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"Minor" IS attacks in Europe


Altherion

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As suggested in the Munich thread, this is a separate thread for the terrorist attacks in Europe not massive enough to warrant a thread of their own. There have been quite a few of them in the past few days, mainly by "refugees." Here is a summary of the German ones:

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On 18 July, a teenage Afghan refugee hacked at passengers on a train in Wuerzburg with an axe and knife, wounding five. He was shot dead by police.

On 24 July, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee killed a woman with a machete and wounded five other people as he fled before being arrested.

Later that day, a 27-year-old Syrian whose refugee application had been refused blew himself up outside a bar in Ansbach. Fifteen people were wounded.

 

In addition, there was a gruesome one in France:

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Two men entered the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a suburb of Rouen, during morning mass at about 09:25 local time.

Inside was the priest - 86-year-old Father Jacques Hamel - as well as three nuns and two parishioners, according to prosecutor Francois Molins.

One of the nuns, Sister Danielle, said the men, armed with knifes, forced the priest to his knees before cutting his throat.

"They recorded it," she told French radio. "It was like they were performing a sermon in Arabic around the altar. It was horrific."

 

 

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Worth mentioning:

  1. There are almost never "refugees" involved in the incidents happening in France. It's mostly done by French citizen, born in France, contrary to the recent ones in Germany. Why? It's a question that can be interesting to explore.
  2. One thing seeming to link all the attacks is the young age of the attackers, this being said. The French murderer was only 19 here.
  3. French politics reacted to that attack (link in french):
    1. For the "left", the president said that "killing a priest means profanating the republic"
    2. For the "right", the previous president said that "the juridic arguments lead us to an incomplete action against terrorism", calling for the jailing of people on the basis of mere hinches from the police (he always hated the justice).

(Note: both reactions from the French politicians make me want to vomit)

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1 hour ago, Errant Bard said:
  • There are almost never "refugees" involved in the incidents happening in France. It's mostly done by French citizen, born in France, contrary to the recent ones in Germany. Why? It's a question that can be interesting to explore.

Several times there is a link with Syria, IS, ... because they fought in Syria, Irak, ... And except for the ones in Nice and in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray there were links with Belgium (place where they bough guns, place from where the attacks were organized). The one in Brussels and Zaventem and the one in Paris (November) were part of the same terrorist group.  

 

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The real issue that's going to have to be faced by countries now is that rather than being carried out by bona fide "membership card holding" terrorists a lot of these attacks are being carried out by random disgruntled locals or refugees or economic migrants etc. These people just seem to almost take up arms on a whim and linking them to known terrorism prior to any attack is going to get more difficult. 

IS just claims any attack for themselves regardless of any actual proper links, and a lot of these attackers claim to follow the ways of IS but have probably never had any contact. 

We're in a tricky situation where people are becoming radicalised simply by spending an afternoon on google rather than needing to go to some terrorist training camp or dodgy mosque/church/social club or whatever. 

Countries need to get a grip on the causes of these people jumping on the IS bandwagon, trying to fight a practically invisible and nebulous entity like this head on is going to get you bogged down with little to gain. 

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3 hours ago, Tijgy said:

Several times there is a link with Syria, IS, ...

Yes, of course, because when it's a pilot who kill hundreds of people, or some guy who kills his family or random people, it's just the act of an unbalanced man that is never put in the "terror incidents" headlines, or something, so what you say is kind of a tautology, but that is not a response to the question I was asking: why in one place it's natives, where in another it's refugees who act.

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The problem is that ISIS will of course always take credit, no matter if there is any real relation to that person. It seems more likely that the boy on the train was "suicide by cop", the one with the machete apparently had been rejected by the woman that was killed and the bomber was also depressive and had had suicide attempts.

I am wary to classify such events along with the murder of the catholic priest in France...

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6 hours ago, Errant Bard said:

There are almost never "refugees" involved in the incidents happening in France. It's mostly done by French citizen, born in France, contrary to the recent ones in Germany. Why? It's a question that can be interesting to explore.

It's mostly due to the different kinds of native Muslims in the two countries. There are far more of these natives in both Germany and France than there are recent migrants. The ones in Germany are mainly Turkish and come from a relatively secular society (especially since most of them came over some time ago, before the current administration) whereas the ones in France (and Belgium,for that matter) are from cultures where Islam is much more important. Thus, it was much easier to recruit among the native-born in the Francophone countries, especially since there were fewer migrants to France than there were to Germany.

