Ahmed and Ahmed: Bradford’s New Terror Duo?

Just a couple of days after BBC3 screened its documentary ‘7/7 Bombings: Conspiracy Road Trip’, The Telegraph and Argus brings us the news that two Bradford residents arrested in September – Saeed Muhammed Ahmed and Naeem Muhammed Ahmed, 20 and 19 years old respectively who both live in the Little Horton area of the city – are to appear in London tomorrow in connection with terror charges arising from an investigation conducted by the North East Counter Terrorism Unit. Moreover, “A 16-year-old boy from the Little Horton area has been bailed pending further inquiries.”

Both Ahmeds are being charged under section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, with S.M. having been “charged with seven offences of collecting records of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”. N.M Ahmed was charged with only four offences. Quite how serious these alleged offences were remains to be seen, as the information provided thus far is rather vague and does not indicate how far down the line, if at all, they were with respect to planning or aiding a terror attack. However, we can be fairly certain that the conspiracy theorists who believe that 7/7 was “a state conspiracy” will not be persuaded either of the guilt or the self-professed motivations of these men should they be sentenced.

Review: 7/7 Bombings: Conspiracy Road Trip

This evening witnessed the broadcast of the first in a three-part series on conspiracy theories with the theme being the 7/7 Bombings; the second and third instalments will deal with Creationism and UFOs. Hosted by comedian Andrew Maxwell (I hadn’t heard of him either), I initially feared, given that is was screened on BBC3, that this offering from the BBC would be from the same stable of “in-depth” documentaries as have previously been hosted by Stacey Dooley, a young woman possessed of all of the gravitas of a helium balloon. Thankfully, this was not to be the case, with Maxwell putting aside his comic persona for the evening and doing a decent job of narrating the piece, questioning each of the conspiracy theorists and attempting to get them to see that “the official narrative”, as they would term it, was actually the correct one.

The four conspiracy theorists came from quite different backgrounds: Layla, a 32-year-old journalist and part-time model; Davina, a 20-year-old Muslim convert and law student; Tony, an ex-security worker and CCTV operative, and Jon, who was described as a “political activist” (i.e. presumably unemployed) from a group calling itself “We are Change”, which from the appearance of its website seems to be some sort of anarchist/Far Left platform akin to Indymedia.

At the start of the documentary, all four believed that the 7/7 bombings were not the responsibility of the men who carried them out: Shehzad Tanweer, Siddique Khan, Hasib Hussain and Germaine Lindsay, but it was the documentary’s express intent to challenge and change these perceptions by presenting them with rebuttals of their pet theories. One of the most interesting aspects of the documentary proved to be how resistant to evidence and logic some of the four proved to be owing to their deeply held and emotionally-charged beliefs, illustrating the lengths to which some people will go to validate a firmly held conviction that is buoyed up by emotional fervour rather than evidence. It seemed, especially for Tony, that to challenge the theory was to in some way question and undermine some aspect of their sense of self.

The four bombers detonated themselves in the bloodiest terrorist act witnessed in Britain (if one excludes the Lockerbie bombing) killing 52 victims and wounding over 700, yet unfortunately the conspiracy theories articulated by the group of four possess a certain resonance with a segment of the population, for an opinion poll carried out by Channel 4 News in 2007 revealed that 24% of its sample of 500 “British Muslims” believed that the 7/7 attacks were planned and implemented by the Establishment.

Maxwell spent a week with the conspiracy theorists, starting out in Leeds where they were introduced to a resident of Beeston named Sasha, who had lived opposite Shehzad Tanweer and knew two of the other bombers. Davina’s belief in a conspiracy theory rested upon her conviction that the personalities of the “Muslim boys” simply did not fit with the atrocity that they had committed. She posed the question as to whether they had been “forced to do it”. Sasha herself noted that a great deal of suspicion had grown up between Muslim and non-Muslim residents since 2005, but stated her belief that the bombers had been “innocent” and that the Hamara Centre – which is where the bombers had spent a great deal of time together – had nothing to do with terrorism as “they were good Muslim boys” who didn’t go to London to kill people. This delusional thinking was demolished by a Muslim academic named Dr Russell Razaq, who specialises in terrorist psychology. He noted how the three bombers sequestered themselves in the Hamara Centre until two or three in the morning, long after it had closed, with nobody else present. Talking long into the night, the three reinforced and radicalised each other’s worldview, free from the observation of others. Davina appeared impressed by this reasoning, and conceded that the apparent discrepancy between their characters and their actions could be accounted for in this way.

The group then took a minibus to Luton, where the three bombers who had set off from Leeds met up with Germaine Lindsay in a Luton car park. This is where one of Jon’s pet theories – that the train times had been “falsified by the Government” because the 07:40 from Luton had been cancelled – was challenged. All four were given the task of pretending to be one of the terrorists, and of making their way from Luton Station to the various points in London where each had detonated their devices. Contrary to their expectations, they made it to the designated locations at just the time that the bombers had – with three of the bombers simultaneously detonating their devices at 08:50 – thereby disproving Jon’s assertion that this had not been possible. Nonetheless, Jon remained convinced that elements in the Government had deliberately planned an operation to murder citizens to legitimise its ongoing war in Iraq and to secure access to oil. Even by the end of the documentary, having been confronted with much more evidence disproving his theory, he held dear to his paranoid leftist delusion that the 7/7 bombings had been planned as “a justification to continue those wars in the Middle East” and to support the spread of “British imperialism” around the world. Tony too was of a very similar mindset, thinking that “big business” also had something to do with it.

Tony had been convinced that there was something fishy about some CCTV footage having gone what he termed “deliberately missing”, with Jon concurring that 20 minutes of missing footage from the Tube “reeks of an inside job”. Brian Paddick, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met on the day was unable to convince the duo otherwise.

The four were introduced to a survivor of the Edgeware Road Tube explosion – Jacqui Putnam – who had seen Siddique Khan reach down and detonate his bomb, yet this convinced neither Jon nor Tony. Davina however, dabbed away a few tears, and at this point came to recognise that the four had committed this crime. Jon and Tony were now taking the line that the four had been “patsies” to cover for a “parallel operation” by the security services.

An Imam – Dr Naseem – was visited, who made the ludicrous claim that the Government had planned the suicide bombings to incite hatred against Muslims, a view with which Jon and Tony enthusiastically concurred.

Layla stated that she had some doubts over who had detonated the bombs, for she had heard that they were already in the trains and had been detonated remotely from beneath. However, an explosives expert explained that none of the trains had derailed, which would have occurred had bombs been planted beneath the carriages. This was the moment when the penny dropped for Layla, who promptly discarded her previous belief in the bombings having arisen from a conspiracy theory, the nature of which she had not elaborated to any great extent. A bitter row then later ensued between Layla and Tony and Jon, with Layla stating that neither of the two men believed in logic. This caused particular offence to Tony, whose argumentativeness appeared to grow out of his innate truculence.

It was Tony who also scoffed at the idea that homemade explosives could be powerful enough to cause the blasts, a belief blown apart like the bus in a quarry demonstrating the power of an improvised device using black pepper and hydrogen peroxide.

In pithy fashion, Maxwell turned to Tony and Jon and said: “Can you not have some more fucking doubt in these online idiots?!” A fair point. By now, Tony conceded that Maxwell had made him realise that “it was a cock-up rather than a conspiracy”. Not Jon though. Jon continued to stick to his conspiracy theory. Whether or not he also believes that the world is controlled by a global elite of lizards was not made clear, but it would come as no surprise to learn that he subscribes to such lunacy.

