Europe’s Muslims Stay Home

Mohammed Alami, 20, sells reggae CDs and believes every Muslim has a duty to go fight in Iraq to drive out the Americans. But he isn’t prepared to go himself.

“Maybe I’m afraid I’m going to die and not solve anything, have an impact,” Alami, a Briton of Moroccan origin, said as he stood at his stall in an open market in central London.

The fall of Saddam Hussein in March 2003 and the U.S. occupation of the country would have seemed an opportunity of a lifetime for Muslim men around the world eager to wage “holy war” against their arch enemy.

Yet the influx of foreign fighters from Europe appears to have been minimal, at least compared with the numbers that poured into previous lands of jihad, or holy war -- Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.

Tough anti-terrorism laws and the close watch on Europe’s Muslim communities, especially mosques, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are deterrents.

Another may be that the Iraqi insurgency is nationalist and lacking the strong Islamic component that attracted so many to Afghanistan to fight the communist, atheist Soviet Union.

Also, Iraq is a dangerous and chaotic place for European youths with no military experience or knowledge of the culture.

“Were there none of those restrictions, I’m certain the number of Arabs and Muslims going to fight in Iraq would have been much higher than those who went to Afghanistan,” said Hani Sibaei, an Egyptian Islamic exile in Britain who supports the insurgency in Iraq.

“Maybe half a million people would have gone because Iraq is closer to them than Afghanistan, which is too far and was too complicated to get there, too expensive. The landscape is too harsh and the language is different. To go to Iraq, all they had to do was go to a neighboring country and cross over,” he said.

The fighters who went to Afghanistan had the backing of the West, including the United States, and were showered with moral, financial, military, logistical and propaganda support. One was Osama bin Laden, before founding Al Qaeda.

But in Iraq’s case, Western and many Muslim nations are working together to stop the volunteers from going there.

Iraq’s borders with Turkey, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are all but shut to them, although some sneak through, including those from Europe. They may number only a few hundred, European anti-terrorist officials estimate, but are thought responsible for many of the worst attacks in the last year, including suicide bombings.

Saad Fagih, a Saudi dissident in London who heads the Movement of Islamic Reform in Saudi Arabia, says he has reliable contacts in his country. He says some Muslims here flew from Britain to Saudi Arabia pretending to be religious pilgrims.

“People who arrange to smuggle them into Iraq are in Saudi Arabia,” said Fagih, under U.N. sanctions for allegedly having Al Qaeda ties, which he denies.

In October, two American soldiers were injured when their patrol was a target of a suicide attack believed carried out by Abdel Halim Badjoudj, 18, a French Muslim of Algerian origin. Responsibility was later claimed by the group headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi.

French officials confirmed the deaths of at least two other French volunteers of Arab descent in Iraq, but say probably less than 100 reached Iraq from France in the last 18 months.

British officials estimate that 50 to 100 fighters have gone to Iraq from Britain. In 2003, Wail Dhaleai, 22, was suspected of having carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq. The martial arts instructor from Yemen had been living in England.

In September, French prosecutors opened an inquiry into Islamic radicals’ flight to Iraq. The move gives anti-terrorist magistrates a legal framework and allows them to question suspects and approach authorities elsewhere for information.

According to an October report by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, as many as 1,000 foreign fighters had infiltrated Iraq and were working with Sunni Muslims. The institute, which gave no breakdown by country, estimated that there are 18,000 potential militants plus many more sympathizers around the world.

But obstacles facing would-be volunteers in Europe are formidable.

“When people call me and ask me if they have a duty to fight in Iraq, I tell them they had better not go because there’s no defined organizational structure there,” said a London-based Muslim cleric, requesting anonymity.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Muslim communities in Europe have been under close watch, including radical mosques that would normally serve as recruitment centers. New anti-terrorism laws give police a freer hand to round up suspects and hold them indefinitely without trial.

There also are ideological reasons. “Iraq is not an Islamic enough cause for them,” said Olivier Roy, considered one of the most knowledgeable European scholars on Islam, referring to what he described as European “born-again Muslims.”

Unlike Afghanistan, Roy said, the bulk of Iraq’s insurgency is made up of nationalists fighting an occupation army to restore an Iraqi state, not an Islamic state.

“So the second-generation Muslims in Europe don’t feel at ease in a nationalist struggle,” said Roy.

Nonsense, said Yasir Sirri, an Egyptian Islamist activist in London. “Jihad is allowed everywhere,” he said.

He didn’t believe any single person or organization in Europe was recruiting holy warriors, but said they weren’t necessary.

“Traveling to Iraq isn’t very difficult. All he needs is [about $800] for transportation. If he joins the resistance he won’t lead a comfortable life but all his expenses will be taken care of. Granted, he won’t be drinking Coca Cola every day,” Sirri said.

The two young Frenchmen killed in Iraq reportedly enrolled in a religious school in Damascus, Syria, before entering Iraq.

But surveillance at European ports and airports is intense. Gilles Leclair, director of the French anti-terrorism unit, said militant groups were in disarray due to post-Sept. 11 measures in Europe that had led to the arrest of many operatives and the loss of training camps and chains of command.

So where is the pipeline that gets a Muslim recruit to Iraq from Britain or France? European security services are finding it difficult to answer such questions and accurately assess how strong and active radical groups are in their countries.

Officials in London describe the British fighters who go to Iraq as sophisticated and good at hiding their tracks. Among the few they have identified are two men who joined the Mahdi Army militia of radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. They were apparently seen on television as Sadr’s bodyguards.

Experts say the would-be fighters usually don’t reveal their plans even to family and close friends. Dhaleai, the tae kwon do instructor, left his pregnant English wife and son in the British town of Sheffield, and entered Iraq from Syria. It was not clear how he reached Syria.

“It’s kind of adventure,” said Leclair, the French official. “They go because it’s an honor to go. I think the high imams are very smart to convince the people ... but it’s very rare that we find people who are going to an area like that with their conviction alone.”

He said the imams sometimes supplied the young men with money, or provided them with contacts in Iraq.

Sibaei, the Egyptian exile in London, said that a recruit going alone to Iraq without any introduction could make insurgents suspect that he was a spy, and that being vouched for by a middleman was crucial.

An Iraqi insurgent who spoke to Associated Press shortly before the U.S. operation in Fallouja said a group of Arab fighters who had come to fight the Americans burdened the highly trained Iraqi insurgents because they had to be trained, fed, clothed and housed. Also, he said, Iraqi fighters feared that they may be spies.

In the days before the Fallouja campaign, some insurgents and many residents complained that the foreign fighters’ presence, although small, was giving the Americans an excuse for daily bombardments of what they claimed were Zarqawi’s safe houses.

They also said suicide bombings and beheadings of hostages were “damaging the reputation” of the genuine resistance against the Americans. To prevent outsiders from infiltrating their ranks or the town, fighters were banned from masking their faces.

“We don’t need foreigners to come from the outside and fight our war,” said Abu Abdullah, 28, a physical education student who claimed to be an insurgent. “We have enough brave men who can do the job and defend the town.”

A European Muslim who makes it into Iraq also faces the constant fear of being hunted down and killed by the U.S.-led coalition or Iraqi government forces.

“I’d be wasting my life if I went. One person isn’t going to make a difference,” said Alami, the CD vendor. “There are things I can do here to help,” such as sending money and clothes through an Islamic charity in his neighborhood, he said.

He said one of his sister’s friends, another Briton of Moroccan origin, had been killed fighting in Iraq. Two others had returned after a brief stint there.

“They were mad,” he said, noting the change in them. “They are fanatics. They are very religious, but before they used to drink alcohol.”