Tony in Londonistan: Britain and the post-bombing reality

Update from AIJAC

Tony in Londonistan: Britain and the post-bombing reality

July 19, 2005
Number 07/05 #06

Today's Update concentrates on the British reaction to the London bombing and especially the realisation that the bombers were apparently seemingly ordinary British-born Muslims.

We lead with the full text of PM Tony Blair's superb speech on Saturday, where he demonstrated that he really does get what is going on here - the attack is the product above all of an evil ideology, it is not a reaction to anything the West has done or any specific injustice, there are no demands that can be appeased, and the only solution is standing up for our values. I advise everyone to read it all and to do so, CLICK HERE.

Next, Israeli academic Jonathan Spyer examines the reality of Britain as Londonistan, one of the world's centres of Islamic extremism, in recent years. He argues that there needs to be a sustained focus on this reality in coming month, even though some people will try to insist that even talking about his problem is "Islamophobia". For all the details, CLICK HERE.

Finally, British expatriate writer John O'Sullivan detects. amidst Blair's fine words and other reaction to the bombing, a reluctance among many to fully confront the reality. In particular, he says, it needs to be admitted that the British brand of multiculturalism is failing to provide an identity to which young Muslims can aspire, and also to be acknowledged that the terrorism is associated with Islam, even if not the Islam of the vast majority of Muslims. He urges that both these realities be faced better, and to read his full argument, CLICK HERE.

Prime Minister Blair's Speech

New York Times, July 16, 2005

The following is the text of the speech delivered by Prime Minister Tony Blair on Saturday, July 16, 2005.

The greatest danger is that we fail to face up to the nature of the threat we are dealing with. What we witnessed in London last Thursday week was not an aberrant act. It was not random. It was not a product of particular local circumstances in West Yorkshire. Senseless though any such horrible murder is, it was not without sense for its organisers. It had a purpose. It was done according to a plan. It was meant.

What we are confronting here is an evil ideology. It is not a clash of civilisations - all civilised people, Muslim or other, feel revulsion at it. But it is a global struggle and it is a battle of ideas, hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside it. This is the battle that must be won, a battle not just about the terrorist methods but their views. Not just their barbaric acts, but their barbaric ideas. Not only what they do but what they think and the thinking they would impose on others.

This ideology and the violence that is inherent in it did not start a few years ago in response to a particular policy. Over the past 12 years, Al Qaeda and its associates have attacked 26 countries, killed thousands of people, many of them Muslims. They have networks in virtually every major country and thousands of fellow travellers. They are well-financed. Look at their web-sites. They aren't unsophisticated in their propaganda. They recruit however and whoever they can and with success.

Neither is it true that they have no demands. They do. It is just that no sane person would negotiate on them. They demand the elimination of Israel; the withdrawal of all westerners from Muslim countries, irrespective of the wishes of people and Government; the establishment of effectively Taleban states and Sharia law in the Arab world en route to one Caliphate of all Muslim nations.

We don't have to wonder what type of country those states would be. Afghanistan was such a state. Girls put out of school. Women denied even rudimentary rights. People living in abject poverty and oppression. All of it justified by reference to religious faith.

The 20th century showed how powerful political ideologies could be. This is a religious ideology, a strain within the world-wide religion of Islam, as far removed from its essential decency and truth as Protestant gunmen who kill Catholics or vice versa, are from Christianity. But do not let us underestimate it or dismiss it. Those who kill in its name believe genuinely that in doing it, they do God's work; they go to paradise.

From the mid 1990s onwards, statements from Al Qaeda, gave very clear expression to this ideology.

Every Muslim, the minute he can start differentiating, carries hatred towards the Americans, Jews and Christians. This is part of our ideology.

The creation of Israel is a crime and it has to be erased. You should know that targeting Americans and Jews and killing them anywhere you find them on the earth is one of the greatest duties and one of the best acts of piety you can offer to God Almighty.

Just as great is their hatred for so-called apostate Governments in Muslim countries. This is why mainstream Muslims are also regarded as legitimate targets.

At last year's Party Conference I talked about this ideology in these terms:

Its roots are not superficial but deep, in the madrassehs of Pakistan, in the extreme forms of Wahabi doctrine in Saudi Arabia, in the former training camps of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; in the cauldron of Chechnya; in parts of the politics of most countries of the Middle East and many in Asia; in the extremist minority that now in every European city preach hatred of the West and our way of life. This is what we are up against. It cannot be beaten except by confronting it, symptoms and causes, head-on. Without compromise and without delusion.

