Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
Like car models and fashion trends, styles in terrorism are transformed over time. Such, at least, was the main thrust of a recent article in Le Monde. Noting that ten years had passed since the November 13, 2015, attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, in which 130 people were killed and 416 injured, Christophe Ayad observed that while terrorism in la belle Republique hasn’t abated since then, it’s “completely changed in nature.”
Meaning what? Meaning that in France, at least, the the age of good old-fashioned organized jihadist mayhem, perpetrated by large squads of well-trained and well-supplied young Muslims whose backgrounds are in North Africa and who are card-carrying members of some recognized terrorist group like ISIS or Al-Qaeda, has given way, to a considerable degree, to a more catch-as-catch-can freelance setup, with bloodthirsty atrocities being performed by individuals, duos, or very small groups of Muslims who are less likely to trace their lineage to the Maghreb than to be relatively recent arrivals from Chechnya, Dagestan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, or Afghanistan. Some of these newfangled enemies within are acting on the orders of domestic or foreign Muslim criminal organizations – which, while carrying out the occasional act of terrorism (often on commission from some traditional terrorist group), specialize in the trafficking of narcotics – while others, apparently a majority, have acted independently, taking such pros as role models. Hence Ayad’s name for this new chapter in the French front in the war for civilization: “the era of inspired terrorism.”
There’s one detail about this new breed of terrorists in France that’s especially striking. They’re not just young, like most terrorists. They’re very young – in their early teens, or even younger.
And, as we’ll see, it’s not just happening in France.
Of course, child jihadists are nothing new. Children were major players in the Intifadas in the Holy Land. Palestinian boys who threw stones at Israeli soldiers were portrayed in the Western media as resistance heroes; the occasional kid who pushed it much too far and ended up being offed by some IDF member acting in self-defense was mourned as a martyr. Famously, while the Israeli army stands between children and danger, Hamas routinely uses them as human shields. And their parents love it: anyone who’s watched TV news regularly during the last few decades is familiar with the spectacle of a Muslim mother who expresses pride in her late, lamented – and shockingly young – suicide-bomber son or who says that she prays for her little boy to die a martyr’s death, preferably sooner than later.
In a time, then, when Islamic terrorism has become a familiar part of Western European life, it shouldn’t be surprising that remarkably young Muslim boys who live on that continent are becoming more and more active participants in militant jihad. This development is particularly unsurprising in a time when Western governments have become increasingly adept at tracking down old-style terrorist groups, foiling their planned attacks, and liquidating their leaders. These days, because of this greater efficiency, it’s far more practical – and profitable – for some infidel-hating desperado in Iran or Qatar to go online and find aspiring jihadists in Europe than to recruit, organize, and train grown men in some camp that can all too easily be discovered – and destroyed – by the CIA. Another key factor in this equation is that in many European countries, minors below the age of 15 can’t be held liable for their criminal actions, however heinous.
Then there’s this. If you’ve lived in certain parts of Western Europe long enough, you already know that teenage Muslim boys can be problematic, especially in groups, and especially late at night on deserted streets. They have, in other words, a naughty little habit of raping infidel women, of beating up gays and Jews, and of robbing just about anybody. But now the more ambitious ones are following that best of all career advice – find a way to make a living doing what you love.
So it was that this past September 23, the national TV news in Norway had to stay on the air for hours past its usual wrap-up time in order to provide live coverage of a developing story in Oslo: in the early evening, grenades exploded outside a nail salon on a street called Pilestredet in the upscale Bislett neighborhood, causing significant damage; later that night, two 13-year-old boys from Muslim families were arrested for the crime. The police hypothesized that they’d been acting on orders from adults. Somewhere.
In the weeks that followed, two more attacks by very young Muslim boys occurred elsewhere in southeastern Norway – one of them a shooting in Sarpsborg by three boys of 12, 13, and 14, the other an explosion set by several teenagers in Strømmen. It has since been concluded that these youths were recruited by a network called Foxtrot, led by one Rawa Majid – a.k.a. the Kurdish Fox – who answers directly to the inner circle of the Ayatollah. Although founded in Sweden, Foxtrot is now operating in Norway as well, routinely employing children as hit men.
To be sure, there are significant differences from country to country when it comes to inventive new ways of whacking the infidel. While most of the young perpetrators in France are supposedly lone actors – “inspired terrorists” – their counterparts in Norway are more often hired guns. Otherwise the situations in these and other Western European countries are pretty similar. The kids in question tend to be recent arrivals. And more and more of them are so young that if they were from ordinary families, their parents wouldn’t leave them at home for the evening without a babysitter.
In the wake of the Pilestredet incident, Oslo Police Chief Ida Melbo Øystese told VG that most of the capital’s 120 criminal networks are from abroad and that their shared “business model” – namely, “that they recruit young people under the age of 15” – is “completely different” from past crime patterns in Norway and reflects “a cynicism we have not seen in this country before.” She called it a “paradigm shift” that marks an end to Norway as “a trust-based society.” What she didn’t say was that the adults and children involved in these crimes are virtually all Muslims, that these aren’t just crimes but acts of jihad, and that “paradigm shifts” are precisely what you should expect when you import Muslims into a Christian country most of whose residents, when this immigration tsunami began, thought of Islam as Christianity with spicier food.
The other day came a new story from Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city. Late on the evening of February 12, a man in his twenties was found in a car in the neighborhood of Hindby. He’d been shot, and after being transported to a hospital he was pronounced dead. The police were somehow able to determine that the murder had taken place in Oxie, about four miles to the southeast of Hindby, and that it had been a contract killing. A few days after the news of the murder broke, a new detail emerged: the suspect being held in the case – who’s not from Malmö – is all of twelve years old. He is being charged not just with murder but also with three attempted murders, the details of which have yet to be released.
The head of investigation for the Malmö police, Rasem Chebil – yes, an Arabic name – told Aftenposten that he found this case horrifying.
He didn’t mention Islam.
Nor did Manne Gerell, an associate professor of criminology at Malmö University, who told Dagens Nyheter: “I can’t recall any shooting death committed by a 12-year-old.” Indeed, this kid is apparently the first 12-year-old ever to be arrested for murder in all of Swedish history. Not that he’s that far an outlier: at present, around a hundred boys aged 13 to 14 have been responsible for shootings and explosions commissioned by criminal networks.
All of which only ramps up the challenge that’s currently facing the West. Sentimental types, when trying to defend the naïve assertion that all cultures are basically alike, often ask, as if it clinched their argument: “Well, don’t all mothers care equally about their children’s well-being?” No, they don’t. Christianity teaches us to protect children, to preserve their innocence, and never to take advantage of their weakness and vulnerability. Under Islam, little girls can be forced to marry octogenarians and subjected to honor killings as punishment for acts that Christians would never even consider transgressions; boys, especially, must be taught to despise the infidel and be soldiers of Allah.
How, then, can Christian societies, which take childhood so seriously that some of them refuse to punish a minor for even the most monstrous of crimes, deal properly with underage felons who are doing the bidding of far-off jihadist kingpins? It’s a puzzle. But it’s a puzzle that’s going to have to be solved, and soon.
