Global Jihad: temi, piste di diffusione e il fenomeno del reducismo ...

United Stated has long been active in seeking resettlement of refugees from areas of
risk to other countries, but during the 1990s, it had to increase the admission of
refugees into its own borders as well. 51 Statistics on asylum cases covered by U.S.
immigration judges between 1989 and 1999 show that only 22.4 percent of the
applications were approved. Yet, the majority of applications from most Muslim
countries (particularly Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, and Iraq), were
approved. 52
The increasing number of Muslim immigrants in Europe and the United States was
also a result of the political violence that occurred and goes on in Muslim countries
since the 1990s. In many cases these immigrants and asylum seekers had supported
or been actively involved in violent activities and were thus easily affected by
Islamist ideas once they arrived in the West.
The Islamists’ increasing focus on Muslim immigrants was in part a practical move.
Oftentimes, the long-term goals of Islamist groups are vague. They tend to speak in
terms of an eternal global mission in accordance with the basics of orthodox Islam, in
which victory, although guaranteed, will be achieved only in the far future. Thus,
they often eschew normal political observance and are not pragmatic unless they are
confronted by force, as happened in the second half of the 1990s. When Arab regimes
started confronting Islamists forcefully, many terrorist groups began to demand that
they be treated as legitimate political movements. This happened during 1998-99 in
Egypt, Algeria, and Yemen, even affecting relations between Hamas and the
Palestinian National Authority. As a result of their murderous operations, many
Islamist groups experienced a significant decline of public support in their
homelands. For example, the terrorist attack in Luxor on November 17 th , 1997—in
which 59 tourists from various countries were gunned down—shocked both the
Egyptian public and the Islamic establishment. Partly as a result of such changes,
51 Steve Edminster, “UNHCR, U.S. Government Gear up to Double Refugee Admissions from the Middle East
and South Asia,” Refugee Reports 20, no. 11 (December 1999). Also available on-line:
www.refugees.org/world/articles/unhcr_rr99_11.htm
52 U.S. Committee for Refugees, Asylum Cases Decided by Immigration Judges Approved or Denied, by Selected Country
of Origin [1999] [table]. Available on-line: www.refugees.org/world/statistics/wrs00_table3.htm
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