Looks like these “homegrown terrorists” are a dream come true for those intent on turning the Western world into Stalin’s Russia.
BERLIN — After thwarting what might have become a “massive” attack on American installations, German authorities will review ways to fight homegrown terrorists, including a proposal to allow Internet spying on all German converts to Islam.
Anti-terror police arrested three men in a village in central Germany Tuesday, outside a vacation cabin where they were suspected of building a bomb. Germans were shocked to learn that two of the alleged bombers were native-born and had common German names, Fritz and Daniel. All three were unemployed and living on German government benefits, but other details are sketchy.
Fritz came from an upper middle class background, and German media reported that he converted to Islam about 10 years ago. His mother was a doctor, his father owned a successful business, and he’s married and attends a technical college in Ulm.
“Daniel”, who like Fritz hasn’t been further identified, was known for angering his neighbors in Saarbruecken by praying loudly every three hours, but little else is know about him or “Adem”, the Turkish-born third suspect.
This was “something new, and not in a good way,” said Col. Christopher Langdon of London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies. They “came from the white German population. They were very traditional German residents who converted and radicalized. These bombers were not Pakistani or Moroccan. That is raising eyebrows.”
Anti-terror forces had been concerned primarily with first or second generation Muslim immigrants — not white Europeans.
Guenther Beckstein, the interior minister in the German state of Bavaria and a conservative leader of the southern wing of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party, has called for a new law authorizing online surveillance of Islamic converts.
“Germans converting to Islam should be watched because they tend to show particular fanaticism in order to prove worthy of their new religion,” he said Thursday.
The number is growing, according to the German Islam archive. In the last decade, only about 300 Germans each year converted to Islam. But in 2005, the number rose to 1,000, and it jumped to 4,000 in 2006.
As shocked as they were by the arrests, the idea of spying on other Germans unnerves many in civil-rights minded Germany, where government surveillance recalls memories of Adolf Hitler.
This week in Copenhagen, Danish authorities arrested nine people on charges of plotting terror attacks, and Kamp and other terrorism experts believe the frequency of attacks in Europe is increasing.
Magnus Ranstorp, Chief Scientist for the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defense College, said that while security forces don’t release information on all thwarted attacks, there are known to have been at least 40 and perhaps has many as 50 since Sept. 11, 2001.
“This is what we can expect for the future: The attack plots are going to come fast and furious,” he said. “And, as is clear in both these attacks, they’re operating in new vistas. Terrorism in Europe is a part of life now.”
September 13, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Ramadan 1428 / 2007
To our Muslim brothers and sisters everywhere:
All praise and thanks be to the one God whom we all worship, who has called you to worship Him after the manner of al-Islam, and us to worship Him according to the gospel of Jesus, whom both faith traditions hail as the Messiah: it is our deep wish that God strengthen you in your devotion to God, your love of God, and your trust in God during this month of Ramadan, and that everything that you do for His sake may be pleasing to Him.
We have joined you in keeping the fast of Ramadan this year, as a freewill offering to God accompanying our prayer for peace, justice, and a spirit of love to grow among the peoples of the Abrahamic religions. It is our desire that all over the world, if God so wills, Muslim, Jew and Christian can learn to stand together in brotherhood in the sight of their Creator, and encourage one another in faithfulness and good deeds. But we are mourning many of the deeds of our government and our people, as they continue to involve themselves in the affairs of Islamic peoples, and the lives of Muslim detainees held at United States facilities, without sufficiently caring or understanding what they are doing to the people whose lives they affect. To our sorrow, we see many American Christians trusting, supporting, and following policy-makers whose guiding principle seems to be “let us do evil, that good may come of it,” as if they did not know that our own scripture explicitly condemns it (Romans 3:8). In repenting our own complicity in this, we hope to lead our brother and sister Christians into repentance.
Our power to make the world’s leaders humble themselves, question their own behavior, and let their hearts be turned, seems very small. And yet we draw hope from our certainty that we are listened to by the true Ruler of this world, the Turner of Hearts, who sees everything and holds all power. This month we curb our natural appetites during daylight hours to be more mindful of the One to whom we must return, the Highest, our Helper. We perceive, sadly, that many American Christians lack understanding of what it means to be a Muslim. How better to change that than for some of us to join the Muslim world in its Ramadan fast? We also hope that such self-restraint as we gain from the fast might help restore a spirit of self-restraint to the worldly culture of the industrialized nations, in however small a way, for on our learning self-restraint now seems to depend the saving of the world from ruin.
Advised by Jesus himself to fast privately and without open display (Matthew 6:16-18), we make ourselves available for responses to this communication but without identifying ourselves individually by name. May God comfort you, sustain you in hope, and bestow on you every blessing.
Ramadan Fasters of Christ
christsfasters@aol.com
September 15, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Christsfasters,
May God accept your beautiful deed and reward you generously for the goodness in your hearts. I wish this month to be a special time for you all, and hope you may experience great and deep blessings in your lives.