The extremist propaganda is cleverly aimed at their target audience. It plays on our tolerance and good nature; it exploits the tendency to guilt of the developed world; as if it is our behaviour that should change; that if we only tried to work out and act on their grievances, we could lift this evil; that if we changed our behaviour, they would change theirs. This is a misunderstanding of a catastrophic order.

Their cause is not founded on an injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such it can't be moderated. It can't be remedied. It has to be stood up to. And, of course, they will use any issue that is a matter of dissent within our democracy. But we should lay bare the almost-devilish logic behind such manipulation.

If it is the plight of the Palestinians that drives them, why, every time it looks as if Israel and Palestine are making progress, does the same ideology perpetrate an outrage that turns hope back into despair?

If it is Afghanistan that motivates them, why blow up innocent Afghans on their way to their first ever election? If it is Iraq that motivates them, why is the same ideology killing Iraqis by terror in defiance of an elected Iraqi Government?

What was September 11 2001 the reprisal for? Why even after the first Madrid bomb and the election of a new Spanish Government, were they planning another atrocity when caught? Why if it is the cause of Muslims that concerns them, do they kill so many with such callous indifference? We must pull this up by its roots. Within Britain, we must join up with our Muslims community to take on the extremists. Worldwide we should confront it everywhere it exists.

Next week I and other party leaders will meet key members of the Muslim community. Out of it I hope we can get agreed action to take this common fight forward. I want also to work with other nations to promote the true face of Islam world-wide. Round the world, there are conferences already being held, numerous inter-faith dialogues in place but we need to bring all of these activities together and give them focus.

We must be clear about how we win this struggle. We should take what security measures we can. But let us not kid ourselves. In the end, it is by the power of argument, debate, true religious faith and true legitimate politics that we will defeat this threat. That means not just arguing against their terrorism but their politics and their perversion of religious faith. It means exposing as the rubbish it is, the propaganda about America and its allies wanting to punish Muslims or eradicate Islam. It means championing our values of freedom, tolerance and respect for others. It means explaining why the suppression of women and the disdain for democracy are wrong. The idea that elected Governments are the preserve of those of any other faith or culture is insulting and wrong. Muslims believe in democracy just as much as any other faith and given the chance, show it.

We must step up the urgency of our efforts. Here and abroad the times the terrorists have succeeded are all too well known. Less known are the times they have been foiled. The human life destroyed we can see. The billions of dollars every nation now spends is huge and growing. And they kill without limit. They murdered over 50 innocent people last week. But it could have been over 500. And had it been, they would have rejoiced.

The spirit of our age is one in which the prejudices of the past are put behind us, where our diversity is our strength. It is this which is under attack. Moderates are not moderate through weakness but through strength. Now is the time to show it in defence of our common values.

A scourge in `Londonistan'

By Jonathan Spyer

Haaretz, 15/07/2005

The responses of senior British officials following the London bombings last week are highly revealing. They contain within them clues to a decades-long failure of political judgment. This failure allowed the forces which produced the bombing to grow and proliferate on British soil, freely, under the noses of the authorities. Innocent Londoners, whose courage and dignity in the face of last week's horrors were inspirational - are paying the price of the complacency of their leaders.

London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, in his response to the bombings, and the forces behind them, declared: "That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is." These words, in their determination to pry the bombings away from any political or ideological context, encapsulate the problem.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, successive British governments adopted an astonishingly myopic policy of tolerance toward the ideologues and activists of radical Islam. Britain's liberal asylum laws allowed the entry of radical ideologues of global Islamism, many wanted by the authorities in their own countries. These individuals set about organizing and proselytizing deep in the heart of Britain's urban Muslim communities. British Muslims, though suffering from the same difficulties of integration into British society as other newcomers (an unemployment figure of 10 percent above the national average, for example), are for the most part a law-abiding population. There is, however, a layer of mainly British-born, deeply disaffected young men for whom radical Islam possesses enormous appeal. A number of these young men have gone on to play prominent roles in the actions of the global jihad. It is now clear that the bombings in London were the work of individuals of this type.

I should probably declare a certain personal involvement here. In the mid-'90s, I left my home in Jerusalem to spend a year studying in London. At that time, I was peripherally involved with a private organization concerned by the activities of radical Islamist activists among Muslim communities in London, and by the complete failure of this to register in public debate. The result of this for me was the spending of more dreary evenings than I care to remember in obscure mosques in working-class areas of the city, listening to Arab Islamist exiles such as the Syrian-born Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, and the Saudi Mohammed Masari, exhorting small audiences of young Muslim men toward involvement in the jihad.

Not being blessed with the gift of prophecy, neither I nor my colleagues could know that within a decade, the same ideas sounding forth in forgotten corners of London would bring mayhem and holy murder to the heart of the capital. But we were aware that something was afoot. In mainstream political and media discussion in the UK, meanwhile, the issue was not downplayed. It was nonexistent.

