priority for various countries’ security establishments than more frequent, more mundane threats are. That’s because Islamic terrorism is sexy, is the kind of menace that gets the purse strings opens, that frightens people and hence is politically useful. Focus the population on a swarthy horde of evildoers menacing it both abroad and at home and it will pay less attention to what you are doing… As always, the security state needs its enemies to justify its existence.\n<\/p>\n

\nAs Palau said, over at the other blog<\/a>: “the facts are being fixed around the policy. While our leaders ramp up the paranoia and suspicion of the Moslems in our midst and present the available data to make it appear our biggest threat is from ‘outsiders\u2019 (thus validating the ‘war on terror\u2019 propaganda and rhetoric we\u2019ve been subjected to since 2001) quietly the wannabe stormtroopers on the inside are regrouping.<\/cite>”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don’t believe the hype. Reading the recent Europol report (PDF) on terrorism within Europe in 2006 it’s easy to see socalled Islamic terrorism is as much hype as reality: Altogether 498 attacks were carried out in the EU in 2006.The vast majority of them resulted in limited material damage and were not intended to kill. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[652],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-terror","tag-islamic-terrorism-is-overrated"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1191,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions\/1191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}