German media professionals often talk about something called the "summer hole." The idea is that once July and August family holiday season kicks in, not much happens in the country and not many people are interested in reading about the little that does happen. This year, however, it seems the "summer hole" is nowhere to be found. The German election campaign is just now getting underway in earnest. The terror attacks in London are still all over the newspapers. The European Union is still in crisis. Africa continues to make headlines. And to top it all off, the Space Shuttle is once again blasting off after a long hiatus.

Indeed, so much is going on that German commentators on Wednesday hardly know where to look. But as it has for the last five days, terrorism -- and particularly yesterday's news that the London police have made their first arrests and determined that the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers -- wins out in the battle for editorial-page space.

Perhaps the most interesting piece of the day is carried by the conservative daily Die Welt. Written by Edward Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, and originally appearing in the Toronto paper Globe and Mail, the piece takes the interesting position that al-Qaida, which is being discussed as the group most likely behind the London attacks, actually no longer exists. The editorial begins with the obvious: "It is no secret that there are large numbers of angry Muslims in Britain and Europe." But Luttwak points out, as many have before him, that even if many are angry, only a very few "reach the stage of joining the extremist groups that speak of using violence, and only a handful act, as in Madrid last year and now in London."

Why is that? One reason, he argues, is that -- despite instructions on the Internet -- it isn't all that easy to build and then detonate bombs. The other -- and this is the main thesis of the commentary -- is that prospective terrorists cannot expect to "receive help from al Qaida, for the very good reason that al Qaida no longer exists as an organization -- and since it was only that, it no longer exists at all." Indeed, Luttwak writes, the London attacks were not all that successful anyway. The terrorists did manage to explode some of their bombs ("It is known that some bombs they placed did not explode.") But they weren't, he says, all that powerful. The coordination of the attacks was professional, it is conceded, but the targets were far from well-chosen. They didn't hit "official" London around Whitehall, "tourist" London, nor "financial" London. The moral? Stop overreacting to such terror attacks. "We can and must learn to under react, to reduce the incentives to further attacks." And what we absolutely have to stop doing, Luttwak argues, is hyping the activities of a few local losers by claiming they were members of al Qaida.

The London attacks have also got people thinking once again about the future of the European Union -- especially when it comes to creating a club that can adequately handle the 18 million Muslims -- a number that is projected to balloon to 40 million by 2035 -- that live in Europe. In a piece written for the Financial Times Deutschland, the well-respected international relations expert Bassam Tibi wonders whether Islam will ever be "Europeanized" or whether Europe is on the way toward being "Islamized." Tibi takes as his starting point the visit two weeks ago by Iran's president to Brussels. Apparently, when his hosts began drinking wine and beer at a state diner, the Iranian got up and left the table in protest. Even worse, the Iranian guest refused to shake hands with a female member of parliament.