This also accounts for the magnitude of the attacks. It's difficult for most people recently arrived in a new place to get access to assault rifles so the German attackers have mostly used edged weapons (there was one ineptly made explosive). On the other hand, natives tend to know both the local customs (and thus how to best exploit them to maximize the damage) and where to buy illegal goods (especially since a highly disproportionate fraction of criminals in France are Muslim).

Has the German government addressed these yet? I can't find a response from Merkel in the news. The Eastern European countries whose opposition to migrant quotas is looking rather prescient right about now are predictably doubling down on it.

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I honestly have no idea what anyone should do about this.  

On the one hand, provoking an overreaction by the West would certainly benefit ISIS and getting the West to lash out against Islam is exactly what they want.  It would really kick things into high gear, should persecution become legitimized.  

At the same time, I think there is only so much sugar coating it we can do by telling ourselves that these are all lone-wolf isolated incidents perpetrated by nut jobs.  Even if they are, there's clearly a pattern and a common motive.  Ignoring that in order to preserve an idealistic view of the virtues of multicultural society has no value, imo.  

I think it is possible to recognize that the vast majority of Muslims (and indeed, all humans) are peaceful folks who just want good lives for themselves and their families, but also that the West (particularly Europe) seems to have a pretty significant problem developing on their hands and the common thread is extremist Islam.  

But, again, I have no solution to offer.  It's a pretty complex problem, likely without a good solution.  

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2 hours ago, S John said:

I honestly have no idea what anyone should do about this.  

On the one hand, provoking an overreaction by the West would certainly benefit ISIS and getting the West to lash out against Islam is exactly what they want.  It would really kick things into high gear, should persecution become legitimized.  

At the same time, I think there is only so much sugar coating it we can do by telling ourselves that these are all lone-wolf isolated incidents perpetrated by nut jobs.  Even if they are, there's clearly a pattern and a common motive.  Ignoring that in order to preserve an idealistic view of the virtues of multicultural society has no value, imo.  

I think it is possible to recognize that the vast majority of Muslims (and indeed, all humans) are peaceful folks who just want good lives for themselves and their families, but also that the West (particularly Europe) seems to have a pretty significant problem developing on their hands and the common thread is extremist Islam.  

But, again, I have no solution to offer.  It's a pretty complex problem, likely without a good solution.  

What's the common motive?

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4 hours ago, S John said:

I think it is possible to recognize that the vast majority of Muslims (and indeed, all humans) are peaceful folks who just want good lives for themselves and their families, but also that the West (particularly Europe) seems to have a pretty significant problem developing on their hands and the common thread is extremist Islam.  

The US has seen far more Islamist terror attacks in recent years than Britain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Spain, Italy, Portugal or Eastern Europe. Just saying.

This isn't really an Islam problem as such, this is an Arab problem. And France, Belgium, and increasingly Germany, are where this problem exists in Europe, because of their immigrant mix. NB I'm not saying this an intrinsic problem with Arabs, but a result of political repression, lack of national esteem, geopolitical issues and, of course, the Saudis and their promotion of wahhabism.

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46 minutes ago, Errant Bard said:

Yes, of course, because when it's a pilot who kill hundreds of people, or some guy who kills his family or random people, it's just the act of an unbalanced man that is never put in the "terror incidents" headlines, or something, so what you say is kind of a tautology, but that is not a response to the question I was asking: why in one place it's natives, where in another it's refugees who act.

But I am not really sure why you try to claim there is a pattern? I think you just cannot do that without knowing everything the authorities know. 

Personally I am most familiar with what is happening in my country. And I know the action of the police authorities on 15 january 2015 in Verviers, the attacks in Paris in november, the attacks in Zaventem and Brussels and another actions of the police authorities this june were all linked to same group or at least connected to the group (Abaaoud, the authorities said the one in june was a new cell but members of this cell were cousins of the brothers El Bakraoui :rolleyes:). You had also the shooting at the Jewish museum, carried out by a French national who fought in Syria. And the attack at the Thalys carried out by someone from Morocco who lived in Spain from 2007 and in France from 2014. You have also Charlie Hebdo, Nice, the recent attacks in Germany. 

