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European extremists under influence of Wahhabism: Author

Monday, 04 April 2016 5:15 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 04 April 2016 5:14 AM ]

This file photo taken on November 16, 2015 shows 27-year-old Belgian Daesh militant Abdelhamid Abaaoud, believed to be the mastermind of a terrorist cell dismantled in Belgium in January 2015. (Photo by AFP)

Press TV has interviewed Chris Bambery, author and journalist from London, and Fredrick Peterson, a US Congress defense policy advisor from Washington, to discuss the absorption of some Europeans into terrorist groups like the Daesh Takfiri terrorist organization.

Bambery says the European people who join Daesh have a lack of Islamic knowledge and “have not studied the Quran.” They have rather been fed a “Salafist” and “Wahhabist” interpretation of Islam through social media, he adds.

The author notes that the European extremists have been suffering from high rates of “unemployment” and “ghettoization,” particularly in Belgium, France, Germany and Britain as well as facing “police surveillance and harassment” since the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

The extremists believe that by joining certain groups “they could gain some form of identity and carry revenge of the European societies who seem to have rejected them,” Bambery argues.

He further maintains that much of the funding going into these groups in Europe has been coming from Saudi Arabia in order to propagate the Wahhabi message. He adds that Wahhabism draws people into wars and Takfiri ideology.

Peterson, for his part, believes “the real threat to Europe comes from within” which “has been seeded and growing for many years now a generation or two perhaps and that is a feeling of a lack of their own identity” in the green continent.

He says the self-exclusion comes from inside the migrant community, creating a feeling of resentment for which both the European governments and migrants are responsible.

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