By: Dr. Werner G.C. Voigt and Dr. Juan Carlos Botello
On Monday, the 22d. of May, at 10:33 pm. local time the concert of internationally renowned superstar Ariana Grande had just ended when a horrific explosion ripped through the crowd of 21 000 adoring fans: An islamist suicide bomber, Salmán Ramadan Abedi, aged 22, had blown himself to pieces with a powerful explosive device, containing nails, ball bearings and jagged metal fragments, and causing the tragic death of 22 innocents and inflicting severe injuries on an additional 119 mostly adolescent attendees. Immediately, the Islamic State (ISIL) terrorist organization took credit for this outrage, saying on its website that one of its “Soldiers” had carried out the attack and threatened more attacks – exhorting its followers to use cars or trucks in crowded spaces worldwide if explosives are not available. In past years, Europe has certainly suffered an ever-increasing number of such inhuman outrages: 2004 in Madrid: 191 persons killed, 2005 in London: 52 killed, 2011 in Oslo: 77 killed, 2015 in Paris 17 killed, again in 2015 in Paris: the Bataclan massacre: 130 killed, 2016 in Brussels: 32 killed, again in 2016 in Nice: 86 killed, once more in 2016 in Berlin 12 dead, and than three more outrages in 2017 in London, Stockholm and now Manchester with a tragic total of 30 deaths. According to its definition in international law, Terrorism is any act or threat to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government to do or to abstain from doing any act.
A common factor in almost all of these cases as in all cases of terrorism in the United States since 9/11 2001 is that the perpetrators were second generation sons of muslim immigrants – young men who were citizens of the very country they were attacking. This is also a key reason that they are so hard to detect or stop before they commit their attacks. These terrorists are not interlopers from other lands but rather our neighbors. Why anyone would choose to murder completely innocent strangers is something of a mystery, but typically these individuals suffer from a split identity: Not quite Western, but at the same time not quite at home with the islamic culture of where their parents came from. In other words, they don’t feel like they fit in. In most cases, this produces a form of identity crisis which makes them easy prey for extremist preachers and recruiters operating out of mosques and dedicated to spreading the incendiary ideology of Osama bin Laden, that all of islam is under deadly assault from the West and they as observant muslims must do something about it. In the case of Salman Abedi we have a man born in Manchester in the United Kingdom to pious refugee immigrant parents from Libya. With his strict religious and ethnic upbringing he found it impossible to assimilate into british culture and society and, unable to hold any job, according to a friend, Abedi, returing from lengthy visits to mosques in Syria and Libya, had lately grown a full beard, chanted verses from the Koran in public and had begun to dress islamically in a long robe: he had come to embrace violent jihad!
The phenomenon of radicalization in fundamentalist mosques should certainly cause all of us in Mexico to be concerned as well. From Sonora in the North to Merida in the South, there are 28 mosques and muslim associations – one of these mosques operates out of a storefront right here in Puebla: the Al Kareem Centro Islámico de Puebla on Blvd. 5 de Mayo 3740, Local 4. Society in general, but especially the authorities, must be very observant of any outward indications that a person is potentially becoming radicalized. Our immigration authorities should be especially watchful of passports which have been stamped in radical Islamic states. Briefly stated: the answer to limiting our exposure to something similar as has occurred in Manchester this week, is careful intelligence gathering and close observation of any person fitting the profile of potential radicalization.
One final, but hopefully not ominous observation: Ariana Grande is scheduled to give concerts on July 12th and 13th in Mexico City at the Palacio de los Deportes…
Let’s hope and pray that history won’t repeat itself. An additional concern must be that organized crime in Mexico could learn from the practices of the world’s major terrorist groups which could be the beginning of a new era of danger for our country. Of course no one needs that, especially when presidential elections are just around the corner!
