The BBC reports that the Home Secretary John Reid was heckled by a couple of protesters during a speech he was giving to Muslims about combating extremists in their communities.
He was interrupted by Abu Izzadeen, an individual who it is believed is the leader of the banned group al-Ghurabaa, calling Reid an enemy of Islam.
The home secretary said “our fight is not with Muslims generally”.
Instead, he said, there was a “struggle against extremism”.
And, warning that terrorist fanatics sought to influence youngsters, he said: “There is no nice way of saying this.
“These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings, grooming them to kill themselves in order to murder others.”
Does anyone still believe this to be true that there are fanatics grooming young people to become suicide bombers?
What we know of the perpetrators of two of the most significant recent terrorist plots, the 7/7 bombers and the plotters of the failed plot of 21st July 2005, would refute that theory.
These men had become radicalized but there was no indication that they had fallen under the sway of a fanatic who had been a radicalizing force. Meetings with members of al Qaeda occurred after they had already decided to carry out attacks as a response to what they saw as the murdering of their Muslim brothers in the war in Iraq.
Far from these extremist bogeymen that John Reid would have us believe in the thing that is most radicalizing young Muslim men is the actions of the British and American governments overseas and at home. That’s not to say that the ultimate ends of the government’s policies are without worth but the means to those ends were clearly going to have negative consequences.
A free and democratic Iraq is a laudable goal but it is one that was never going to be simple to attain and the incredibly stupid idea of linking it in to the War on Terror gave the Islamic extremists the jihad they were looking for. Furthermore the incompetent manner in which the post-war operations have been carried out have resulted in thousands of innocent Iraqi lives being lost which furthers the extremists propaganda that the West has declared war on Islam.
Regardless of whether you believe that the War in Iraq was right or wrong only a blind fool could truly believe that it hasn’t resulted in an increase in acts of terrorism. How much longer can British ministers continue to perpetuate myths and avoid the stark truth that is obvious to the rest of us?
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) wrote that The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.
Recent history may yet prove him right as it is the blood of innocents that is being spilled at the moment and the tree of liberty is far from refreshed.