Although this documentary appears to have caused something of a furore in the press, it was a decent programme that sought to undermine some frankly outlandish conspiracy theories held by a worrying minority of people about the atrocity on 7 July 2005. The words of a father about his 22-year-old son David, who died that day on his first solo trip to London as he stood next to Siddique Khan, summed up the loss that many experienced, and will never be able to replace owing to the actions of a small group of violent Islamists: “I’ll never ever stop feeling angry about the death of my son”.

There are others like them in our towns and cities today, and it is to the credit of the security services that so many would-be bombers have been intercepted before being able to carry out their plots. Islamism is what caused these deaths, and it is Islamism that must be rooted out to ensure that this never happens again. Many so-called 'truthers' are apologists for and enablers of Islamism, and their ravings deserve no credence, just as Islamism deserves no place in our country. Who do they think made Shehzad Tanweer's 'martyrdom' video? MI5? Their position is delusional and risible.

Jon, Davina, Andrew, Layla and Tony: Conspiracy Road Trippers

Wahhabist Terror strikes Tatarstan

Today, unknown assailants have attacked two outspoken critics of Wahhabi/Salafist Islam in Kazan, capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan. Valiulla Yakupov, Tatarstan’s Deputy Mufti, was shot and killed as he left his home, whilst elsewhere in the city the Chief Mufti himself - Ildus Fayzov – was seriously injured as a car bomb tore his vehicle apart. Although nobody has yet claimed responsibility for these attacks, it is a near certainty that they were perpetrated by Salafist militants, angered by the efforts of these two men to combat a growing trend towards Quranic literalism and the call for violent Jihad that has been gaining traction in the republic. It seems symbolic that the attacks took place upon the eve of Ramadan, as if emphasising that the attackers regarded them as false Muslims. 

Valiulla Yakupov

 Izvestia reports that “Spetsnaz are conducting an operation to detain the presumed killers” and reveals some interesting background information on the two victims. Fayzov only took up his position in April 2011, succeeding Gusman Iskhakov who, according to “the unofficial version” was held to be “leading an insufficiently rigorous policy in relation the republic’s radical Islamists”, whereas Fayzov “took a hard-line and principled position on this question.” Fayzov and Yakupov in this respect were cast from the same mould, and shortly before his death, Yakupov told the paper that he was “alarmed at the growing influence of followers of radical currents of Islam amongst the republic’s Muslims.” He believed that these influences were primarily of foreign origin, stating: “Dozens of people go abroad, who then return to the republic and act as influential agents: actually recruiting new people and sending them abroad.”

There thus seems to be a clear motive for the attacks, with the Islamists wishing to use violence to silence those who advocate a peaceful interpretation of Islam, with a view to further radicalising and polarising the situation within Tatarstan. However, although Yakupov and many others have made reference to a very real foreign role in generating this phenomenon, there is also the Caucasus to take into consideration, which has acted as an incubator for Salafist radicalism these past two decades. Self-styled ‘Emir’ Doku Umarov has been attempting to create what he terms a “Caucasian Emirate” and, according to Nezavisimaia gazeta, has also called for “mujahideen” to “resettle in the Volga region so as to call local Muslims to jihad.”  The Chechen Islamist also wishes for Tatarstan to secede from Russia and to become part of a “Greater Caucasian Emirate”. Such people are said to have settled in Tatarstan and are playing an active role in pushing Salafism, with the consequence that experts now believe that no less than 10 of Kazan’s 50 mosques now effectively lie in their hands.

As outlined on this blog last year, officials in Tatarstan have grown increasingly worried about the growth of violent Islamist militancy for quite some time, as reflected in a piece on the republic run by Nezavisimaia gazeta entitled ‘A whole Generation of Extremists’, for it is amongst the younger generation in particular that Salafism is exerting the greatest appeal. This revealed that a considerable number of individuals had visited Pakistan and Afghanistan where they participated in violent jihadist activity before returning home with a view of attacking domestic targets.

Although Tatarstan as of 2010 had a population of 3.8 million, of which only 53.2% were Tatars (traditionally Sunni Muslims), experts consider that there are no less than 3,000 Islamist radicals in the republic, of which approximately 10% are “ready to take up arms and wage jihad, and the remainder to sponsor and help them in any way”. This figure is roughly equivalent to the number of Islamist radicals reputedly being monitored in the UK. For a territory as small as Tatarstan, this figure is quite remarkable, and today’s killings are not the first that have been perpetrated by jihadists on its soil. In November 2010, three Islamist militants believed to have planted a bomb beneath the car belonging to the Director of Tatarstan’s branch of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) Centre for Countering Extremism, were tracked down and killed in Nurlat’skii District. In the five-year period leading up to 2011, more than 100 people in Tatarstan had been sentenced for their involvement in terrorist and extremist activity.

Whereas in the past the version of Islam encountered amongst the Tatars has been of a relatively mild variety, the example of the effective displacement of traditional Sufism and other forms of Islam by Salafism in the Caucasus, seems unfortunately to point the way forward for Tatarstan, where young Muslims have increasingly taken to mimicking the fashions of the militants from the Caucasus, so much so, that many young Tatar nationalists have erroneously appropriated this alien cultural form as a signifier of their identity. Although therefore Kazan may lie far away and be practically unknown to most of us, this particular problem, born ultimately of Saudi oil wealth, is one shared with many other countries. Today’s attacks provide a sad and salutary reminder, that the malign influence of Salafist ideology is not yet on the wane, but rather, very much on the offensive and making significant inroads. 

The Three Disgraces: Shoot, Bomb and Hack

There is something deeply perplexing about the mentality of a certain type of Muslim; the literalist, doctrinaire, thin-skinned hair-trigger sensibility type. The type that will repeatedly insist that Islam is 'the religion of peace' and emphasise the 'compassion' of their prophet Mohammed, whilst sending themselves into paroxyms of rage whenever their beliefs or prophet are challenged or criticised, threatening to unleash violence against any insolent naysayer who should dare to slight their eggshell sense of ego in this way. Three of this type would seem to have appeared in court today: Birmingham residents Jewel Uddin, Omar Mohammed Khan and Mohammed Hasseen.

How odd it is that these three men seemingly thought that they would demonstrate how misuided the EDL is about the 'peaceful' nature of their religion through planning to unleash carnage. In what way did they think that exploding a pipebomb packed with ball bearings and nails, using sawn off shotguns, swords, machetes and knives, would win the hearts and minds of those whom they claim misrepresent them and their religion as violent? Although it comes as a relief that these apparently rabidly anti-English criminals were unable to enact their bloody plan, it was sadly predictable that the BBC chose to append the stigmatising term 'far-right' to the EDL in its radio reporting of the case. Why? Is it not time that the BBC issued some kind of apology to the public for its deliberate masking of the threat from doctrinaire Muslim fanatics in this country, and for its simultaneous and systematic demonisation of all - such as the EDL - who draw attention to this ugly reality? If the EDL ever required a concrete demonstration of the need for their movement to exist, then these three men have provided it. What impact might this alleged plot have upon turnout at the Bristol EDL demonstration on Saturday 14 July? Will it encourage more people to come onto the streets in support of the EDL, or will it deter them?

For more on the Dewsbury Bomb Plot, see here.

Dewsbury Bomb Plot?

Normally, the fact that a significant swathe of the resident Pakistani population evades car insurance rankles with me, given that this results in the rest of us having to pay higher premiums. However, today this selfish and anti-social practice has proven to be a blessing in disguise, for according to articles in today’s editions of the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror, a chance traffic check that led to a car being impounded because the driver was not insured, could have saved Dewsbury, or possibly somewhere else, from an Islamist terror attack.

The car was stopped and impounded as it was heading southbound on the M1 between Junctions 34 and 33 last Saturday near Sheffield’s Meadowhall Shopping Centre. The driver and his passenger were released, and the incriminating contents of the car are not said to have been discovered until last Monday, when someone in the pound raised the alarm regarding something suspicious in the car. Without this alarm, the improvised explosive device (IED), two firearms, ammunition and anti-British leaflets would not have been discovered. The leaflets, claims the Mirror, made specific negative references to ‘the EDL, David Cameron and the Queen.’

