Soldiers patrol at the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014.PARIS – The Islamic State group’s call on Muslims to go after the “filthy French” and other Westerners multiplies already deep security concerns in nations targeting the militant organization.
The appeal made public Monday makes intelligence tracking of potential suspects virtually impossible and opens up Muslims in the West to the possibility of being unfairly put under suspicion or stigmatized.
Nations are honing mechanisms to monitor Westerners who head to Syria and Iraq to fight in the jihad, the better to catch them when they return home with deadly skills. But how do you track someone who reads the Islamic State group’s call in a newspaper or on a mainstream website, and then carries out a spontaneous attack?
Experts in terrorism agreed that the options to counter-act the call on all Muslims to kill are virtually nil, beyond bolstering security forces’ visibility – thus allowing them to act quickly if need be.
“We are not waging a war between east and west, or Christianity and Islam,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday. The French government says what it calls the “butchers” of the Islamic State group don’t represent Islam.