Is there some desire to claim back their heritage or something?
Poor economic success and social exclusion, mostly. It's a recipe for disaster, and preventing it from happening should be a major priority for the rest of Europe. I don't expect that any preventative measures will be taken, anti-immigration parties being how they are, but one can always hope.
A nice dream, that enlightened westerners can merely share their prosperity with immigrants and they will turn out to be nice westerners. It makes sense, every terrorist attack becomes Europe's fault for not being tolerant and progressive enough.
"Our ISIS fighters come from various backgrounds"
Yep, you got ones like Nasser Muthana who was a med student, Abu Hussain al Britani who was a hacker, Abu Taubah who was a London student and convert, Abu Bakr Al Khurassani who was a business student, Khalil al-Britani who was a failure who fucked up his GCSEs, Abu Usamah al-Eritri who was an estate agent with biomed degrees, Umm Layth who was privately educated in Scotland (most expensive education outside of London), Zubair Nur who was a petroleum geology student, Mohammed Ismail an English convert from coventry who went to Syria with two friends but came back alone e.t.c.
Estimates on the low end say 700 ISIS fighters, higher end 1,500 or more, check out them profiles if you're interested.
Which is why my hopes for Westerners are very slim, because so many of them cling so tightly to oppression narratives that they literally cannot see what is right in front of them even as it kills them.
From the Queen Mary study I talked about on September 11 (the date of that post only strikes me today as auspicious):
Having surveyed 600 Pakistani, Bangladeshi and other Muslim men and women from London and Bradford, sympathy for violent protest and terrorism was generally low, more were neutral and the great majority were opponents. But sympathy levels increased among those under 20, those in full time education rather than employment, those born in the UK, and high earners (£75,000 per year or more).
Economic success and integration fixed nothing and somehow made even more violent Islamists. Salafism is very popular in our Universities.
Why even have these people in your country?
So yeah, looks like this could turn into the European 9/11.
Do you guys think France will now go to war in Syria? If they do, I hope Germany shows some solidarity and sends along the Bundeswehr. We've done jack shit for so long, and those killed and wounded in Paris were among those who paid the prize: It's time to own up to our mistakes.
Useless platitudes with pointless hopes from someone whose nation will never take action.
I'd also like to remark that I'm disgusted by the xenophobes in this thread, but that goes without saying. If your reaction to some 150 people being killed is 'kick out dem goat-fuckers' you're not someone whose hand I'd shake. Show some Goaddamn respect - if not to the millions of Syrians, Iraqis etc whose lives have been destroyed, then at least for the victims of the Paris attacks.
Show some respect? To the Syrians and Iraqis murdered by Islamists or the Parisians murdered by Islamists?
You're respecting them by shaking hands with the men who murdered them and the sons who will murder them?
Who let them into Europe?