Gangster Islam: The problem Europe ignores

Gangster Islam: The problem Europe ignores 

For over a decade, Europe’s struggle to successfully integrate its Muslim population has been evident. But throughout the years a new and distinctly European phenomenon arose, which is as significant as it is underreported: Gangster Islam. 

It entails the conflation of the seemingly a-religious street culture of youths from a Muslim background on the one hand, and elements of the Islamic religion on the other. 

The German publication Der Spiegel once very briefly touched on the matter, a Danish documentary highlighted Islamic extremists recruiting gang members from a Muslim background, and a Dutch terrorism expert pointed out how Syrian returnees were more likely to live a life of crime in order to finance the jihad, than to actually commit a terror attack. 

One would think that after having spent millions of euros on interreligious dialogues, cultural sensitivity trainings and moral diversity classes, Europe’s social scientists would have punctured the surface by now. 

But a fundamental discussion on how and why street culture and religion conflate, and what the implications of this new hybrid culture are, seems thus far to have been shied away from. 

The analyses that have been made conclude gang members and jihadist mostly resemble one another in their tendency towards and fascination for violence. However, the resemblances between seemingly a-religious street youths from a Muslim background and Islamists, are actually more numerous and more fundamental.