Europe’s security had actually calmed down: the Islamic State (IS) lost its appeal, Salafists do not preach in public, one searches in vain for bearded men and veiled women in the pedestrian zones of Europe, distributing Quran books for free with the associated promises of salvation, the self-proclaimed Sharia police are no longer acting out either.
The security authorities in Europe also agreed that the number of potential attacks had fallen thanks to a recent large-scale surveillance of Islamic threats. Last year, according to Europol, there were only six jihadist attacks or attempted attacks across Europe. Police and secret services also worked more closely together on investigations across countries, and information about possible threats and attacks was exchanged better than in the past. Islamism remained present as a danger, but many now saw it as just a smoldering fire that politics and the security apparatus were bringing more and more under control.
A turning point was October 7, 2023 with the terror of Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza. These two events could be an accelerant for the Islamist scene in Europe. Since then, there has been a risk of terrorist attacks in the West. The authorities have thwarted four attacks in Germany alone in the past few weeks, and several Hamas members who had planned attacks were arrested. While countries like France are now sounding the alarm, no terror alert levels have been declared in Germany. Many experts in Berlin still believed that a threat from Hamas, the terrorist branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, was not present in Europe due to a lack of supporters.
Europe’s interior ministers now agree that the risk of “radicalization of violent Islamists is high.” There is a “changed threat situation” that governments are taking “very seriously”. “Islamist individual perpetrators are a danger that always exists.” For the European security organs, developments in the Middle East are likely to “develop a high threat relevance for the security situation in Europe”. If the conflict worsens, individual people in particular could see this as “encouragement for an attack”.
Terrorism experts are convinced that the war in Gaza is particularly suitable for inflaming hatred. Hardly any conflict can be presented so ideologically clearly. Unlike in previous conflicts, for example in Syria, here it is not Muslims fighting against other Muslims, but rather Muslims against Jews, who are still hated by many. There is talk of a “genocide” by the Israelis against Palestinians. Political scientist Peter Neumann from King’s College London says: “This war has everything that Islamists could wish for.” Hamas’ propaganda also has an impact. “An attack requires perpetrators who are so emotionally committed that they go out and take action,” says the terrorism expert. “Strong emotions” played an important role. “And that’s what we’re seeing at the moment.”
This poses a problem for the security authorities. Because the scene has become more diverse. There are former extremists who had actually broken away from Islamism and who are now radicalizing again in a very short time frame. There is also a new form of extremism: young people who radicalize themselves on platforms such as TikTok or YouTube, without any fixed connection to an extremist organization. This happened before, when Salafist agitators targeted young men and attacked the values of the majority society. There are now many more such videos and if you watch a few, the algorithm will give you more and more. According to extremism researchers, many young people are under the spell of such posts. It is a „tiktokization of terror“. Organizations such as “Reality Islam”, “Generation Islam” and “Muslim Interactive”, which are close to Hamas or to Hizb ut-Tahrir, banned in most EU countries, are particularly active on the Internet. Hizb ut-Tahrir aims for a global caliphate state, but there is no mention of that in these videos. Nobody talks about unbelievers who have to be killed. Instead, it is claimed that the German state oppresses Muslims, for example because it bans pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
“The agitators are clever, they don’t even talk about the caliphate. They take up the issues that concern people, everyday issues, experiences of discrimination, both alleged and real, and that’s how they get their followers,” says Ahmad Rukovic, extremism researcher in The Hague. There is no doubt in his mind that Muslims experience such discrimination and he sees a danger in this very fact: if Muslims felt excluded, then the human catchers would have an easy time of it.
Platforms like Tiktok are just the “gateway drug”. We continue in closed groups on Telegram or Signal. There, young people can further radicalize themselves. They encourage each other, and at some point one of them might be ready to take action. Examples prove this thesis: There have already been preparations for attacks by young people in Germany, Austria and France.
All of this makes it much harder for the services to monitor the scene. In the past, people still met in places known to the authorities, in mosques, community centers or shisha bars. Exactly where radical preachers gathered their followers. These places could be observed. In the past, many Islamists tried to travel to IS territory. Anyone who made it was gone. And those who didn’t succeed at least left their personal details behind. Then the services at least knew who they were dealing with. There used to be a clearer ideology. Anyone who wanted to join IS had to commit to its radical interpretation of Islam, they had to know at least a few verses from the Koran and often dressed accordingly. People like that got noticed at some point.
Today, however, young people with pseudonyms log in first to Tiktok, then to YouTube, and in the end they end up in one of tens of thousands of encrypted Telegram chats as Yussuf13763. Today they cite terrorist organizations such as IS, which have released their trademark. All you have to do is make a fairly straight pledge of loyalty and film the crime with your cell phone and IS will claim responsibility for the attack. All of this only has to do with Islam in the sense that the perpetrators refer to it. “Most extremists have no idea about the Islamic faith tradition,” said Neumann. At most they knew about political Islam, which has existed since the 1950s and 1960s. “Islam is an identity marker for them, just like Christianity is for right-wing identitarians.” After all, their followers have no idea about Christianity.
All publishing rights and copyrights reserved to MENA Research Center.