It was this discovery that precipitated this week’s second national police swoop to arrest Islamist militants, with three men from Sparkhill in Birmingham being seized on Tuesday, and three others from Moseley, Alum Rock and Sandwell on Wednesday. A seventh man, from Dewsbury, was arrested on Thursday. With such a gap between the seizure of the car and the arrests, the Telegraph notes that this meant that:

the suspects were at large for three days after the police had seized the vehicle, which could have allowed time to destroy or hide other weapons or incriminating evidence.

Evidently, the suspects and their accomplices will have done their best to cover their tracks during the intervening period, which could unfortunately hinder the prosecution of all involved, and potentially mask the identities of other individuals linked to the plot.

A 'notorious far-right group' and a 'wonderful family' man: a view from a distorting mirror
It is striking that the Daily Mirror chose to open its story on this foiled plot with a sentence that sought to blacken the name of the bombers’ potential target rather than the bombers themselves:

One theory is the occupants were planning to bomb a march by the notorious far-right group taking place just hours later.

Later in the article the EDL is described as ‘the notorious anti-Islamic group’. Note how this stigmatising linguistic usage contrasts to the Mirror’s attempt to normalise and humanise the Dewsbury terror suspect, whom it described as a:

dad-of-three [who had] set up a boxing club in 2009 to get youngsters off the streets. One neighbour said: “They are a wonderful family and this must be one huge mistake.”

How very interesting to see another member of this ethno-confessional ‘community’ not condemning the fact that this man was plotting terroristic violence, and instead describing his actions as “one huge mistake”. Why did the interviewee regard it as a “huge mistake”? Because he had been caught, rather than being able to see through whatever act of mass murder and maiming he was planning?

In the Telegraph the reader encounters yet more apologia for one of the terror suspects arrested in Sparkhill: 

We’ve grown up with them. They’re all lovely. They’re fine. They had a bit of a family issue with the mum and the dad separating, but there’s never been any problem with them as neighbours. They’ve never given any impression of being radicalised. They’re British Pakistanis. We’ve known them since they were babies and they’ve always seemed pretty westernised.

The Dewsbury terror suspect was part of a “wonderful family” and his alleged Sparkhill accomplice was “lovely” and “fine”. Such descriptions could seem to express a deep-rooted unwillingness on the part of Pakistani British residents to condemn Islamism and Islamist-related violence, which may ultimately rest upon the fact that they share and approve of the goals of violent Islamists: the Islamisation of Britain. Although not perhaps willing to use violence to achieve this themselves, are they particularly bothered when others do so in their name? The evidence would seem to suggest not. 

Bomb, Assassination or 'Mumbai-style attack'?
According to the Telegraph, a number of the suspects were already known to MI5, and the seizure of materials ‘raised the suspicion that a group were planning an assassination attempt or a Mumbai-style shooting atrocity that day or imminently.’ Dewsbury of course lies to the north of Sheffield, so it is odd that the men were stopped as they were travelling south on the day of the EDL march in Dewsbury if they were attempting to attack it. Perhaps they were on their way to pick up co-conspirators? Then again, their intended target may have been something else altogether.

Over at the Casuals United blog which supports the EDL and other ‘infidel’ groups across the UK, two of its contributors speculate that there is something fishy about this alleged plot. Both of the posts below take a conspiratorial stance, although each with a distinct slant:

7 07 2012

We are supposed to believe that police pulled over a car that had no insurance and they impounded it. We are supposed to believe that there were guns and a bomb in the car, but police let the men go and didn’t bother searching the car till the next day? We all know that this would never happen. Police stop you for something like that, they always search your car. If it does turn out to be true then it validates everything we[’]ve said about this country being full of dangerous scum who need to be deported in large numbers.

This story stinks and I reckon its been manufacture[d] to cause fear and put people off going to EDL demos. What do you think? If they ever did bomb a demo Britain would turn into Northern Ireland overnight and that is a fact.

NFSE

Suzy

7 07 2012

Someone[‘]s just pointed out that its funny that at the last two demos there have been no Muslims on the streets at all, no gangs of Jihadis and bad boys as there usually are, and they catch a car full of them supposedly on their way to plant a bomb at our demo. Prior warning via the Mosques? Makes you wonder.

Zoe

The strange death of Muslim 'anti-fascism'
It is true that the so-called ‘anti-fascist’ counter-demo in Dewsbury attracted startlingly low numbers of supporters despite heavy backing and publicity, and there was a notable absence of local Muslims amongst the small crowd that turned out. Hitherto, the SWP-dominated ‘Unite Against Fascism’ and its various Trotskyist-led front groups have found ‘anti-fascist’ mobilisation against the EDL useful from their perspective, drawing in hot-headed young Muslims as an aggressive shock-force, designed both to intimidate and to manufacture the perception in the national media that there exists a genuine ‘fascist threat’ in this country, which is just grist to their mill of Marxist revolutionary radicalisation. However, it seems that many Muslims have cottoned on to the opportunistic nature of the Trotskyist far-left and the fact that they have been used as a catspaw to further a Marxist agenda with which they fundamentally disagree. Moreover, highly politicised groups with a specifically Muslim identity have emerged that appear to have been attracting many younger Muslims who might previously have been siphoned off into the ranks of the SWP and other leftist organisations. Thus, the absence of Muslim ‘anti-fascist’ mobilisation at the last couple of EDL demos could be more indicative of both of these trends, than of any ‘warning’ from mosques to stay away because of potential violence.

Seven years ago today 58 people died in London in the 7/7 bombings and hundreds were maimed and mentally scarred. These latest arrests, together with the London arrests on Thursday, illustrate the ever-present threat of violent Islamism within our shores. We must remain vigilant and ensure that all forms of Islamism are rooted out of our country, and its proponents removed.  

7/7 Mass Murder Victims

M6 Terror Scare closes motorway

This morning The Daily Telegraph reported that a terror alert had resulted in the closure of part of the M6 Toll Toad following an alarmed call from a passenger on the Megabus service from Preston to London. It was claimed that another passenger was seen with a smoking liquid (it is safe to assume that this was not Heston Blumenthal with a canister of liquid nitrogen). The M6 Toll was therefore closed between junctions T3 and T4 in both directions at 08.20 this morning, whilst, reports Sky News, armed police arrived at the scene. Despite the massive disruption and considerable resources involved, it proved to be a false alarm with the cause being a passenger smoking an electronic cigarette!

Six arrested in London
This came on the same day that five men and a woman were arrested in a dawn terror swoop on a number of locations across London. Some of these were UK nationals. The London Islamist plotters are believed to have been preparing explosives for use in bomb-making, but it is not thought that their plans were connected to the forthcoming Olympics. Their alleged target(s) have not been disclosed.

Shamefully, one of the men arrested - Salahuddin al Britani - whose real name is Richard Dart, is an indigenous convert. As you can see from the video below, he speaks with the affected faux sub-Pakistani accent adopted by many converts, which lends his speech an unintentionally comical turn, perhaps appropriate for a man who was arrested in the part of London renowned for the golden age of British cinematic comedy - Ealing. Dart, originally from Dorset, featured in a documentary made by his brother Rob Leech entitled My Brother the Islamist which was shown last year, which also featured the touching concern of a Dorset mother for her son Ben who had converted to Islam having grown tired of heavy metal. For Maggie's sake, for she struck me as a worried and caring mother, I hope that Ben has given up on his Islamist idiocy, but unfortunately, I suspect that he has not grown out of it and remains trapped within Anjem Choudary's band of cultish followers, whatever name they may at present be bearing.

