International Conference: Current Security Challenges for the Western Balkan Region Addressed by Means of Joint Responsibility and Cooperation Lorenzo Vidino: Islamism in Europe The presence of sizeable Muslim communities environments. It therefore must be taken into in Western Europe is a relatively new consideration that the characteristics, agendas, phenomenon, largely the product of waves of dimensions and challenges of Islamist immigration that began after World War II. While movements in Europe are signicantly different size and composition vary signicantly from from those of their counterparts in Muslim­country to country, today virtually all European majority areas. countries host a Muslim minority and, while no ofcial data is available, most estimates put the Forewarnings of the existence of this problem number of Muslims living in Western Europe at about 15 million. 1 This new Muslim presence had surfaced at the end of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s. In 1989 the Muslim has created some of the problems that often world's rage against Salman Rushdie had been come with any large immigration wave: nancial sparked by protests and a book burning difculties for the newcomers and tensions with the native population. While some of these organized by Muslim organizations in the British city of Bradford. 3 In 1995 militants linked to the issues are common to other immigrant groups Algerian Armed Islamic Group- many of whom in Europe, others are unquestionably peculiar to had grown up in France- orchestrated a string Muslim communities. of bombings throughout France. In the second 18 Many of the tensions that have arisen around half of the 1990s networks of jihadists, mostly linked to outts in North Africa, were dismantled the Muslim presence in Europe over the last in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium and decades have more or less clear religious Great Britain. Yet, despite all of these warning undertones. Some of them are unquestionably signs, few Europeans grasped the magnitude of due to the fear, ignorance and intolerance of the problem until the 2000s. Events like the some Europeans towards Islam or, in many September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks(whose cases, any religion. But another crucial factor ringleaders had radicalized in Hamburg), the generating tensions is the presence of 2004 Madrid train bombings and assassination Islamism/political Islam, in all of its different of Theo van Gogh, the 2005 London bombings manifestations, within Muslim communities in and scores of other thwarted attacks and virtually every European country. Borrowing dismantled terrorist networks have revealed the Peter Mandaville's denition, Islamism can be presence of a sizeable number of European­dened as“forms of political theory and based Muslims who embraced jihadist ideology practice that have as their goal the and are ready to use violence for it. establishment of an Islamic political order in the sense of a state whose governmental principles, Yet jihadist terrorism is only the tip of the institutions and legal system derive directly from iceberg, the most visible manifestation of the the shari'ah. 2 extremely diverse and ever evolving political movement that is Islamism. Keeping in mind the ”But it must be said that political Islam is a unavoidable oversimplication of this global and highly exible movement, taking categorization, one way of differentiating different manifestations in different Islamists is according to their modus operandi. 1 The exact number is highly debated and is virtually impossible to establish with certainty. 15 million is the number estimated by the 2004 U.S. Department of State International Religious Freedom Report, as well as by a 2005 study by the Pew Research Center entitled An Uncertain Road: Muslims and the Future of Europe. 2 Peter Mandaville, Global Political Islam(London: Routledge, 2007): 57. 3 Gilles Kepel, Allah in the West: Islamic Movements in America and Europe(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 126-46.