Europe Napped For Years While ISIS Built Up Their Terror Force
The U.S. has done the same, quite frankly.

And what has contributed to that here is our desperation to deny that Islam is anything different from Judaism and Christianity; we like to believe there are just some bad people, not that it is a pernicious ideology. (It is not practiced that way by all -- or even understood by all Muslims for the pernicious slaughter/convert and conquer ideology it is.)

But it it is understood and practiced by enough Muslims to be a danger to life as we know it, where you used to be able to go to a Paris café or concert hall without wondering whether you'd make it home alive afterward.

More on this below.

Rukmini Callamachi writes for The New York Times:

In an audio recording released on Sept. 22, 2014, Mr. Adnani, the ISIS spokesman and chief of the external operations wing, addressed the West.

"We will strike you in your homeland," he promised, calling on Muslims everywhere to kill Europeans, "especially the spiteful and filthy French." And he urged them to do it in any manner they could: "Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car," he said, according to a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist propaganda.

In the months that followed, a man decapitated his employer near the French city of Lyon, sending a snapshot of the severed head to the Islamic State. Another man stormed a police station in Paris, carrying a butcher's knife and a photocopy of the Islamic State's flag.

These are among around two dozen plots linked to the Islamic State that were documented in the year after Mr. Adnani's speech. In most, there were no direct operational ties back to Syria, but there were clear signs that the attacker had consumed the terrorist group's propaganda online.

The low potency of these attacks, with single-digit death tolls, combined with the fact that many of the perpetrators had a history of mental illness, prompted analysts and officials to conclude that the Islamic State remained a distant second to Al Qaeda in its ability to carry out attacks on Western soil.

Experts now believe that the Islamic State was actually adopting a strategy first put forward by an earlier operations leader for Al Qaeda, who argued that the group would become obsolete if it worked only on 9/11-size plots that took months or years to mount. He instead called for Al Qaeda to also carry out a patter of small- and medium-size plots, and to use propaganda to inspire self-directed attacks by supporters overseas.

In a recent issue of its online magazine in French, Dar al-Islam, the Islamic State explained the approach. "The Islamic State has deployed its resources to generate three types of terrorist attacks," the article states, specifying that they include large-scale plots coordinated by the group's leaders, down to "isolated actions of self-radicalized people, who have absolutely no direct contact with ISIS, and yet who will consciously act in its name."

One small positive -- there's a level of dumbshittery that sometimes allows would-be murderers to be stopped:

Mr. Boudina had been sloppy enough to keep using his Facebook account, and his voluminous chat history allowed French officials to determine his allegiance to the Islamic State. Wiretaps of his friends and relatives, later detailed in French court records obtained by The Times and confirmed by security officials, further outlined his plot, which officials believe was going to target the annual carnival on the French Riviera.

The slaughter is driven by Islamic doctrine, explains William DiPuccio, Ph.D.:

Those who maintain that traditional Islam is a "religion of peace," labor under the naïve assumption that jihad (Islamic holy war) is only permitted in self-defense, so Muslims would never strike unless they are threatened or attacked first. But, what constitutes a threat or an attack - or any perceived "offense" - can be a cartoon, a movie trailer, or even children in kindergarten naming a toy teddy bear, Mohammed.[49] Throughout Islamic history, the invasive nature of jihad was so evident as to be beyond all question. But modern Muslim apologists have muddied the water with interpretations of the Quran which obfuscate or sanitize the original meaning. According to the widely respected Dictionary of Islam (1885), which is still available from Islamic publishers, jihad is defined as (emphasis mine):

A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad. It is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Qur'an and in the Traditions as a divine institution, and enjoined specially for the purpose of advancing Islam and of repelling evil from Muslims... [Quoting from the Hanafi school, Hedaya, 2:140, 141.], "The destruction of the sword is incurred by infidels, although they be not the first aggressors, as appears from various passages in the traditions which are generally received to this effect."[50]