Today's arrests underscore that the threat from Islamist terrorism in this country is real and is not going away. Those who are protesting against the temporary installation of anti-aircraft missile batteries in East London are foolish indeed. The again, perhaps the latter can be excused for having overexposed themselves to the content of The Guardian and BBC broadcasts of all sorts, and thus ended up with heads full of irrationally naive twaddle.

Richard Dart's absurd video complete with comedy accent

Toulouse Gunman: Schizophrenic or Islamist?

A gunman reported to have taken four hostages in a Toulouse bank today is claiming to be a member of al-qaeda, whereas the local authorities claim that he is suffering from "schizophrenia." The Daily Telegraph reports that three gunshots have been heard, but thankfully there has been no news of injuries or fatalities.

The gunman himself - "Boumaza" - claims that he has taken the hostages for "religious" rather than financial reasons, so it can only be hoped that French police manage to bring this situation to a swift and safe conclusion, given the favoured Islamic method of executing hostages. One hostage was released earlier this afternoon.  At the time of writing, Boumaza is not reported to have made any specific demands, which perhaps lends credence to the official line that he is suffering from schizophrenia. His sister, who is helping police with negotiations, says that her brother reacted very negatively to being taken into social care as a child, becoming angry with and fearful of the outside world.

UPDATE
According to Lenta.ru, the gunman has been arrested after an exchange of fire during which he was wounded. None of the hostages are said to have been harmed. A video report from the scene can be viewed below.

Police in Toulouse

7/7 Bomber Grave Vandalised

The BBC reports that the grave of one of the 7/7 bombers, Hasib Hussain, has been vandalised. Apparently, his was one of a number of graves in the ‘Muslim section’ of Cottingley Cemetery that was vandalised and according to the BBC ‘had racist graffiti scrawled on it.’ Whether it did or not cannot be objectively ascertained, for the BBC deems criticism of an ideology – Islam – to be ‘racist’.

Hasib Hussain does not deserve to be remembered with fondness or with any degree of respect; his name should rather be execrated. He, along with his fellow bombers, took the conscious decision to kill and maim innocent people for no reason at all, and as such, the vandalism of his grave specifically does not cause any disquiet to me. It would have been better had he possessed no grave at all, and whatever had remained of his body had been burned and the ash dumped far out at sea. Putting this aside, it is of course unacceptable that the graves of other Muslims in Cottingley Cemetery were vandalised, and the fact of their vandalism will understandably be painful to their family and loved ones. Such an action cannot be condoned. However, only two graves – one of which was Hussain’s – were damaged. West Yorkshire Police state that:

 "We have received a report of damage to two graves in the Muslim section of Cottingley Cemetery and we are investigating.”

"Neighbourhood Policing officers are paying extra attention to the area and have liaised with local community representatives to reassure them."

Given that the West Yorkshire Police refer to only two headstones, why does the BBC report mention ‘a number of graves’, for this seems to imply more than two? Unfortunately, given the innate contemporary bias and unreliability of the broadcaster in reporting such matters, doubt must be cast upon its portrayal of this act of vandalism. As one commenter - Dinan - has stated below, gravestones are vandalised every day, yet the BBC chose to accord this incident national prominence and to highlight it as a 'racist hate crime'. Why then did the BBC choose to completely ignore the racist nature of the murder of Luke Fitzpatrick (who was white) in Dollis Hill last month, when a 22-strong masked black gang descended upon a pub armed with bats and knives and unleashed a violent assault upon the drinkers inside? Apparently, the defacing of a gravestone belonging to a Muslim supremacist mass murderer is deemed to be some heinous 'racist hate crime', whereas a black gang attack upon white Britons resulting in death and injury, is not. The editorial policy of the BBC can be described as nothing less than perverse.

Hussain murdered 13 members of the public, and wounded many others.

Hasib Hussain's Handiwork: Tavistock Square Bus Bombing

Luton in ‘harmony’, or Luton in discord?

“Read all about it! Five terror plot suspects arrested in Luton!” Yes, yet again dear reader, police have descended upon a number of addresses within a certain “community” to arrest a group of men alleged to have been planning to inflict death, injury and general misery upon the host population, simply because we do not share their warped backward Islamist ideology. So wearisomely familiar and routine have such arrests become, that it is increasingly hard to be moved to comment upon them, which is a worrying sign in itself.

Scarce a week seems to go by without another Islamist plot being uncovered, and for all of the media’s professed concern about a potential network of crypto-Breiviks lurking in the shadows waiting to butcher the innocent, this thankfully remains as firmly in the realms of fantasy as Breivik’s resurrected ‘Knights Templar’. Breivik the butcher, mercifully, remains an army of one; a genuine clerical fascist; a warped individual who carries within himself more the spirit of Mohammed than that of Christ; a man possessed of a lust for blood, rather than a desire for peace. Breivik is, in many respects, a mirror-image jihadi. A man who truly loves his people would never seek them out and methodically murder them, irrespective of any ideological difference. Breivik is no nationalist. He has made of himself a wretch and a perpetual outcast.

And what of the men in Luton who have just been arrested? What will they become? For the English, if these five prove to be found guilty, then true justice must surely demand that they be shunned and returned to their land of ancestral origin. Amongst their “community” however, how will they be regarded? Will they be ostracised or fêted? The likely attitude, sadly, is predictable, for although many of Luton’s Muslims will refrain from lionising these aspirant killers, significant numbers of them will not. As sure as night follows day, in the weeks, months and perhaps years ahead, their advocates will be heard, and they will shriek at us as if we were the criminals. Luton, according to an initiative funded by the town council, is in “harmony”. This arrest, together with this medium-sized town’s Muslim population having provided a home to the Stockholm suicide bomber Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, one of the fertiliser bomb plotters and a facilitator of the 7/7 bombings, attests to the fact that there is no such thing. It is also home of course, to Sayful Islam. For observers to profess to be perplexed at why Luton should have given birth to the EDL is thus disingenuous to say the least.

In a little under two weeks’ time, the EDL plans to demonstrate in Luton in celebration of its third anniversary. What impact, if any, will these arrests have upon that day, Saturday 5 May? Channel 4 may have dubbed Stephen Lennon and the EDL “proud and prejudiced”, but who can blame him and his supporters for wishing to articulate a deep and well-founded sense of unease arising from certain unwelcome phenomena originating within the Muslim population, that no major political party will acknowledge, let alone address? “Luton in harmony”? Unfortunately not. It could be, but that would demand something that our current authorities are unwilling to do: ditching multiculturalism and rooting out Islamism once and for all. The one reassuring thing to emerge from today’s story is the fact that our security agencies have once again nipped a potential plot in the bud. Overall, they have done a pretty good job in recent years. 

RUSI Report on Somalia

One quarter of foreign fighters in Somalia - some 50 - are according to the BBC said to be 'British' (i.e. they hold UK passports; in reality they will be ethnic Somalis or Muslims of other non-indigenous ethnic stock). The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) warns that this number is set to increase as those convicted for Islamist terror-related offences in recent years are released in the near future. This fact serves to underscore the predominantly negative impact of the settlement of Somalis in Britain in cities such as Sheffield and Bristol. How many of these violent Islamists will return to Britain and participate in plots to undermine our peace and security? These potential 'lone wolves' constitute a real extremist threat to our country, not the phantom 'far right' as the BBC would have you believe. 