The result was that, largely unseen by the wider British public, a burgeoning militant Islamist subculture proliferated. London - "Londonistan" as the Islamists cheerfully began to term it - became a jihadist hub. The city played host to Islamist publishing houses, gatherings and newspapers: The Hamas monthly, Filastin al-Muslimah, was only one of many publications produced there. Individuals such as Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri and the Palestinian Abu Qutada preached support for the global jihad at regular gatherings in urban mosques. A recent British government report estimates between 10,000 and 15,000 supporters of radical Islamist groups resident in Britain by the end of the `90s.

And from this fertile, unmarked ground, some of the best known names of the jihad have grown. The "shoe bomber" - Richard Reid, a convert to Islam radicalized by the fiery sermons preached at the Brixton Mosque in south London. Omar al-Sheikh, the killer of journalist Daniel Pearl, and the disaffected, brilliant son of Pakistani immigrants. Dhiren Barot, Nadeem Tarmohammed and Qaisar Shaffi - British citizens and Al-Qaida members currently on trial for plotting to attack major financial centers in United States cities. And, of course, Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Mohammed Hanif, the British-born students of Omar Bakri Mohammed, who came to Tel Aviv via Gaza in 2003 and carried out the bombing of Mike's Place bar on the beachfront, killing three Israeli civilians.

The March 2004 bombings in Madrid sounded an alarm for the British authorities. It was now clear that offering asylum to radical Islamists and permitting them freedom to agitate offered no long-term immunity from attack. Some measures were taken. Abu Hamza al-Masri and Abu Qutada, among others, were arrested (though the latter has since been released). We are told that the resources of the security services began to be massively channeled toward the effective monitoring of radical Islamist networks. But the vital "paradigm shift" leading to wide-ranging action against radical Islamism has not taken place. Neither is it certain that it will happen now. The reason for this is because parallel to the actions of the radical Jihadists, a much broader, far-reaching effort at apologetics has taken place. This has created a strong lobby arguing for the retention of the ruinous policies of the `90s.

The strange romance of parts of the European left with radical Islam is a much remarked-upon phenomenon of the current political scene. The response of the left/Islamist axis in Britain to the horrific events of last week is already becoming apparent. The Guardian newspaper is carrying a slew of op-eds from such luminaries as Tariq Ramadan, and also the UK-based Islamist Faisal Bodi, who seeks to blame the attack on British involvement in Iraq. Mayor Livingstone, who earlier this year hosted the Islamist Qatar-based, anti-Semitic Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in London, at the expense of London's taxpayers, is part of the problem.

These elements, strongly represented in opinion-forming circles in the UK, will be doing their utmost in the weeks and months to come to cast the blame for the events of 7/7 everywhere except where it belongs. They will seek to portray all attempts to focus the discussion on the past folly of policies toward domestic and external radical Islam as "Islamophobic," and illegitimate. Consequently, the achievement of rational policy in the vital judicial, policing, intelligence and educational fields to ensure the defeat of this scourge is in the first instance a contest of political will. The prevention of a repeat of the terrible scenes witnessed last week in London may hinge on the outcome of this contest.

Dr. Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya.

GRIM REALITIES

John O'Sullivan

New York Post, July 17, 2005

   When something too terrible to contemplate actually happens, it is a normal human reaction to contemplate something else entirely. That is what seems to be happening in Britain since the bombs exploded on the London Underground and, even more tortuously, since the bombers were found to be not only suicide bombers but home-grown and fully assimilated suicide bombers.

   This aversion to reality is not immediately obvious from media reports of British reactions. They have concentrated on such events as Tony Blair's stout defiance of the terrorists, the united Parliament supporting him and the stoical bravery of ordinary Londoners. These things are important, of course, but they are a predictable part of the script following any major terrorist action.

   You have to listen carefully for those odd little indications, both things said and things left significantly unsaid, that reveal a fear of facing reality. Before we knew for certain that the terrorists were suicide bombers, for instance, Tony Blair listed the countries that had suffered similar terrorist bombings.

   His list, though long, did not include Israel. That omission cannot have been accidental. It may perhaps have reflected the unpopularity of Israel in Europe's media and political elites. More likely, it revealed a desperate wish that the bombings should be the conventional kind the Brits have coped with before and not the eerie suicide variety that would threaten Britain with an Israeli-style future. The wish, however, was a deceiver.

   Another litmus test was the meeting of European ministers responsible for homeland defense called by the British home secretary last week. It is a core belief of European progressives, including in this case the Blair government, that coordination of security, law-enforcement and immigration under the EU will help defeat terrorism. Every previous terrorist outrage has been used to further this coordination. But a single European immigration system would put British immigration security in the hands of Greeks, Italians and Spaniards. Would that really be likely to improve it?

