The following op-ed about the ubiquity of Salafism and support for the Islamic State, in Europe as well as in the Middle East, was originally published in Wina magazine. Many thanks to JLH for the translation:

The Caliphate Next Door

October 13, 2014

Everyone is presently watching the “Islamic State” in the Near East. But there are hundreds of like-minded Islamic towns all over Europe. Terror is among us; it has just not revealed itself.

by Oliver Jeges

For months now in Germany and Austria, we have been hearing about a subject that we thought had been all talked out: Islam. Not a day passes between Hamburg and Vienna, Istanbul and London, Stockholm and Cairo, without some Muslim flipping out because his pride, his honor or his feelings have been in injured. And since the turn of the millennium, terrorism in the name of Islam has become as routine in the news as the weather report. The usual car-bomb in Baghdad, Islamabad or Abuja, the traditional assassination attempt in Syria or Gaza, no longer capture anyone’s attention. Such events have become too “normal.” You could say, it’s just a cultural peculiarity among Orientals.

Everywhere there is Islam, there is Islamism. They are Siamese twins. One cannot survive without the other because they have grown together.

The Takbir, or Allah’s Index Finger as the symbol of an entire youth movement… No problem if you feel good as a “teenie terror.” A milieu without context is releasing these teenagers into an uncertain future.

IS — the Islamic State — had to show up so that the subject of Islam would become prominent in the media again. The caliphate proclaimed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, its leader, gives a new twist to the reportage. How brutal and insouciant Islam’s evil face is! IS adherents stone adulterous women, crucify “infidel” Christians, dispossess minority Yazidis from Iraq and outlaw any influence which they believe is not compatible with the pure teaching of the Koran.

And for the first time we notice that this is no mere regional hot spot in the Near East. IS is recruiting its fighters from all over the world. More than 2,000 of them are from Europe, including Germans, British, Austrians, Dutch. Even an Australian Muslim with his underage children joined the jihad. It is true that the the caliphate is “only” raging through Syria and Iraq. But the ideology that makes these terrible actions possible has already found its way here.

There is a Salafist Presence in Almost Every European City

There are people who interpret the Koran literally and reject Western values such as the separation of church and state, democracy, freedom of speech, gender equality, sexual self-determination and international law. In Germany’s Wuppertal, there is a sharia patrol after the British model. Young men patrol nightly to enforce Muslim moral order. If there is a too casually dressed Muslim female, a young Turk with a bottle of beer in his hand, a Egyptian-German standing in front of a gambling hall, the watchmen are on the spot. London has had these morality police for at least two years. Young Muslims — converts included — discipline anyone who does not follow the rules of Islamic law. This form of intimidation is the rule, and the European rule of law undertakes little against it.