Nonetheless, the RUSI report dutifully contained, to the delight of the BBC, an obligatory politically correct counterfactual statement complaining that the Government's anti-radicalisation strategy "only pays lip service to the threat from extreme far-right terrorism". Moreover, the BBC notes that "The committee cited the growth of far-right groups with links to similar organisations in Europe" as evidence of this 'threat'. As I wrote yesterday, such statements are unadulterated malicious fiction: there is no 'far-right terrorism'. The reality is that the forces of the so-called 'far right' currently embody the only emergent ideology which clearly opposes globalisation and the powerful economic elites that favour and further this anti-democratic process. Why are we who oppose transnational debt slavery 'extremists'? We wish harm to no-one. It is not nationalists who have pushed for wars against Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, but globalists and our so-called 'moderate' Westminster politicians who figure amongst their number. Nationalists desire peace and national security, not war. 

Given that our Government and Civil Service are such fervent advocates of globalisation, it is no wonder that they and their think tanks seek to deploy every technique of black propaganda at their disposal to undermine the reputations of nationalists and patriots, invoking the canard of 'far-right violence' and 'terrorism'. The statement of a Home Office spokesman that "National security is the first duty of any government" thus has a very hollow ring, for there are no greater threats to our national wellbeing and survival than our very own globalist politicians and policy mandarins within the senior Civil Service. RUSI constitutes part of this official propagandist apparatus, but there are certain to be people within the Institute who are acutely aware of the reality that they are obliged to blot out with their pro-globalist spin.

Abu Qatada will surely look upon this situation, as well as the absurdities of the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights, with some satisfaction.

Sky News Report: Infamous Five arrested at Sellafield

It would seem that our wonderfully ‘vibrant’ multicultural experiment might have spawned a group of five interested in exploring the potential of nuclear power in England, but not with a view to meeting any energy deficit or cutting emissions of carbon dioxide. Rather insultingly, the five London residents (they’re not Londoners) have been described as ‘Asian’ males in their twenties. Why doesn’t the media come clean about this and stop insulting ethnic Chinese and Japanese, as well as Hindus and Sikhs, and just tell us that these men are Muslims of sub-continental extraction, rather than tarring all people of Asian origin with this brush? I am tired of having to read between the lines in reports about these people. I’d wager one of my front teeth that it transpires that they’re Muslims. One source has described them as Bangladeshis, although the police have failed to confirm this (which suggests that they are). Maybe these men were prospecting for a new ingredient for an extra-hot phal which would illumine the darkened interiors of the restaurants of Brick Lane, but then again, they could well have had much more nefarious purposes in mind.

It’s not clear whether the five had decided to visit Sellafield with a view to honing their amateur photography skills by taking portraits of this ‘beautiful’ site, or whether they were staking it out for an attack or theft of nuclear materials. We’ll probably find out by digging through the small print of an obscure press release in a year or two. They could well be members of the bin Laden fan club with a taste for Islamist terrorism, or, irrespective of what they actually are, ‘victims of institutional racism’ for the Guardian. I can already hear Mehdi Hassan smacking his lips over this one, and getting ready to verbally chastise we infidel ‘cattle’ once again for our filthy, impudent kufr intolerance. The Birmingham Post however, reports that the arrests have triggered police raids on four houses in East London.

Still, over to Sky for some footage of Sellafield’s ‘beauty’ and a little commentary on the arrests:




UPDATE
The latest Sky video report below provides a little more detail about the enthusiastic photographic chroniclers of the nation's nuclear facilities:

Rajib Karim: the BBC’s ‘Geordie’ Terrorist (don’t mention Islam!)

It’s been almost a year since I posted on the arrest of Rajib Karim, and today I learn from the BBC website that finally he has been found guilty of plotting to blow up an airliner. From reading the initial BBC report last March, a casual reader could have been mistaken for thinking that Karim was a Geordie owing to the misleading language that it employed. The report opened as follows:

A Tyneside man has been charged with a series of terror offences, police in London have said.

Rajib Karim, aged 30 and of Newcastle, has been accused of committing three offences under the Terrorism Act.

Naturally, it omitted any possible link to Islam, for the ‘dhimwits’ at the BBC had screened out such nasty ‘doubleplusbad’ thoughts. Today however, even the BBC had to come clean and reveal the following:

Karim was committed to an "extreme jihadist cause" and determined to become a martyr, jurors were told.

The Bangladeshi national, who moved with his wife and son to Newcastle in 2006, had already admitted being involved in the production of a terrorist group's video.

Karim, a privately-educated IT expert from Dhaka, became a supporter of the extremist organisation Jammat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) after being influenced by his younger brother Tehzeeb, the court heard.

He was described as a "mild-mannered, well-educated and respectful" man who hid his hatred for Western ways from colleagues by joining a gym, playing football and never airing extreme views.

Well, how grateful we all are to have been enriched by his presence. So, this ‘Tyneside man’ was a Bangladeshi national who’d only been resident in the UK since 2006? Well, that’s enough for the BBC to class him as a purebred British indigene, is it not? He’s so Geordie that he’s lucky that ‘Auntie’ didn’t take to calling him a British ‘far-right’ extremist in its reporting. The BBC loves to promote open borders.

And what about that idiotic BBC meme that the roots of jihadism lie in a lack of education, ‘social exclusion’ and poverty? Yes, ‘a privately-educated IT expert’ with a good job with BA really is hard done by isn’t he? We have millions of our own people unemployed, many of them with computing qualifications and experience, and yet BA privilege this wretched ingrate with no links whatsoever to this country. Our three main political parties are of course equally culpable in encouraging and facilitating this type of immigration (as well as all the others). What marvellous benefits this policy brings!

Well, we won’t be hearing any jokes being cracked about Karim or any of his Islamist pals on Radio 4’s ‘Now Show’ will we? It’ll be wisecracking all the way about ‘knuckle-dragging’ (don’t they just adore that term?) EDL supporters, or snorting derision directed towards ‘Islamophobic’ (sic) ‘Daily Mail readers’.

If you happen to work with any “mild mannered, well-educated and respectful” Muslim colleagues, watch your back (especially if they’re ‘Geordies’).

David Cameron’s Speech on Multiculturalism: a Damascene Conversion?

The Prime Minister’s speech in Munich yesterday generated many a febrile headline and caused the sort of hyperventilating hysteria amongst leftists across the UK that one would expect. Its explicit message was that multiculturalism as a policy has failed, and has made a significant contribution to generating the homegrown Islamist terror threat that so bedevils our country today.

Unfortunately, although much of what he said in his speech appears on the surface to be driving in the right direction, I would argue that we should not expect too much by way of action to follow from this. There is a reason of course that he earned the mocking sobriquet ‘Cast-Iron Dave’, with his reneging on a promise to hold a referendum to allow the electorate to have a say on the Lisbon Treaty, and his subsequent failure to place an effective cap upon mass immigration. Both of these have reduced his ‘cast-iron’ promises to nothing more than a heap of rust. It is in this context that I think this speech was as much directed at placating the traditional Tory press and ‘Middle England’, as it was at determining the direction of future policy and actually tackling the roots of Islamist violence and antipathy towards our society.

Before reading further, please take time to watch the video below in full taken from the Vlad Tepes blog. It’s not too long, and intercuts passages from Cameron’s speech with some of his other recent utterances on the subject of Islam. The contrast is instructive.

"Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism." (David Cameron, Munich 5 February 2011)

The sentiments in the above statement can only be applauded, and it is of course this soundbite that will be remembered from this speech. However, if it is to amount to anything more than a piece of mere verbiage designed to generate positive headlines in the traditionally Tory press which has no great affection for Cameron, then I would suggest that he needs to roundly distance himself from many of the statements on Islam that he has previously made. He did, did he not, once call for British society to integrate more with traditional Islamic values than vice versa? Also, he has promoted the highly voluble Sayeeda Warsi to a ministerial position despite the fact that she is unelected (an appointed ‘Baroness’ who sits in the House of Lords) and who has recently been berating ordinary middle-class Britons for their socially acceptable ‘Islamophobia’ (sic). I anticipate that we shall see far more of this in the future.

