Scratch European anxiety about the coming Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and you usually discover a foreboding about the possible repercussions among Europe's large and expanding Muslim population. An assault on Saddam Hussein could provoke, it is feared, demonstrations or riots in the streets, terrorist attacks, and worsening rancour between Europe's Muslims and non-Muslims.

It may be no coincidence that France, Germany, and Belgium have become the anti-American axis in western Europe since they all have sizeable, increasingly militant, and, in the eyes of the non-Muslim natives, increasingly indigestible Muslim communities. In particular France, which leads the anti-war cause, has seen more terrorism spring from its immigrant and native-born Middle Eastern population than any other European state.

In the mid-1990s, a motley group of French and Algerian Muslim radicals robbed banks, bombed metro stations and cars, and almost derailed an express train between Paris and Lyons. Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda has grafted itself on to some of France's many north African extremist groups. It is no wonder the Direction de la surveillance du territoire, the French internal security service, has become the most efficient and most feared counter-terrorist agency in Europe.

Yet European fears about another Gulf war producing an increase in terrorism, or even an increase in Muslim/ non-Muslim animosity, are misplaced. The coming war in Iraq will probably diminish, not enhance, the odds that young Muslim males will become holy warriors or take to the streets more violently than their non-Muslim, anti-war European compatriots.

Although the Muslim communities in Europe are not exactly what they were before the first Gulf war--their social and economic conditions have worsened--they are not radically different in temperament. In 1990-91 there was extraordinary concern, especially within France, that the Muslim denizens of Europe were going to run amok. The French government even gathered a group of academics to advise on whether participation in the war would lead to domestic upheaval.

But the war came and went, and few strictly Muslim disturbances occurred. Though the war had a central role in the genesis of al-Qaeda--Osama bin Laden wanted his holy warriors, not infidel Americans, to protect the sacred lands of the Arabian peninsula from Iraqi invaders - its role in the anti-western radicalisation of Muslims in Europe was slight.

To the extent that we can see into the minds of Europe's Islamic extremists, both native-born and immigrant, it appears that the Algerian civil war, not the Gulf war and not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was their most galvanising foreign influence in the 1990s. And European Muslims are becoming ever more distinct from their religious brethren in the old Muslim world. Even among radical fundamentalists, who increasingly know only European languages, western influences are probably more powerful than Middle Eastern inspirations.

Frantz Fanon's Les damns de la terre is read avidly by young fundament-alists everywhere in Europe; Ibn Taymiyya, the medieval jurist and the spiritual godfather of today's Islamic holy warriors, is often taken in through translated apophthegms and quick mosque tutorials. Western influences can, of course, be as lethal as anything generated by Islam's jihad literature. And to the extent that spiritual or material distress leads young men to terrorism, the roots of violence are more likely to lie in the factors defining daily life for Muslims in Europe than a distant war in the Middle East.

It is possible, of course, that the televised image of an American or British bombing run against Iraq may tip some radical fundamentalist in Leeds or Marseilles into suicidal holy-war terrorism. It is a good bet, however, that any young man who would be turned by such images - and remained turned after the televised images of the Iraqi people celebrating Saddam Hussein's downfall--is already nearly a holy warrior. Europe and al-Qaeda, let us remember, have successfully produced jihadists for more than a decade.

The coming war in Iraq is actually achieving an unusual solidarity between many Muslims and Europeans. Today, it is virtually impossible to discern in Europe a distinctly Muslim or Arab objection to the war within the vast anti-war opposition among non-Muslim Europeans. European public opinion did not like America's confrontation with Iraq in 1991, but it dislikes it more today. For a European Muslim to be vehemently anti-war and anti-American in 2003 is to express "pro-French" or "pro-German" or "pro-European" views. The anti-war tide gives Muslims an unprecedented political and cultural opportunity to join the continent's mainstream.

That, of course, is to assume that Muslims do not diverge in large numbers from the anti-American mainstream. In practice, many have first- hand knowledge of dictators and may listen more sympathetically to the stories and images of a liberated Iraq. Either way, Muslim militants may have little to protest about in the streets, or in their minds, since non-Muslim Europeans will pre-empt them.

The US-led war in Iraq will challenge the foundation-myth of Osama bin Laden - the promise that America is weak and on the run. Many Europeans see bin Ladenism in reverse, as a by-product of America's strength, adventurism and support for Israel. The latter view is odd, since al-Qaeda went global during the administration of Bill Clinton, a multilateralist, conflict-averse president who repeatedly welcomed Yassir Arafat to the White House. But it is a natural response given western Europe's embrace of the doctrine of soft power.

Most of Europe's Muslims, who have not been protected by the US for 60 years, have a more acute knowledge of the Middle East's power politics. They are likely to respond to America's victory in Iraq more calmly, if not more appreciatively, than their non-Muslim neighbours. The holy warriors may still bomb us; they will bomb us war or no war if they can. But if thoroughly Europeanised Muslims end up running amok, Europeans will have only themselves to blame.

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at AEI.