The recent terrorist attack at the Finsbury Park Mosque in London, as well as those that have occurred in recent weeks in London, Manchester and again in Brussels, highlight that inter-religious tensions are emerging as a clear attempt to increase tension, to favor populist political parties in order to transform European democracies into more autocratic regimes. Many experts on the politics of integration of Islam and the Middle East have already given their core topic interpretation. One of them, French professor Gilles Kepel, compared in the magazine 'Le Nouvelle Observateur' (LOBS) the French and British integration policies, highlighting how the "tolerant" UK system, which allowed the creation of Shari'ah Councils within different neighborhoods of Birmingham, has been unable to keep Britain safe from internal Islamist attacks.

After the 9/11 attacks, the Western world became more aware of Islamic terrorism and after the London bombings in 2005, Europeans assumed the possibility that Muslim citizens from the continent could perpetrate terrorist attacks in their own country. The following reaction, at first, emphasized a clear incomprehension rooted in the Eurocentric feeling of superiority: How is it possible that British citizens, present in the UK for generations and coming from poor countries, are not infinitely grateful to the host state and, on the contrary, promote terrorist attacks? 

The integration policies of the European Union clearly differ from country to country, as well as the historical relationship of the various continental nations with Islam and the Arab world. On the contrary, the Islamophobic approach in Europe emerged as a more homogeneous phenomenon, particularly relevant in countries such as France, where there have been important terrorist attacks in recent years, but also in Italy, where, on the contrary, nothing has happened recently. England and France have clear historical responsibilities in the fragmentation of the Arab-Islamic geography, integrated in the past within multi-ethnic and multi-religious empires (such as the Ottoman).

At the same time, in the last decade, even when the media had never focused attention on these events, some Islamophobic attacks against Muslim European citizens have led to a growing number of clearly religiously motivated murders: five killed in the United Kingdom since 2005, one in Switzerland in 2016, four in Sweden since 2009, eleven in Germany since 2005, one in France in 2015 and one in Denmark in 2008.

European Islamic terrorism is changing our way of life What is the real goal of these attacks Have the European Union's integration policies failed? 

First of all, everyone, mostly Muslims escaping the civil wars in Syria and Iraq - in which the European Union and the US have clear responsibilities - is trying to reach Europe. Why Because our continent attracts people who believe that it is possible to live in a better place and want to do so. They do not want to go to Saudi Arabia or the Emirates, even if they are Muslim countries like yours. So there is a part of the Arab world that recognizes the need for peace to improve the way of life: to integrate plurality.

This is the real goal of the latest terrorist attacks: a plural society, mutual understanding between religions, a new Babylon of nations. The European perpetrators of these attacks are a failure of the unifying policy partly for personal reasons and incapacity and partly because integration policies and Eurocentric attitudes still refuse to lose weight.

The suburbs built in the suburbs for the last arrivals are still geographic ghettos; the school programs have nothing to do with the cultural-historical-religious background of half of the pupils on class; and thirdly, there are no real opportunities to obtain a work as a factor of integration. These are just a few aspects of the European Union's responsibilities.

All in all, a majority of EU citizens were not persuaded in the 2017 elections to vote for populist-islamophobic parties in the Netherlands, Austria, France and the United Kingdom, and probably won't even do so in the upcoming German elections. Terrorist attacks have tried on numerous occasions to change election results, but to no avail.

Can today's old democracies of the European Union still preserve some of their values? 

Integration policies are the test bed. Policies to prevent religious radicalization need to be implemented, with a approach that is not univocally about security. School and university systems still have an important role to play.