By Vestnik Kavkaza
"As Europe Moves Aggressively Against Terrorism, New Challenges Emerge" the New York Times writes. The recent arrests of suspected terrorists in European countries, "highlighted the scope and complexity of the challenge facing European intelligence agencies and security services in confronting the expanding threat from radical jihadists, many of them battle-hardened in Syria and Iraq," the article reads. The recent raids suggest that European countries are more willing now to engage in pre-emptive measures to fight terrorism. However, their actions raise controversy among the civil population and "a growing debate about whether they are going too far, too fast, and are at risk of sacrificing civil liberties." There are also fears that routine checks of Muslims in Europe will spur more resentment towards non-Muslim Europeans in the Muslim community.
Another article on the subject appeared in the NYT under the title "Patriot Act Idea Rises in France, and Is Ridiculed." Valerie Pecresse, a former French minister has recently called for the introduction of a law similar to the USA Patriot Act in France, which extends the authority of the U.S. intelligence services. "Politicians and civil rights advocates on both sides of the Atlantic bristled at that suggestion, and at a string of arrests in which French officials used a new anti-terrorism law to crack down on what previously would have been considered free speech," the article reads.
"French Muslims resent scrutiny after Charlie Hebdo attack," the Los Angeles newspaper reports. Many Muslims in France see "a case of guilt by association" in recent scrutinized checks of poor French neighborhoods mostly populated by Muslims. The newspaper has interviewed a number of French Muslims in such neighborhoods of Paris and concludes that Muslims "reject the terrorist acts, but also deeply resent their religion being mocked."
An article criticizing the German anti-immigrant group Pegida appeared today in the Guardian. The author of the article, Timothy Garton Ash, professor of history at Oxford University, calls Pegida a "xenophobic movement." "Europe. There is a real and present danger of a downward spiral in which radicalised minorities, Muslim and anti-Muslim, will drag anxious majorities, non-Muslim and Muslim, in the wrong direction. Only a conscious, everyday effort by each one of us will prevent it," Ash believes. "You just take it as given that Muslim British people are as much Brits as anyone else – that in truth there is no “they”, just a larger, gloriously mixed and muddled “us”. That is how we will win the plebiscite every day. And that is how we will see off a vampire called Pegida," Ash's article reads.
