Europe’s disgruntled immigrant underclass youngsters are not, as is always assumed, exclusively Muslim fundamentalist. Nor have they fully adopted the west’s urban and secular counterculture. No, it is a toxic mix of the two according to author Lorenzo Vidino:

As a French official recently told me, many youngsters from the Muslim-majority ghettoes of France "dress like rappers, smoke marijuana and drink alcohol, yet they watch jihadi videos and have pictures of [Osama] bin Laden on the display of their expensive cell phones." Any individual that attacks mainstream society becomes a hero, be it Abu Musab Zarqawi or the late American rapper Tupac Shakur.

And as we’ve established here before, this culture is open to everyone:

Operating in the southern areas of the British capital, the gang is composed of several hundred members and is active in criminal activities ranging from robberies to drug trafficking. The members of the gang are mostly British-born black youngsters originally from the Caribbean or Africa who converted to Islam in British penitentiaries and use their newfound faith as a bonding element.

It reminds me of Faisal Devji's theory that the jihad is becoming a vehicle for a very diversified group of individuals. Although totally different from say the Taliban or the Zarqawi group, the 'Euro hood' is an increasingly assertive and growing element of the jihadist war on the West.