In February, several young men in Birmingham, England were arrested for their alleged role in a plot to kidnap a fellow Muslim serving in the British army, behead him, and record the execution for broadcast on the Internet in the fashion of jihadists in the Middle East. In many quarters in Europe, this episode was seen as further evidence of the depths to which some seemingly ordinary European Muslims—the suspects included a high-school teacher with a passion for cricket—have sunk. For others, however, the whole affair was evidence of something entirely different: the pervasive victimization of European Muslims in what the Paris-based writer Rana Kabbani has termed a “carnival of [European] hatred.”

In the latter view of things, a view by no means limited to Muslims themselves, European Muslims have become scapegoats for the society’s wider problems. Trapped in their ghettos, refused decent opportunities for advancement, taunted by the majority population, and targeted for persecution by the government, they have (it is said) come to resemble a previous hated minority. As Muhammad Naseem, chairman of Birmingham’s Central Mosque and widely regarded as a moderate, argued in the wake of the arrests: “The German people were told the Jews were a threat. The same thing is happening here. The Muslims are now the bogey people.” Among those seconding the charge was an op-ed writer in London’s Guardian: “Muslims are now getting the same treatment Jews had a century ago. Today’s anti-Muslim racism uncannily echoes earlier anti-Semitism.”

© 2009 Commentary Inc.