“The point is this: the ideology of extremism is the problem; Islam emphatically is not.” (David Cameron, Munich 5 February 2011)

Islamism is a movement which seeks the political implementation of Islam; nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately, the Tories are already committed to overseeing an expansion in the network of faith schools and are now funding Muslim schools which will rear a generation of English-despising Muslims with a superiority complex coupled with the usual sense of Muslim resentment about the wider non-Islamic society within which they reside. The National Secular Society has done much to highlight the dangers of this policy.

Cameron’s reference to the situation in Egypt as a demonstration that Islam is not incompatible with democracy is rather precipitate, for the Egyptian revolution has yet to draw to a conclusion, and we do not yet know what sort of politico-legal settlement will result. It suggests that were he to have made this speech in early 1979 he would have applauded the Iranian Revolution, where secular parties and Islamists came together to topple the Shah, but only one party – the Islamist one - emerged to shape the future of Iran and its people, once it had established its hegemony through the bloody quashing of all internal political opposition. Unfortunately, this could happen in Egypt, as is demonstrated by the fact that the current adminstration is already holding talks with the Muslim Brotherhood regarding transitional arrangements.

The full text of Cameron’s speech is reproduced at the end of this article, so you can read and digest it at your leisure and draw your own conclusions. I however, remain very sceptical, and suspect that this Munich speech shares much in terms of its ideological myopia with an earlier agreement reached by another Prime Minister in this city many years ago. Those who protest against Islamisation, such as the EDL, should therefore continue to work towards their goals until we have ensured that this process is thrown into an irreversible retreat in our country. Don't trust Cameron. This apparent Damascene conversion maybe little more than an illusion.

Full Text of David Cameron’s Speech at the Munich Security Conference, 5 February 2011

Today I want to focus my remarks on terrorism, but first let me address one point. Some have suggested that by holding a strategic defence and security review, Britain is somehow retreating from an activist role in the world. That is the opposite of the truth. Yes, we are dealing with our budget deficit, but we are also making sure our defences are strong. Britain will continue to meet the NATO 2% target for defence spending. We will still have the fourth largest military defence budget in the world. At the same time, we are putting that money to better use, focusing on conflict prevention and building a much more flexible army. That is not retreat; it is hard headed.


Every decision we take has three aims in mind. First, to continue to support the NATO mission in Afghanistan . Second, to reinforce our actual military capability. As Chancellor Merkel’s government is showing right here in Germany, what matters is not bureaucracy, which frankly Europe needs a lot less of, but the political will to build military capability that we need as nations and allies, that we can deliver in the field. Third, we want to make sure that Britain is protected from the new and various threats that we face. That is why we are investing in a national cyber security programme that I know William Hague talked about yesterday, and we are sharpening our readiness to act on counter-proliferation.

But the biggest threat that we face comes from terrorist attacks, some of which are, sadly, carried out by our own citizens. It is important to stress that terrorism is not linked exclusively to any one religion or ethnic group. My country, the United Kingdom , still faces threats from dissident republicans in Northern Ireland . Anarchist attacks have occurred recently in Greece and in Italy , and of course, yourselves in Germany were long scarred by terrorism from the Red Army Faction. Nevertheless, we should acknowledge that this threat comes in Europe overwhelmingly from young men who follow a completely perverse, warped interpretation of Islam, and who are prepared to blow themselves up and kill their fellow citizens. Last week at Davos I rang the alarm bell for the urgent need for Europe to recover its economic dynamism, and today, though the subject is complex, my message on security is equally stark. We will not defeat terrorism simply by the action we take outside our borders. Europe needs to wake up to what is happening in our own countries. Of course, that means strengthening, as Angela has said, the security aspects of our response, on tracing plots, on stopping them, on counter-surveillance and intelligence gathering.


But this is just part of the answer. We have got to get to the root of the problem, and we need to be absolutely clear on where the origins of where these terrorist attacks lie. That is the existence of an ideology, Islamist extremism. We should be equally clear what we mean by this term, and we must distinguish it from Islam. Islam is a religion observed peacefully and devoutly by over a billion people. Islamist extremism is a political ideology supported by a minority. At the furthest end are those who back terrorism to promote their ultimate goal: an entire Islamist realm, governed by an interpretation of Sharia. Move along the spectrum, and you find people who may reject violence, but who accept various parts of the extremist worldview, including real hostility towards Western democracy and liberal values. It is vital that we make this distinction between religion on the one hand, and political ideology on the other. Time and again, people equate the two. They think whether someone is an extremist is dependent on how much they observe their religion. So, they talk about moderate Muslims as if all devout Muslims must be extremist. This is profoundly wrong. Someone can be a devout Muslim and not be an extremist. We need to be clear: Islamist extremism and Islam are not the same thing.


This highlights, I think, a significant problem when discussing the terrorist threat that we face. There is so much muddled thinking about this whole issue. On the one hand, those on the hard right ignore this distinction between Islam and Islamist extremism, and just say that Islam and the West are irreconcilable – that there is a clash of civilizations. So, it follows: we should cut ourselves off from this religion, whether that is through forced repatriation, favoured by some fascists, or the banning of new mosques, as is suggested in some parts of Europe . These people fuel Islamophobia, and I completely reject their argument. If they want an example of how Western values and Islam can be entirely compatible, they should look at what’s happened in the past few weeks on the streets of Tunis and Cairo : hundreds of thousands of people demanding the universal right to free elections and democracy.


The point is this: the ideology of extremism is the problem; Islam emphatically is not. Picking a fight with the latter will do nothing to help us to confront the former. On the other hand, there are those on the soft left who also ignore this distinction. They lump all Muslims together, compiling a list of grievances, and argue that if only governments addressed these grievances, the terrorism would stop. So, they point to the poverty that so many Muslims live in and say, ‘Get rid of this injustice and the terrorism will end.’ But this ignores the fact that many of those found guilty of terrorist offences in the UK and elsewhere have been graduates and often middle class. They point to grievances about Western foreign policy and say, ‘Stop riding roughshod over Muslim countries and the terrorism will end.’ But there are many people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, who are angry about Western foreign policy, but who don’t resort to acts of terrorism. They also point to the profusion of unelected leaders across the Middle East and say, ‘Stop propping these people up and you will stop creating the conditions for extremism to flourish.’ But this raises the question: if it’s the lack of democracy that is the problem, why are there so many extremists in free and open societies?


Now, I’m not saying that these issues of poverty and grievance about foreign policy are not important. Yes, of course we must tackle them. Of course we must tackle poverty. Yes, we must resolve the sources of tension, not least in Palestine , and yes, we should be on the side of openness and political reform in the Middle East . On Egypt , our position should be clear. We want to see the transition to a more broadly-based government, with the proper building blocks of a free and democratic society. I simply don’t accept that there is somehow a dead end choice between a security state on the one hand, and an Islamist one on the other. But let us not fool ourselves. These are just contributory factors. Even if we sorted out all of the problems that I have mentioned, there would still be this terrorism. I believe the root lies in the existence of this extremist ideology. I would argue an important reason so many young Muslims are drawn to it comes down to a question of identity.


What I am about to say is drawn from the British experience, but I believe there are general lessons for us all. In the UK , some young men find it hard to identify with the traditional Islam practiced at home by their parents, whose customs can seem staid when transplanted to modern Western countries. But these young men also find it hard to identify with Britain too, because we have allowed the weakening of our collective identity. Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We’ve failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.