But this are not all of them. There have been also other incidents in Europe where some people were killed by refugees, ... There have been some incidents for example in Calais.

But if you really believe there is a pattern, I think you cannot forget demographic elements. Germany received much more refugees than France who actually did not receive that much refugees.

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

It's mostly due to the different kinds of native Muslims in the two countries. There are far more of these natives in both Germany and France than there are recent migrants. The ones in Germany are mainly Turkish and come from a relatively secular society (especially since most of them came over some time ago, before the current administration) whereas the ones in France (and Belgium,for that matter) are from cultures where Islam is much more important. Thus, it was much easier to recruit among the native-born in the Francophone countries, especially since there were fewer migrants to France than there were to Germany.

This also accounts for the magnitude of the attacks. It's difficult for most people recently arrived in a new place to get access to assault rifles so the German attackers have mostly used edged weapons (there was one ineptly made explosive). On the other hand, natives tend to know both the local customs (and thus how to best exploit them to maximize the damage) and where to buy illegal goods (especially since a highly disproportionate fraction of criminals in France are Muslim).

I completely agree with this. 

38 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

The problem is that ISIS will of course always take credit, no matter if there is any real relation to that person. It seems more likely that the boy on the train was "suicide by cop", the one with the machete apparently had been rejected by the woman that was killed and the bomber was also depressive and had had suicide attempts.

I am wary to classify such events along with the murder of the catholic priest in France...

 

This is indeed part of a problem. There is a big difference between for example the attacks in Paris and Brussels and those in Germany. Those in Germany were certainly not done by an organization. The bomber in Ansbach (luckily but also stupidly) forgot to have a ticket for the concert. The dead count and the number of the injured would much be higher if the bomb did explode in the concert hall. We do not always know what those people wanted to achieve, their reasoning, ... The main problem is that those people are probably getting inspired/influenced by the bigger terrorist attacks, ...  

Any way some numbers (the articles are in Dutch).

- There have 20 mentions of signs of radicalization in asylum centers from march in Belgium (x). Radical refugees do not exist only in Germany.

- During 2015 were apparently 2/3 of arrested people due terrorism EU citizens. Almost 6/10 are born in the EU. (And Belgium has the highest number condemnations) (x) (based on numbers of Europol)

- There have been more than 1000 people arrested from which 424 in France, 187 in Spain, 134 in the United Kingdom and 40 in Germany. 687 arrested because of jihadist affiliation, 168 separatist (mostly France, Spain and Ireland), 67 left-wing and 11 right-wing. (x) (based on numbers of Europol)

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At this point it feels like a contagious spate of mimic attacks by disaffected individuals, similar to the outbreak of school shootings in the US after Columbine, and other similar phenomena, notably suicides.

The more we report these, the more they will continue.  The pattern seems to be still growing in intensity at this point. 

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1 hour ago, Hereward said:

The US has seen far more Islamist terror attacks in recent years than Britain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Spain, Italy, Portugal or Eastern Europe. Just saying.

This isn't really an Islam problem as such, this is an Arab problem. And France, Belgium, and increasingly Germany, are where this problem exists in Europe, because of their immigrant mix. NB I'm not saying this an intrinsic problem with Arabs, but a result of political repression, lack of national esteem, geopolitical issues and, of course, the Saudis and their promotion of wahhabism.

Is it? It seems to me that there issues with extremism in Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well, just to name a few.

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8 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Wasn't the attack on the priest a clear violation of the exhortation in the Koran to treat "people of the book" with respect?

Probably depends on which book but as with all religious texts there are so many contradictions there is probably somewhere else it says the opposite.

Also, wasn't there a stabbing recently in France of some women and girls because they were not dressed appropriately?  I think that was Koran inspired however, it can be hard to keep track of it all when it is so frequent.

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2 hours ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

Is it? It seems to me that there issues with extremism in Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well, just to name a few.

True, and I contemplated noting that my post, but Afghanistan and Pakistan's anti-West extremist problem is largely down to Saudi-sponsored wahhabism in the madrassahs, overturning their sufi Islamic tradition. Turkey is not really relevant, as it is a domestic, not anti-Western phenomenon, except where its source is from Syria.

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