Assimilation's Failure, Terrorism's Rise

From British author Kenan Malik, at New York Times:
SIX years ago today, on July 7, 2005, Islamist suicide bombers attacked London’s transit system. They blew up three subway trains and a bus, killing 52 people and leaving a nation groping for answers.

In one sense the meaning of 7/7 is as clear to Britons as that of 9/11 is to Americans. It was a savage, brutal attack intended to sow mayhem and terror. Yet whereas 9/11 was the work of a foreign terrorist group, 7/7 was the work of British citizens. The question that haunts London, but that Washington has so far barely had to face, is why four men born and brought up in Britain were gripped by such fanatic zeal for a murderous, medieval dogma.

British authorities have expended much effort in seeking to understand how the 7/7 terrorists acquired their perverted ideas and became “radicalized.” In the immediate wake of the attacks, much ink was spilled over the role of extremist preachers and radical mosques. More recently, the focus has shifted to universities as recruitment centers for terrorists.

But this obsession with radicalization misses the point. The real question is not how people like Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 bombers, came to be radicalized, but why so many young men, who by all accounts are intelligent, articulate and integrated, come to find this violent, reactionary ideology so attractive. To answer it, we need to look not at extremist preachers or university lecturers but also at public policy, and in particular the failed policy of multiculturalism.
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Actually, I don't separate multiculturalism from extremism. The same ideological forces promote both: the neo-communist left. But state policy exacerbates tensions, and Malik makes some interesting suggestions on bringing people together rather than driving them apart --- and driving some into the hands of terrorists.

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France's Burka Ban Takes Effect

At New York Times, "France Enforces Ban on Full-Face Veils in Public." And from Telegraph UK, "France’s burka ban is a victory for tolerance":

Despite some high-profile protests, France’s banning of the burka is enormously popular with the public. Unfortunately, as in Britain, almost anything politicians do that the voters approve of tends to be denounced as populisme – a particularly dread charge among the over-earnest French political class – and instead of enjoying the deserved benefits, President Nicolas Sarkozy has found himself on the defensive.


Sarko’s modest measure (the burka is forbidden only in public places, the fines are piffling and the enforcement procedures incomprehensible) has led to much talk of sledgehammers and nuts, warnings of an apocalyptic Muslim backlash and claims that the Republican tradition of liberté is being compromised in a seedy ploy to combat the resurgence of the hard-Right Front National under its new leader Marine Le Pen.


Almost anything, in fact, than an acknowledgement that the public overwhelmingly sees the ban as right for France, beneficial to its Muslim communities and justified – if on no other grounds – as a statement in support of liberalism against darkness. Approval runs right across the spectrum, with Fadela Amara, the Algerian-born former housing minister in Sarkozy’s government, calling the burka “a kind of tomb, a horror for those trapped within it”, and André Gerin, the Communist MP who headed the commission investigating the grounds for a ban, describing it as “the tip of an iceberg of oppression”.


Mme Amara is Fadela Amara, "the Algerian-born former housing minister in Sarkozy’s government ..."


That part about Muslim women not having a choice isn't something that progressive leftists want to talk about. Frankly, the burka ban is apparently evidence of French "discrimination."

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