Europe faced with terrorist threat

Thomas Hauschild, an ethnologist from Tübingen who conducts research at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin, interprets the terrorist attacks in Algiers as the fruit of a new collaboration between Al-Qaeda and the Algerian terrorist network GIA. In his opinion, the West has "overlooked the expansion of the fighting zone to the European Mediterranean region". "In the initial phase Al-Qaeda relied entirely on the naked language of terror. There were no announcements or explanations. Today they inform us in detailed communiqués about the meaning and purpose of their attacks. The Al-Qaeda network has developed into an alternative public sphere in which people are constantly forming an opinion about the West and trying to communicate with it. A year ago, a German-language website started to broadcast the long-winded addresses of mass murderers, and there was no attempt to stop this. And yet there is no public debate about these addresses and provocations in the West." Hauschild ends with an appeal to the European public, both Christian and Muslim: "Only a self-aware new 'we' made up of the immigrant and the native population, Christians, Muslims and true 'infidels', can find the right answers to the questions Al-Queda is asking us."

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