Excerpt:
In late 2005, the U.S. State Department decided that European Muslims needed America's help. Too many were living in parallel societies, cut off from the mainstream. Extremism and violence were rampant; it was no coincidence that three of the four 9/11 hijacker pilots had been radicalized in Europe or that Islamist terrorists had killed hundreds in London and Madrid. What Europe needed, the State Department figured, was help to set up an international network "to discuss alienation and extremism."
The idea was intriguing. The United States was the target of Islamic radicals, but its own communities seemed to have not produced the violence found in Europe. Experts had long debated the reasons for this. Some cited the fact that often the Muslims who immigrated to the United States either had jobs or planned to study. In Europe, by contrast, Muslims had come to work in industrial jobs that didn't exist anymore. They had working-class levels of education and lacked the skills to find new employment, leaving many frustrated, with too much time on their hands. Social services were thought to be related to the problem. In the United States, unemployed Muslims had few welfare benefits to help them out. If they wanted to survive, they had to work long hours. In Europe those who lacked employment could claim relatively generous welfare benefits and have time to indulge in extremist politics. Other explanations were batted around too: that Islamic violence was largely an Arab and Pakistani phenomenon; whereas a high percentage of Muslims in Europe had immigrated from these regions, those in the United States represented a broader array of homelands.
But no one made the single argument that informed the State Department's plan: that the United States had better Muslim leadership. A State Department-sponsored conference in November 2005 brought together 65 Belgian Muslims and U.S. tutors from the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The U.S. diplomats thought so highly of ISNA that it seems to have been appointed as a co-organizer of the conference.