What the fukk are you talking about?
This issue is a particularly big issue in France for a reason. Much bigger than "the West". Their actions, in particular, over hundreds of years and in recent years - has put them in this position.
- large marginalised Muslim population, makes up the majority of prison population
- Haven't bothered to do anything about ^^^ unlike the UK for example
- large National Front collective
- fukked up former colonies
- extremely aggressive foreign policy in Muslim countries. Even the US have retreated
- firearms problem due to location in Europe
Im ranting coz am pissed. Pissed at our (The West) inability to see the forest for the trees, pissed at Obama's lack of courage, pissed at Americans electing a leader during a time of war and clipping his powers. If you think WASPs are about to go to war for a black man you are kidding yourself, and that goes for Hillary too. They'll only do that if there is another attack in the homeland. Now all we have is Obama obfuscating the public acting like we are not at war while playing some COD shyt with his drones.
You rightly state this is much bigger than "the West", this is an ideological battle between capitalism and a fundamentalist section of salafist sunni Islam. We easily forget Osama's manifesto, his was a long term war. The fact that he called his terrorist organization al qaeda (the base) should be illuminating. Now they have gone from being guests to some po dunk regime in Afghanistan while living in caves to controlling a large land mass, having a functional economy and recruiting successfully internationally.
It is not only 'a particularly big issue in France', they have attacked America, UK, Spain, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia etc. We have tried stifling (Europe) we have tried direct confrontation (Bush) we have tried limited engagement (Obama) we have tried balkanization, Kenya- (limited) and Nigeria have some form of sharia as part of their jurisprudence. All to no avail. So we either accept these facts on the ground or to use a capitalist term 'creative destruction', we engage in a prolonged war of attrition...to paraphrase Mao "even if we lose 300 million so what this is war". But we are not gonna do that because we aint about that life.
So am pissed that we are losing what the Pope called 'a piece meal 3rd world war'. Here I am sounding like a fukking neocon