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Muslims In The West Post 9/11
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the world became witness to the dramatic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, as well as the downing of a plane in Pennsylvania. Some 3000 people died, as did the perception that the United States was a fortress immune to foreign intervention. Other spectacular attacks on Western targets followed: Bali in 2002 (200 victims), the Madrid train attacks in 2004 (191 victims) and the London train bombings in 2005 (56 victims). The perpetrators of 9/11 had foreign networks that extended deep into Europe, while the London bombings were the work of homegrown Muslims. The Madrid attacks are often referred to as “homegrown terrorism” because at least 21 of the 27 individuals implicated adopted their jihadist ideology while living in Spain. The West was put on notice: Islamist identity, the ideology that had been fostered and promoted by the west since the end of World War II to impede the spread of communism, had mutated and become anti-western, and thus a serious security threat. Increasingly Muslims living in the West began to be seen as a fifth column, while Islam and Muslims became associated with violence, viewed by some as an existential threat to the West.
Western nations eager to placate their populations gripped by fear began to legislate laws that targeted Muslims as security threats. The United States passed the USA PATRIOT Act which gave the government the right to spy on citizens without a warrant and to incarcerate people without cause. Other Western nations also have become gripped by a fear of Islamic extremism and have passed similar laws in order to maintain vigilance over the Muslim population. Western citizens began to buy into the ideas generated by Islamophobes since the fall of the Soviet Empire that Islam is the enemy of the West. These sentiments have increased since 2013 by the carefully orchestrated dramatic brutality of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) that not only has threatened the geographic and political order put in place by European colonial powers in the Middle East in the aftermath of WWI, but also has begun to recruit fighters from among the disenchanted young Muslims of the west. ISIS’s professional propaganda magazines and videos have repeatedly announced that the West is its enemy.
Most Muslims of the West are caught in a vise; they are held accountable for the atrocities of terrorists overseas and called on daily not only to distance themselves but to denounce their ideology and actions. That only an estimated 1–2 percent of Muslims living in the West are suspected of harboring extremist ideologies or are involved in extremist activities has not impeded growing suspicion of the entire Muslim population. The rate of arrests of terrorist suspects in various European Union nations increased 20 times that of the United States. Muslims are often seen as a foreign enemy, which has dramatically increased the incidents of discrimination, restricted legal and social rights, and enhanced anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment among the general European public. The unemployment rate of foreign-born residents has more than doubled that of natives in the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, and France, and is more than 1.5 times higher in Germany, Austria, and the UK.
Muslims In The West Post 9/11
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Last Updated: 04/2022
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