Danes Expect More Attacks as Islamic Cells Escalate Jihad

Maybe if they keep wishing harder the jihad threat will go away.

At the Washington Post, "Danes wary of more attacks as gangs turn to extremism":

COPENHAGEN — With baseball caps pulled low over their eyes and scarves wrapped tightly around their mouths, the young men huddled at sundown to pay tribute to a killer.

Dozens had come to the scene where their “brother” was shot dead by police after he sprayed gunfire outside a cafe and a synagogue. Now they would give him a proper — and defiantly public — send-off: quiet prayers, followed by repeated chants of “Allahu Akbar” and the raised-index-finger salute of the Islamic State.

“May Allah show you grace,” read the handwritten sign they taped to the bullet-scarred apartment building where 22-year-old Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein fell. “Rest in peace, Captain.”

Hours later, an estimated 30,000 Danes held torches to the freezing Baltic wind in their own Monday evening commemoration — this one for Hussein’s victims. Swaying to the rhythm of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” they vowed not to bend to the impulse that drove the gunman to take two lives over the weekend in the country’s first fatal terrorist attack in three decades.

“When violence and hatred hits Denmark, the answer is community and democracy,” Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt told the solemn crowd.

But the earlier, far smaller gathering offered ominous hints of just how long and difficult this country’s struggle with violent extremism may prove to be.

Danish Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard told the BBC that the weekend’s attacks were believed to be the work of a “lone wolf,” a troubled young man who had already had multiple run-ins with the law and who had not acted in concert with a broader terrorist cell.

But authorities said Hussein was part of a network — a criminal gang called the Brothas that has traditionally traded in drugs and theft but whose members have lately been lured by radical Islam.

Like Hussein, many are the sons of Middle Eastern immigrants who have struggled to find a place in Denmark. These young men turn to the bonds of gang life and religion to forge their identities.

“The Brothas is dominated by young men without an education who feel they are not accepted in society,” said Aydin Soei, author of “Angry Young Men,” a book about gangs and inner-city life in Copenhagen. “They are not good Muslims and they know it. But Islam is part of their identity. They have a group identity of everyone being against them and being underdogs. In that identity, Islam means something.”

Welcome to Copenhagestan.

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