Center for Strategic and International Studies
Volume 3 • Number 11 • October 2005

An intelligence expert has indicated that France's Islamic workforce is beginning to impose their beliefs at their places of work and is using their religion to justify theft, embezzlement, and the supply of inside information to criminal gangs. Eric Denece of the French Center for Research and Intelligence reported that the Islamists' want to “take control of Muslims within the workforce [and] challenge the rules in order to impose Islamic values.”

Denece mentioned the exposure of “around ten prayerrooms” at EuroDisney, as well as reports from a freight company operating at the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport that it had been threatened with repeated strikes by a small group of Muslims who want to impose their own work methods. A separate report to the French government by the French Center for Research and Intelligence indicated that Islamists are now using businesses to congregate in because of the close
surveillance of mosques.

In Britain, it has been discovered that Islamic radicals have turned to university students to bolster their ranks. An investigation by the Sunday Times in London found that an organization called Stop Islamophobia had been recruiting students at several London universities in an effort to fight anti-Muslim prejudice. However, the organization was a cover for a party called Hizb ut-Tahrir, which used the Stop Islamophobia organization to spread messages of anti-Semitism, anti-Hinduism, anti-Sikh, homophobia, antifeminism, and anti-Western influences. Prime Minister Tony Blair announced in August that the group would be outlawed, and the National Union of Students has called for a university-wide ban of the group.

Islamic radicals are also targeting high-crime areas of Britain's inner cities to gain recruits and support using tactics similar to those employed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). “In some areas, doubting the effectiveness of the police, Islamic radicals are permitted to enter the community and clean it up,” says Inayat Bunglawala, spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Britain. “They tend to look for people who have no feeling of purpose and try to give them a purpose.” Extremist groups then take advantage of poverty and disillusionment and gain the confidence of young British Muslims, who many believe are then brainwashed into becoming potential terrorists. (Combined dispatches)

Center for Strategic and International Studies
Volume 3 • Number 11 • October 2005