So, when a white person holds objectionable views, racist views for instance, we rightly condemn them. But when equally unacceptable views or practices come from someone who isn’t white, we’ve been too cautious frankly – frankly, even fearful – to stand up to them. The failure, for instance, of some to confront the horrors of forced marriage, the practice where some young girls are bullied and sometimes taken abroad to marry someone when they don’t want to, is a case in point. This hands-off tolerance has only served to reinforce the sense that not enough is shared. And this all leaves some young Muslims feeling rootless. And the search for something to belong to and something to believe in can lead them to this extremist ideology. Now for sure, they don’t turn into terrorists overnight, but what we see – and what we see in so many European countries – is a process of radicalisation.


Internet chatrooms are virtual meeting places where attitudes are shared, strengthened and validated. In some mosques, preachers of hate can sow misinformation about the plight of Muslims elsewhere. In our communities, groups and organisations led by young, dynamic leaders promote separatism by encouraging Muslims to define themselves solely in terms of their religion. All these interactions can engender a sense of community, a substitute for what the wider society has failed to supply. Now, you might say, as long as they’re not hurting anyone, what is the problem with all this?


Well, I’ll tell you why. As evidence emerges about the backgrounds of those convicted of terrorist offences, it is clear that many of them were initially influenced by what some have called ‘non-violent extremists’, and they then took those radical beliefs to the next level by embracing violence. And I say this is an indictment of our approach to these issues in the past. And if we are to defeat this threat, I believe it is time to turn the page on the failed policies of the past. So first, instead of ignoring this extremist ideology, we – as governments and as societies – have got to confront it, in all its forms. And second, instead of encouraging people to live apart, we need a clear sense of shared national identity that is open to everyone.


Let me briefly take each in turn. First, confronting and undermining this ideology. Whether they are violent in their means or not, we must make it impossible for the extremists to succeed. Now, for governments, there are some obvious ways we can do this. We must ban preachers of hate from coming to our countries. We must also proscribe organisations that incite terrorism against people at home and abroad. Governments must also be shrewder in dealing with those that, while not violent, are in some cases part of the problem. We need to think much harder about who it’s in the public interest to work with. Some organisations that seek to present themselves as a gateway to the Muslim community are showered with public money despite doing little to combat extremism. As others have observed, this is like turning to a right-wing fascist party to fight a violent white supremacist movement. So we should properly judge these organisations: do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separation? These are the sorts of questions we need to ask. Fail these tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organisations – so, no public money, no sharing of platforms with ministers at home.


At the same time, we must stop these groups from reaching people in publicly-funded institutions like universities or even, in the British case, prisons. Now, some say, this is not compatible with free speech and intellectual inquiry. Well, I say, would you take the same view if these were right-wing extremists recruiting on our campuses? Would you advocate inaction if Christian fundamentalists who believed that Muslims are the enemy were leading prayer groups in our prisons? And to those who say these non-violent extremists are actually helping to keep young, vulnerable men away from violence, I say nonsense.


Would you allow the far right groups a share of public funds if they promise to help you lure young white men away from fascist terrorism? Of course not. But, at root, challenging this ideology means exposing its ideas for what they are, and that is completely unjustifiable. We need to argue that terrorism is wrong in all circumstances. We need to argue that prophecies of a global war of religion pitting Muslims against the rest of the world are nonsense.


Now, governments cannot do this alone. The extremism we face is a distortion of Islam, so these arguments, in part, must be made by those within Islam. So let us give voice to those followers of Islam in our own countries – the vast, often unheard majority – who despise the extremists and their worldview. Let us engage groups that share our aspirations.


Now, second, we must build stronger societies and stronger identities at home. Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism. A passively tolerant society says to its citizens, as long as you obey the law we will just leave you alone. It stands neutral between different values. But I believe a genuinely liberal country does much more; it believes in certain values and actively promotes them. Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, democracy, the rule of law, equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality. It says to its citizens, this is what defines us as a society: to belong here is to believe in these things. Now, each of us in our own countries, I believe, must be unambiguous and hard-nosed about this defence of our liberty.


There are practical things that we can do as well. That includes making sure that immigrants speak the language of their new home and ensuring that people are educated in the elements of a common culture and curriculum. Back home, we’re introducing National Citizen Service: a two-month programme for sixteen-year-olds from different backgrounds to live and work together. I also believe we should encourage meaningful and active participation in society, by shifting the balance of power away from the state and towards the people. That way, common purpose can be formed as people come together and work together in their neighbourhoods. It will also help build stronger pride in local identity, so people feel free to say, ‘Yes, I am a Muslim, I am a Hindu, I am Christian, but I am also a Londonder or a Berliner too’. It’s that identity, that feeling of belonging in our countries, that I believe is the key to achieving true cohesion.


So, let me end with this. This terrorism is completely indiscriminate and has been thrust upon us. It cannot be ignored or contained; we have to confront it with confidence – confront the ideology that drives it by defeating the ideas that warp so many young minds at their root, and confront the issues of identity that sustain it by standing for a much broader and generous vision of citizenship in our countries. Now, none of this will be easy. We will need stamina, patience and endurance, and it won’t happen at all if we act alone. This ideology crosses not just our continent but all continents, and we are all in this together. At stake are not just lives, it is our way of life. That is why this is a challenge we cannot avoid; it is one we must rise to and overcome. Thank you.

Breaking News: Multiple Terror Attack Plot Intercepted

Sky News has been the first to break the news of an alarming and sensational plot designed to simultaneously wreak bloodshed in cities across Europe, including several unnamed British cities of which one was intended to be London. Thankfully, the intelligence services have kept one step ahead of the plotters and prevented its implementation. The question is: how many other such plots are brewing? If you are a commuter on the rail and underground networks of Britain, France or Germany, remain ever vigilant. Your life and the lives of those around you may depend upon your heightened state of alertness.

Although not describing any of the details of the plot, CNN claims that a significant spike in the number of drone attacks against targets in Pakistan – some 20 in the past month – has been directly connected to the attempt to disrupt its implementation. This is more than double the monthly average of such strikes. The Herald Sun also reports that eight Algerians linked to the plot have also been arrested.

Sky’s full report is reproduced below:

Intelligence agencies have intercepted a terror plot to launch Mumbai-style attacks on London and other European cities, according to Sky News sources.Sky's foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall said militants based in Pakistan were planning simultaneous attacks on London and other major British cities.

The group - thought to be linked to Al Qaeda - were then planning similar attacks in France and Germany.

He said the plot was in the "advanced but not imminent stage" and the plotters had been tracked by spy agencies for some time.

Intelligence sources said the planned attacks would have been similar to the commando-style raids carried out in Mumbai.

Suspected Bomber aboard Toronto to Karachi Flight

The Associated Press has reported that a Boeing 777 flight has made an unscheduled landing in Stockholm owing to a tip off that one of the passengers was in possession of explosives. It has been announced that the suspect is an ethnic Pakistani Canadian citizen. Bomb technicians and police are heading to the plane, but as yet there is no intention of closing the airport. Kansas City News reports that the 273 passengers are now being evacuated. Astonishingly, the BBC coverage of this story does not even mention the fact that the suspect is a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin (this was the case as of 09:22 UK time; the BBC may relent and add this detail later). This is typical of the BBC’s unwillingness to link acts of terrorism or suspected terrorism to Islam, Muslims or even Islamism.

If the suspect turns out to be an Islamist suicide bomber, the question has to be asked: why hasn’t he detonated himself? Did he have a change of heart or a failure of nerve? Did his device fail? Is this man another ‘underpants’ bomber? Is this just a false alarm?

Details at present are scant, but the manner in which the tip off was delivered was unusual: according to CNN it was given by a woman who called Canadian police from a payphone in Canada who then relayed the information to the crew of the plane whilst it was in Swedish airspace. The report quotes Stockholm Police spokesman Kjell Lindgren as saying: "They landed here because they said that someone onboard was carrying something that wasn't allowed, some explosive or something. We don't know exactly what it is yet."

