missing the boat

Once again, when it comes to Islam and understanding, Westerners are completely missing the boat. Case in point: this NY Times article on An Islamic Alienation. I don't buy the premise that Western culture is so at odds with whatever 'Islamic culture' they are talking about that creates disenfranchised angry underemployed Muslims who then want to fill a rucksack with explosives and blow themselves up at King's Cross tube station.

Fact is England and the European countries are different in their treatment of Muslims but not better. Note: why hasn't the United States had an attack by American Muslims? Okay, I may be jinxing/knocking on wood here, but why hasn't it happened? And why does the 9/11 commission report even explicitly say that Mohammad Atta's radicalization occurred not in Saudi Arabia but in Belgium, where he went to school?

England has little communities of immigrants, Muslim and other's who are kept separate from society. Western europe is probably worse, hate to say it, but Germans are into keeping themselves 'German,' and the Italians are bent on keeping themselves 'Italian.' There really is no hyphenation, like American-Bengali ... its not a melting pot or a mosaic. With that there's little opportunity to rise. Little reason to break out of community. But then where do the youth go, and what can they do?

I'm not saying that its the fault of Western countries, to some extent there is a level of fearing to break out of a community on the part of immigrants, but its not lopsided where all the blame for this lies.