Poverty and Alienation Blamed for Radicalization

The blame game has kicked off, French national unity did not last long. Poverty and unemployment in Belgium and the role it played radicalizing young muslims involved in the Paris atrocities is getting much attention. 

Inside  — the Belgian radicals’ den: Hans von der Burchard and Laurens Cerulus spent Sunday in the now infamous Brussels suburb [Molenbeek] the Belgian justice minister says he doesn’t have a grip on — and a terrorist den barely a couple of kilometres from the city’s European quarter. “Many houses are run-down. Poverty is rampant. Molenbeek has the highest unemployment rate of any region in Belgium, at 30 percent.” The consequences? “In this environment, where young Muslim have little to be optimistic about, radical messages offer strength and heroism,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the EU Radicalization Awareness Network.

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General comments from Brussels

“Just look at unemployment figures, school drop-out rate and lack of social housing… ”

“We are scared to engage with people different from us and they feel rejected in their identities and so it goes on and we tumble into a war no-one can win.”

“Brussels has a problem of unemployment, poor housing, alienation and radicalization, and it needs sorting out. Abolishing the communes and having one city government and one city police force would help.”

Rasha Elass writes for Reuters,

“Until perhaps Friday, the main perception among Western intelligence agencies and Washington policymakers has been that Islamic State poses ‘no immediate threat’ to the United States or the West… Some countries, as naive and misguided as they have been, privately sighed relief to see their own Islamist nationals travel to Islamist territory to meet their fate.”

“‘It’s better than having them stay in our country,’ one Western diplomat told me … ‘statistically, a newly arrived jihadist to ISIS territory is killed within weeks, so good riddance.’”