The video report below is taken from Sky News:

Plot to kill Pope Benedict intercepted

The UK is currently on a heightened state of alert (classed as 'severe') for (Islamist) terrorist attack, and this morning a little before 6am five men were detained by counter-terrorism officers. Initially, the BBC was typically coy about the identities of the men, providing their ages but neither their nationalities nor their confessional allegiance. From the outset however it was clear that the men were Islamists, but as readers will be aware, not only has the BBC become reticent about referring to ‘Islamic’ or ‘Muslim’ terrorism, but it has in recent years even shied away from mentioning the most overtly politicised and anti-Western form of this religion that goes under the name of ‘Islamism’. The Daily Telegraph on the other hand, was not so squeamish about citing the national backgrounds of the detainees: several are Algerians, and I’ll wager that all of those arrested were Muslims. This evening it transpires that a sixth man was arrested at lunchtime. All of those concerned worked for the cleaning company Veolia Environment Services.

The presence of these men bears testimony to Cardinal Kasper’s observation that arriving in Britain was now like landing in a “Third World country.” Indeed, these men were from the Third World and had (if they possess passports) the most tenuous association with Britain and the real British people. Thus it is with untold millions who hold UK passports, but possess neither a sense of belonging nor allegiance to the country in which they reside, nor to its native people. Indeed, many hate us. This hate is at its most systematised within the doctrinaire Muslim fifth column.

The unhappy fact of Britain’s colonisation by Third World malcontents is further attested by the depressing news that many prisoners convicted of Islamist-terror related offences will shortly be released. Unsurprisingly, they have not dropped the jihadi views that generated the actions that landed them in prison. They hold UK passports, but they are ‘British’ in name only. They are aggressive aliens; interlopers who ought to be deported along with their families with no right of appeal and no right of readmission. Their numbers however are sure to be supplemented by newcomers trained in Somalia, Pakistan and wherever else Islamists are able to operate training camps.

Although I do not generally find that my opinions coincide with those of the Pope, I must say that I thought (and still do think) that he spoke honestly and with perfect sense when in his September 2006 Regensburg Address he quoted the fourteenth-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus:

Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

My sentiments are at one with those of Paleologus and the Pope on this issue. Evidently, this stirred up rancour amongst Muslims globally and will doubtless have served to mark him out as more of a target than he already was for Muslim militants.

Thankfully neither Pope Benedict nor the crowds who flocked to see him have come to any harm. We shall have to wait and see whether or not the six detainees had something concrete planned for the papal visit. The Telegraph claims that the police believe that the men were plotting to assassinate the Pope, but what means they intended to employ have as yet to be revealed. Below is a Sky News video report relating to the arrest of the plotters:

Vladikavkaz Suicide Bombing

An Islamist suicide bomber attacked the Russian city of Vladikavkaz this morning, detonating a car bomb in the city's central marketplace at 11:00 Moscow Standard Time. The market was packed and was thus transformed into a scene of carnage. Reports of casualties vary, with Izvestiia reporting 15 dead and 90 injured, whereas Nezavisimaia gazeta cites the same number of dead, but 114 wounded. Two children were amongst the fatalities. As in all such cases, the final tally of the dead is likely to rise.

Izvestiia reports that North Ossetian police have provisionally identified the bomber as a man named Archiev. Registration documents found after the explosion indicate that the car belonged to someone with the surname of Dobriev. It is not clear whether the car had been stolen.

The authorities have warned that more attacks may follow and have sealed the border between Northern Ossetia and Ingushetia. Most Ossetians are Christians, whereas the Ingush are Muslims. This is but the latest instalment in the bloody history of the region which has witnessed a growth in local Salafist activism in recent years which has amongst its aims the creation of a breakaway ‘emirate’ in the northern Caucasus region.

One of the main figures behind recent Islamist suicide attacks is Dokku Umarov, the self-styled Chechen ‘Emir of the Caucasus Emirate.’ His aim is to establish an Islamic emirate uniting the Northern Caucasus, the Krasnodar, Astrakhan and Volga regions. It is not as yet clear whether or not he or his group specifically was linked to this attack, but amongst the many incidents this year they have already staged suicide bombings in Nazran (Ingushetia), Kizlyar (Dagestan) and of course Moscow. Last November also witnessed the bombing of the Nevskii Express which links Moscow and St Petersburg.




Pictures courtesy of Reuters:

Five Years on from 7/7 Beeston’s Islamist Threat Remains

Last week bore witness to the fifth anniversary of the Islamist suicide attacks upon the London transport network in which 52 people were killed and hundreds maimed and wounded. Strangely, just as with 9/11, you will come across some Muslims who claim that this attack was not carried out by the bombers, even though Shehzad Tanweer recorded a ‘martyrdom’ (sic) video and he along his co-conspirators – Hasib Hussain, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Jermaine Lindsay - blew himself to pieces in London that day. For some Muslims, 7/7 has been deemed a “false-flag” operation. This view is of course the product of a paranoid conspiratorial mindset in which doctrinaire Muslims’ favourite bogey – the Jews – had a hand. Peculiarly, this perspective is most frequently encountered amongst Muslims who possess the most fervent desire to see indiscriminate bloody violence wreaked upon the kuffar.

Until this morning, I had not noticed a piece that appeared in the London Evening Standard last week entitled ‘Anger still felt among our young Muslim men’. This report dealt with current attitudes in the Beeston area of Leeds, which possessed an intimate link with the 7/7 attacks and still possesses a (growing) Muslim population. Kiran Randhawa (interestingly, her surname means “battle leader”) afforded a certain Muslim community leader (hey, don’t these people have local councils like everyone else in the UK, or is it just that they prefer to possess a parallel tribalist apparatus of social governance and control?) named Akhlaq Mir an opportunity to voice ‘community’ grievances. He stated:

There are still feelings there that triggered the bombings. As far as the Muslim youth are concerned, our soldiers are out in Afghanistan killing people every day and they are angry and they are frustrated.

Unsurprisingly, he and two other men – the Imam Kasim Nasir and Muslim youth worker Fahad Khan – sought to use this assertion as a basis for seeking to leverage money and resources from the Government. We all know that the sole reason underpinning the actions of the 7/7 bombers was an adherence to doctrinaire Islam. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it. The men who carried out these bombings were ideologically motivated. They alone were responsible for their own actions. However Mir, who is chairman of an education centre in north Leeds, isn’t having any of this:

We try to educate them, we tell them what Islam says. But the fear is always there that some of them will follow a path that they shouldn't. The Government needs to do more, to provide projects like ours with funding and also give some of these young people a voice, so they can vent their anger and feel like they are being listened to without resorting to violence.

Give them a voice? What does he mean? We have elections in this country. People have the right to demonstrate and to debate using the spoken and written word. Constituents can write to their MP or local councillor if they wish to raise certain issues. They can write to the press or blog. If they don’t like this way of life then fine: nobody is compelling them to stay here. There are plenty of countries which have Shariah. Should they not consider setting up home in one of those, such as the one from which their family originated for example?

What Randhawa’s article shows is the fact that significant numbers of Muslims in Leeds (and elsewhere) are temperamentally predisposed towards attacking non-Muslim British citizens. This identification of we non-Muslims as “the enemy” arises directly from their reading of the Qur’an, for that book tells them to dominate all non-Muslims using whatever means necessary. Furthermore, it also demonstrates that influential so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims are willing to use this fact as a cynical ploy to bid for funds for their own pet projects at a time when core public services are being cut and taxes increased for all of us. Two words spring to mind which seem to aptly summarise their approach in this game: blackmail and intimidation. The way to prevent future suicide bombings is to remove their cause: Islam. How about funding projects aimed at mass apostasy amongst the Muslim population? Now, that’s what I’d call a worthwhile and productive approach.