Breeding Bin Ladens: America, Islam, and the Future of Europe

Johns Hopkins University Press | 244 pages | ISBN 9780801885051

While American leaders wage war on extremists in the Middle East, they are dangerously detached from a potentially greater threat closer to home. In Breeding Bin Ladens, Zachary Shore asserts that the growing ambivalence of Europe's Muslims poses risks to national identities, international security, and the transatlantic alliance. Europe's failure to integrate its Muslim millions, combined with America's battered image in the Muslim world, have left too many Western Muslims easy prey for violent dogmas. Until America and Europe adopt new strategies, Shore argues, Europe will increasingly become the incubation ground for breeding new Bin Ladens. The U.S. continues to spend billions of dollars and lose thousands of its young men and women to combat Islamic extremists, a group estimated to be as small as fifty thousand. What Western leaders have not done, says Shore, is seek to understand the millions of moderate Muslims who live peacefully in the United States and Europe. Many in this extraordinarily diverse group are deeply ambivalent toward perceived Western values.

While they may admire America's economic or technological might, many are appalled by its crass consumerism, sexualization of women, lack of social justice, and putative hypocritical foreign policies. Shore offers a deeply nuanced and hopeful consideration of Islam's future in the West. Cautioning Western leaders against an anti-terrorist tunnel-vision that could ultimately backfire, Shore proposes bold, creative, and controversial solutions for attracting the hearts and minds of moderate Muslims living in the West.