Generation Jihad

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That lack of connection to their native societies can often lead Muslims in Europe to seek order in religion. Zaheer Khan, 30, who grew up in the county of Kent in southeast England, was drawn to radical Islam as a college student in the mid-1990s. The Wahhabi and Salafist recruiters, he says, "would tell you that things like taking out car insurance are against Islamic principles, or voting--this is haram, forbidden. Slowly the disengagement was there. You didn't say, 'Let's explore what it means to be living in Britain.' This didn't come up." The radical feelings that Khan had back then--although he is still devout, he has since moved away from radical Islam--are apparently widespread among second-generation Muslims. "The problem is that they have no real roots," says Dominique Many, a lawyer for one of the Muslim Frenchmen taken into custody by French officials on suspicion of volunteering to fight against U.S. forces in Iraq. "In Tunisia they are considered foreigners. In France they are considered foreigners. This is the new generation of Muslims."

Rootlessness is compounded by economic struggle. On the whole, Muslims in Europe are far more likely to be unemployed than non-Muslims are. In Britain, almost two-thirds of children of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin--ethnic groups that together account for three-fifths of Britain's Muslims--are categorized as poor; the national average is 28%. A French law-enforcement source says jobless Muslims are "the easy marks, the fodder of jihadist networks." Yassin el-Abdi, 24, a trained accountant in Mechelen, Belgium, who has been unemployed for three years, says extremists in Europe are making a bad situation for Muslims even worse. "These people who are planting the bombs are wrecking things for us," says el-Abdi. And the depressing reality, says his friend Said Bouazza, who runs a job-training center in Mechelen, is that unemployment is only adding to the jihadists' ranks. "It's like a ticking time bomb. There are people who fight back by opening their own store. Or they plant bombs."

The kinds of young people taking up the jihadist cause in Europe might have been more inclined in the past to drift into a life of crime or drug use. The more committed would have had to journey to religious seminaries and training camps in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan to receive indoctrination in jihad. But now they don't need to leave home. The Internet has played a huge role in fostering a sense of community among both the fanatics and those who would join them. "They're becoming dedicated Islamists without ever leaving their home nations," a French counterterrorism official says.

What's more, TIME's reporting across Europe shows, the war in Iraq has further radicalized some Muslims, convincing them that the U.S. and Britain are bent on war with Islam and that the only proper response is to fight back. Listen to Uzair, the Savior Sect leader in London: "Muslims are being killed all over the world through the foreign policy of the U.K. and U.S. Many feel they cannot sit around and do nothing about it. What is the difference between a suicide bomber and a B-52? I really feel that war has been declared on Islam." Iraq, says a senior French security official, "has acted as a formidable booster" for extremist groups.