Breitbart News reports that one of the Brussels bombers had been featured in a documentary about the successful assimilation of Muslim immigrants in Sweden.  The film, ‘Without Borders — A Film About Sport And Integration,’ ran in 2005 and treated the alleged effects of soccer in encouraging immigrants to adopt European culture.  (There is a very similar program called “Soccer Without Borders,” targeting immigrants in the United States.)   Osama Krayem was only 11 at the time the film was made.  Now in his late 20s, he apparently did not set off warning bells in his community in spite of outspoken support for the Islamic State (ISIS).  Friends said they thought the outspoken support for ISIS was just him “trying to be cool,” which sends an interesting message about what is “cool” in this community.

Even when Krayem started posting pictures of himself on Facebook with Islamic State flags and guns, his old friends didn’t think anything was wrong. One said he just thought Krayem was trying to be “cool”, and that was just what “young people are doing”…. Osama had successfully joined the Islamic State and started posting pictures of his exploits on Facebook. A year later, Krayem has swapped the migrant enclave he had grown up in —Rosengard — for another. Traveling through Greece as a refugee, he came to reside in Molenbeek, Brussels, he took on took a leading role in organising the bomb attacks.

The story lines up several crucial points about the dangers of radicalization among Muslim immigrants.  The first is that Osama is a second-generation immigrant, one born and raised in Europe.  Second generation Muslim immigrants are substantially more likely to adopt radical Islamic practices than their parents — more than twice as likely, according to Danish statistics.  This means that even with background checks on refugees and immigrants, the threat of radicalization is not avoided.  The next generation, the ones who will be born citizens of your country, are the ones more likely to turn against a Western nation and try to establish Islamic law.  This is true even if the parents take assimilation seriously, as Osama’s parents apparently did given that they enrolled him in a soccer program aimed at integrating him into ordinary Swedish life.

The second point is that even when Muslim immigrants adopt outward Western forms, there is no guarantee they will not turn them to radical Islamic purposes.  Soccer hooligans are a great training ground for street fighters, as this gang in Germany demonstrates.

The third point is that a society simply cannot allow Islamic enclaves to form within itself.  These enclaves exist in America, too, and are being used to inculcate radical features of Islamic law such as whippings.  There is video evidence that they are also hosting military-style training for their members.

The final point is, of course, that the refugee stream from Syria does in fact contain radical, terrorist elements.  It is indeed a vector for ISIS infiltration of the West.  From Belgium, you can enter the United States without so much as a visa.  This Osama did not bring his jihad to America, but there was nothing stopping him from doing so.