The news for much of this year has been dominated,\nunderstandably, by COVID-19. Fears of terrorism seem to have been relegated to\nthe backburner as many are concerned about their health, lockdowns, and the\neconomic damage wrought by the coronavirus. However, recent acts of terror in\nFrance and Austria are a rude reminder of the fact that Islamist radicalism\nremains a serious threat. They also show that Jihadist terrorism is in many\nways undeniably interconnected with mass immigration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A recent FAIR blog points out that such attacks are an obvious repudiation of lax, open-arms policies \u2013 towards both legal immigration and illegal migration \u2013 and, in particular, the \u201clet-everyone-in-and-we\u2019ll-sort-it-out-later\u201d approach towards asylum<\/a>. It should now be clear that keeping the floodgates into Europe open is reckless and exposes the citizens of European nations to danger. The need of politicians and activists to feel compassionate does not override the right of ordinary people to feel safe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Islamist terrorism and radicalism in Western Europe also lays bare certain inconvenient, politically incorrect truths. One is that there is a great deal of Islamist-inspired hatred and contempt for the \u201cinfidel\u201d West and its values in many Muslim-majority countries (e.g., see here<\/a> and here<\/a>). Moreover, some of those countries are hotbeds of terror. Immigrants and refugees do not automatically leave such sentiments at the door upon entering France, Austria, the United States, or any other Western nation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The other problem concerns assimilation, or rather the\nlack thereof \u2013 especially among immigrants from Islamic-majority nations in\nEurope. While some terrorists (such as the Nice church attacker) are very\nrecent arrivals, and a minority consists of European converts to radical Islam,\nmany are either immigrants or refugees themselves, or their European-born\nchildren who not only failed to assimilate, but in fact rejected Western\nsociety and doubled down on a rabidly anti-Western identity. No doubt overall\nnumbers play a big role: why assimilate when immigrant enclaves are constantly\nreplenished by a large, steady influx of newcomers? But surely, the radical\nIslamist sentiments which some immigrants bring with themselves also makes them\nunreceptive to assimilating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The latest Islamist terror wave in Europe shows that\nmass migration \u2013 especially from regions where anti-Western sentiment is high \u2013\ncoupled with the lack of assimilation can be a truly lethal mix. This is why\nstricter vetting, significantly limiting mass migration, and cracking down on\nasylum fraud would make sense. Now that Europeans throughout the continent are\nonce again being subjected to COVID-19 lockdowns or restrictions, there is no\nreason why boats with migrants should be allowed to land in Europe and the\npassengers allowed to roam free while given pro forma \u201cexit slips\u201d (the\nEuropean equivalent of \u201ccatch and release\u201d). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The news for much of this year has been dominated, understandably, by COVID-19. Fears of terrorism seem to have been relegated to the backburner as many are concerned about their health, lockdowns, and the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus. However, recent acts of terror in France and Austria are a rude reminder of the<\/p>\n