Europeans See ISIS as Biggest Threat – Poll

BERLIN, (ST)-A new opinion poll, carried out by Pew Research Center and the results of which were published on Tuesday by Reuters, showed that the biggest threat the majority of the Europeans identified is the terrorist group called “Islamic State” (ISIS or Daesh).

Participants in nine countries out of ten, covered by the poll, said they believed that ISIS is the biggest danger. The highest rate that supported this view was recorded in Spain with 93% followed by France with 91%.

This European view came after terrorism has reached the heart of the countries which have sponsored terrorism from the very beginning and which thought that they could use it to destabilize and destroy other countries including Syria.

 Results indicated that terrorism danger is followed by the danger of global climate change and global economic instability, which 66 percent and 60 percent of Europeans called major threats, respectively. Almost half of the people polled (49 percent) feel threatened by the large number of refugees arriving in Europe.

The poll was made last April; that is a month after ISIS-affiliated extremists killed 32 people in Brussels airport and metro blasts. A report on the poll results was published a day after an ISIS-allied gunman killed 49 people in Orlando nightclub in Florida on Sunday in a deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United states.

Many intelligence officers and media outlets in western countries have acknowledged that the return of European terrorists to their homelands after taking part in the fight alongside the terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq has become one the biggest obsessions and  a source of fear of the governments of these countries.

Hamda Mustafa