Campaign for the American Reader: Pg. 69: "Breeding Bin Ladens"

Zachary Shore is Associate Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and a Research Scholar at the Institute of International Studies and the Institute

of European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

His books include What Hitler Knew: The Battle for Information in Nazi Foreign Policy and, more recently, Breeding Bin Ladens: America, Islam, and the Future of Europe.

I invited Zach to put Breeding Bin Ladens to the "page 69 test." Here is his reply:

Page 69 of my book on Europe’s Muslims contains the final page of chapter three, entitled “Two Faces, Two Futures.” Here I spotlight two prominent Muslim leaders in Germany and -- after interviewing them over the course of several years -- allow their stories to stand for one of the great divisions occurring within the Muslim community across the continent. The chapter begins as follows.

Europe is caught in a quandary, and two Muslim men could not better embody it. Cem (pronounced “gem”) Özdemir is a prominent Turkish-German politician, the first ethnic Turk ever elected to the Bundestag. Mustafa Yolda is a leading figure in Hamburg’s spiritual community. Both men, each in his late thirties, are ardent advocates for Muslim rights. Both are handsome, highly educated, and disarmingly charismatic. Both are first-generation Turkish-Germans, the sons of guest workers who migrated to Germany to help produce its “economic miracle,” and both are devoted to changing Germany and Europe. Yet they advocate two markedly different futures for Europe’s Muslims: one intensely secular, the other deeply religious.

Page 69 ends the chapter with this paragraph:

Europe faces two distinctly different, equally plausible futures. One embraces Muslims as part of the new European identity. The other excludes moderate, religious Muslims, leaving them prey to the call of Islamic extremists. Both Cem and Mustafa are working toward the former, a European identity inclusive of secular and religious Muslims, though their means to that end are distinct. The obstacles before them are considerable. Speaking about Germany, Mustafa says that Muslims are now living as second-class citizens. If the darker future results, and Muslims feel excluded from the Europe they call home, the repercussions will be profound. Even the optimistic Cem says that the conditions are ripe for a social explosion. If the Madrid and London bombings and their violent backlash are not to become the norm across the continent, Europe must soon solve its Muslim quandary. Europe’s, and America’s, security depends on it.

Many thanks to Zach for the input.

Among the praise for Breeding Bin Ladens:

"Zachary Shore realized earlier than most the potentially huge importance of the religious revival among young Muslims in Europe. The interviews and other evidence in his scrupulously researched and lucidly written book constitute powerful evidence of a disturbing trend. It is not simple hatred of the United States so much as ambivalence about Western society as a whole that has driven these teenagers and twenty-somethings into the arms of the extremists. And while America is prepared to fight (albeit clumsily) a war on terror, a post-Christian Europe seems caught between old fashioned xenophobia and post-modern insouciance."
—Niall Ferguson, Harvard University

"'No one is born a terrorist; terrorists are bred.' That is the thesis of this remarkable book. It starts not with assumptions by Americans and Europeans about Europe's Muslim community, but with the voices of Muslims themselves. Those voices are vital for Americans and Europeans to hear and understand. Breeding Bin Ladens is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of the liberal democratic West."
—Anne-Marie Slaughter, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University

"Shore captures much of the nuance and contradiction of a community being asked to integrate into national polities that exploit them economically, treat their faith as a second-class superstition, and fail to deal with persistent, widespread racism."
—Aziz Hug, American Prospect