   The meeting hardly suggested so. It decided to store all electronic communications for one year so that security forces might inspect them. No sooner had the meeting concluded, however, than the experts pointed out quietly that such a vast amount of data would overwhelm the intelligence agencies. In short, the top-level security meeting was an example both of "gesture politics" - the only kind of politics at which the Europeans excel - and of "displacement activity," which is doing something pointless because you shrink from doing something necessary.

   This kind of bustling irrelevancy is undertaken be cause the authorities are baffled by two emerging realities. The first reality is that the suicide bombers were homegrown. They were not poor, not oppressed, and not segregated from the rest of Britain. They were born to families integrated into British neighborhoods; they went to British schools and colleges - one was even a teacher; they played cricket.

   Why then did they become suicide bombers? Why did others like them go to fight British soldiers in Afghanistan?

   One important answer seems to be that they were fully assimilated into a nullity. The British identity presented to these young people under multiculturalism was at best thin and at worst vicious. That was certainly not necessary. Not too long ago, people all over the world admired and emulated the moral ideal of the British gentleman. But a mixture of political passions - left-wing post-colonial guilt, elite enthusiasm for the EU, the post-1945 unfashionableness of patriotism - caused this identity to be trashed and despised. And nothing offered in its place. No natural patriotism filled their soul to block the entry of murderous ideologies. And nature abhors a vacuum.

   Blair and his colleagues are beginning to grasp this. They talked last week about reviving and proselytizing "British values" in much the same self-conscious way that Americans used to promote assimilation before the multicultural revolution. It does not come naturally to them, however. They are uncomfortably aware that until yesterday they were promoting the multiculturalism that kills. And those older instincts may well compromise and distort the British patriotism they are now attempting to promulgate.

   Still, they are tackling a fundamental problem. By now, however, it is only half the problem. The second emerging reality - one that ministers are desperately wriggling to avoid - is that Islam had at least something to do with what inspired the suicide bombers.

   Their motives are honorable. They want to protect innocent Muslims from reprisal attacks, to avoid conflict with a billion Muslims worldwide and keep empty young souls out of the arms of al Qaeda recruiting sergeants. It is also understandable that peaceful law-abiding Muslims - especially those like the unfortunate father whose own beautiful daughter perished in the bombings - should want to insist that, almost by definition, Muslims could not have carried out these atrocities.

   Both attitudes are, alas, unrealistic. What filled those empty young souls was a variant of Islam - a death cult within Islam, a blend of fundamentalist Islam with the totalitarian ideologies of 20-century Europe, but a variant of Islam all the same. In the honest words of Abdel Rahman al-Rashed of the Al-Arabiya news channel: "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims."

   And it is another fact, equally painful, that a large minority of young Muslims in Britain are attracted to this death cult within Islam just as a large minority of young Irish nationalists kept the fascist death cult of the Provisional IRA in business for 30 years. British official estimates, seeking to minimize the danger, still suggest that 16,000 young Muslims might now be part of a terrorist network.

   The four suicide bombers have shown that future mass murderers can move easily among us as well-dressed, polite, respectable young men just like the rest of us. Their only distinguishing feature, in fact, is that they are Muslims.

   They will therefore have to be countered on two levels: British security forces will have to learn the intelligence techniques that have slowly and painfully defeated the suicide-bomber threat in Israel - and Muslim clerics and intellectuals will have to defeat the death cult in the mosque, the lecture room and on the Internet. However discreetly, both will need to take the "Islamic factor" and other realities into account.

   For a long time to come, however, Britain (and other European countries) face a frightening prospect. Worse bombings with higher casualties will probably occur. And those who cannot endure this reality will take refuge in illusions and displacement activities - of which the easiest to hand is anti-Americanism. Even while the bodies were being disinterred from the London underground, some voices were heard blaming the United States, the Iraq war and George W. Bush for what had happened. Neither Blair's government nor the Tory opposition will yield to this temptation. But others - the BBC, the multiculturalist Left, some European countries; all the usual suspects - will find slippery reasons for blaming the U.S. for these additional crimes. The BBC has already told its correspondents not to refer to the London bombers as "terrorists".

   It should therefore be firmly stated that the terrorists bombed the World Trade Center, the East African embassies, USS Cole and the World Trade Center a second time, along with countless other atrocities elsewhere, long before Iraq was invaded. To blame the United States therefore is to argue that resisting terrorism is the cause of it.

(John O'Sullivan, former adviser to Lady Thatcher and former New York Post editorial-page editor, is editor-at-large of National Review.)

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