If infidels refuse the call to Islam and do not agree to pay the dhimmi tax, called jizya, in recognition of their subservience, Muslims are required to make war upon them, "set fire to their habitations ... inundate them with water and tear up their plantations and tread down their grain," to weaken their resolve.[51] Muslims are directed to engage in a perpetual holy war against unbelievers until they submit to Islamic rule. This longstanding historical interpretation is fully supported by modern Islamists and serves as the propelling force behind their aggression.[52]

When Islamists call their religion "a religion of peace," they mean something quite different than the commonly received Western understanding of "peace" or harmony among people of differing loyalties. Saudi Shaykh Muhammad Saalih al-Munajjid explains in his fatwa (religious ruling), "Yes, it is the religion of peace but in the sense of saving all of mankind from worshipping anything other than Allaah and submitting all of mankind to the rule of Allaah."[53] In other words, once the world submits to Islam, there will be peace - Pax Islama.

More from his piece:

Islamists use the United States, the "Great Satan," as a foil for their hatred of "decadent" Western civilization and Christianity; and they use Israel, the "Little Satan," as a foil for their hatred of Jews, who, according to the Quran (5:60),[56] were cursed by Allah and turned into apes and pigs for their disobedience. The stated goal of Islamic extremists is not simply to free Arab lands from Western interference and to annihilate Israel (which has no right to exist in their view), but to consolidate the global "Ummah" (Islamic nation), and establish a Muslim empire ruled by a universal Caliph. While this may seem rather improbable, if not unbelievable, to Westerners, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Hamas, and the Mujahideen regard the restoration of the Caliphate as one of their main objectives.[57] These organizations have outspokenly devoted themselves to a violent, never-ending struggle to bring about this end. In the well-known words of the Muslim Brotherhood's creed, "Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations."[58]

Another cause of terrorism among Muslim factions is internal strife. Islamists seem to be driven not only to establish the hegemony of Islam by supplanting secular governments and legal systems, but also by enforcing religious purity according to their own standards. Violence between Sunni and Shiite extremists has been ongoing in Muslim countries for over a millennium. Wahhabi and Salafist purists export violence and terrorism to Islamic states and Muslim communities around the world, while imposing strict compliance with Shariah law on other Muslims. Over the past five years, 82% - 97% of terrorism victims worldwide have been Muslims. Most of these casualties were the result of Islamic factional violence. Last year, the greatest number of major terrorist attacks (that is, involving 10 or more deaths) took place in Muslim-majority countries.[59]

Most of the violence carried out by Islamic supremacists has no direct connection to Israel or the U.S., and little or nothing to do with economic and political oppression. If both Israel and the U.S. were to disappear today, Boko Haram (the name means, "Western Education is Forbidden") terrorists would continue to slaughter Muslims and Christians in Nigeria and burn churches to the ground. Islamists in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh would still persecute and kill Hindus, as they have for centuries. The Janjaweed Islamic militia would carry on its genocidal slaughter against Christians in Sudan. Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions would persist in their violent struggle for power. The persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt would press ahead uninhibited. Oppression and violence against Muslim women under Shariah law would most likely increase. The Taliban in Afghanistan would keep on poisoning and shooting Muslim girls for attending school and affirming their right to be educated. The cadence of misery inflicted upon the world by Islamic extremists would not miss a beat.[60]

As Robert Durie Osborn, a British major who served in India during the nineteenth century, put it: "They are strong only for destruction. When that work is over, they either prey upon each other, or beat themselves to death against the bars of their prison-house."[61]

Indifference is Not an Option

Islamic supremacism likely poses a multi-generational threat to the existence of Western civilization - perhaps the greatest threat it has ever faced. As members of American society, Muslims - most of whom were undoubtedly fleeing abuse, not trying to bring it with them - should of course be treated with respect, and their religion afforded the same deference we extend to other religions. But our civility should not blind us to the potential for extremism in the Muslim community - a concern shared by 60% of Muslim Americans - or to the religious connections between Islam and terrorism. Considering the magnitude of the threat, we can no longer afford to entertain the naïve and dangerous premise, which argues that all religions are essentially the same: Islam is different.