Then in passing Mr Goldstein let slip the thing of interest. Friends who taught high-school students in the predominantly Muslim areas of Molenbeek and Schaerbeek told him that when it came to their students’ views of the terrorists who had just bombed their city, ‘90 per cent of their students, 17, 18 years old, called them heroes’.1 Elsewhere, in an interview with De Standaard, the Belgian Security Minister, Jan Jambon, said that ‘a significant section of the Muslim community danced when the attacks took place’. As is the norm, Jambon was criticised for this by his parliamentary colleagues and the media. He replied that he had the information from several of the Belgian security services. But what he said, as with the revelation from Mr Goldstein, is in fact a glimpse beneath the surface that is afforded the public in stories following every act of terrorism in Europe. These stories are at least as responsible as the attacks themselves for the decisive shift that is occurring in the mood of Europe. Because although the bombs, gun and knife attacks are all of utmost concern, a secondary concern (but one that in the long run is greater) is the question of the relationship between the tiny number of extremists who carry out such attacks and the rest of the populations from the same background.

A poll taken in Britain in 2006, the year after the Danish cartoons were published, showed that 78 per cent of British Muslims believed the publishers of the cartoons should be prosecuted. A slightly smaller number (68 per cent) felt that anyone who insulted Islam should be prosecuted. The same poll found that almost a fifth of British Muslims (19 per cent) respected Osama bin Laden, with 6 per cent saying they ‘highly respected’ him.2 Nine years later, when two members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula walked into the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris and massacred the publication’s staff for printing caricatures of Mohammed, 27 per cent of British Muslims said they had ‘some sympathy’ for the motives of the attackers. Nearly a quarter (24 per cent) said they believed violence against people who publish images of Mohammed can be justified.3 The BBC, for whom this poll was carried out, ran it with the good-news headline ‘Most British Muslims “oppose Muhammad cartoons reprisals”.’

The combination of very high-visibility events and an awareness that what lies beneath the terrorism constitutes an even bigger problem means that in recent years the views of the European publics have increasingly diverged from those of their leaders. After nearly every terrorist attack the political leaders of Europe informed their publics that this had nothing to do with Islam, and that Islam was in any case a peaceful religion. The publics appeared to disagree.