Terror and Islam in Europe

I got back on Sunday from a week-long conference on migration and social cohesion in Europe. I can’t report much, since almost all the sessions were off the record, yet what wasn’t said was often most revealing. In Brussels, a top EU counterterrorism official gave a long presentation without mentioning the word “Islam” (or any related terms) even once. In the Q&A session that followed, I asked him about that surprising omission. He provided a minimal answer that stated the obvious — Muslims extremists have been responsible for the most damaging attacks in recent years.

This was only the most glaring example of the apparent taboo that has shut down open discussion about the relationship between terrorism and radical Islam. But to whom does the taboo apply? My best guess is that certain educated, progressive Europeans are afraid of tying together Islam and terrorism. But Europe as a whole is embroiled in public controversy about Islam. In Belgium and France, the governments are taking steps to ban the niqab, more commonly referred to as the burka. In Switzerland, a recent referendum banned the construction of new mosque minarets.

I hesitate to draw too many inferences from one week of discussion, yet I would at least want to explore the hypothesis that there is a major disconnect between the European public and much of the intellectual class. A commitment to multiculturalism and a fear of popular racism seems to have resulted in a sort of intellectual paralysis, where one cannot think openly and creatively about the very serious threat that Muslim extremists present to Europe.