And how are you gonna fight terrorism without being discriminatory?
Mike
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=338F4DB0-927B-471F-B536-710A0FA1B6C9
Osama bin London's Country Camps
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | 3/4/2008
"Fifty-two. That's not even breakfast for me."
Those were the words of an Islamic preacher in Britain, Mohammed
Hamid, who liked to call himself "Osama bin London." Hamid was
referring to the fifty-two people murdered by Islamic jihadists in the
London bombings of July 2005, and was boasting that his own plots
would lead to, presumably, lunch and dinner -- far more deaths. One
police official, discussing surveillance tapes made of conversations
inside Hamid's home, said, "There was repeated talk of finding and
killing nonbelievers."
Hamid was a member of the "London 7," a jihadist gang that established
training camps in the British countryside, where they prepared for
large-scale attacks on British non-Muslims -- and who even planned to
open training camps in the U.S. as well. Two of the gang members
pleaded guilty to terror charges Tuesday, but this case is far from
over. Its implications ought to be studied closely by government and
law enforcement officials.
The establishment of jihad training camps in the British hinterlands
raises disquieting questions with no easy answers: How many more might
be there? How can they be detected? Questions like these should lead
to considerations of the wisdom of the current no-holds-barred
immigration policy, and of the loyalty of the larger Muslim community
in Britain - questions that have never been satisfactorily answered.
Exposure to the jihadist, Islamic supremacist ideology, says the self-
styled British "former Islamist" Ed Husain, "that radicalism, that
extremism, that 'them-and-us' mind set -- starts here on our streets
in Britain."
Why does it start on the streets in Britain, and what can be done
about that? According to the Associated Press, "Hamid, originally from
Tanzania, hand-picked recruits from mainstream mosques, inviting them
for radical meetings at his home and then selecting a smaller number
to attend the camps, police said." Yet whenever law enforcement
officials have broached the topic of monitoring activity inside
mosques, they meet a barrage of indignation and criticism. The core
problem is that, for all their ballyhooed condemnations of terrorism,
peaceful Muslims in Britain and America have not moved in any great
numbers to expose those who hold jihadist sentiments, much less to
separate themselves from them and expel them from their mosques. There
is no wall of separation in the British or American Muslim community
between Muslims who accept Western pluralism and just want to live
ordinary lives and those who hold to the same ideology of jihad and
the destruction or subjugation of infidels to which "Osama bin London"
had dedicated his life. There is no easy or reliable way to
distinguish a Muslim who may be working to top the death total of the
July 2005 London bombings from one who abhors the very idea.
In such an environment, new methods are needed. Yet in both Britain
and America legislators and judges continue to work against legitimate
and legal anti-terror initiatives. In Britain in mid-February, a judge
overturned the convictions of five Muslims who downloaded pro-jihad
material from the Internet. And in America, after House Democrats
allowed a surveillance act to expire last week, if telecom companies
monitor jihadists' phone calls as they plot terrorist attacks,
jihadists can sue the telecoms and tie them up in the courts. National
Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael B.
Mukasey wrote last week to the House Intelligence Committee: "We have
lost intelligence information this past week as a direct result of the
uncertainty created by Congress' failure to act. Because of this
uncertainty, some partners have reduced cooperation."
Of course, not every Muslim in Britain or the United States will fall
prey to the likes of "Osama bin London." But the London 7 case
demonstrates anew that the more law enforcement officials depend on
the politically correct assumption that there is little or no sympathy
for the global jihad among Muslims in the West, the more they put us
all at risk. This week ABC sent two actors - one dressed as a veiled
Muslim woman and the other playing the part of an "Islamophobic" store
clerk who treated her rudely - into a store in Waco, Texas, in order
to gather evidence of American xenophobia and racism. A far more
dramatic do***entary might be made of the London 7 case - of young
Muslims in Britain actually working toward the violent deaths of their
non-Muslim fellow citizens. And it didn't seem to enter into the minds
of anyone at ABC that the fact that all too many Muslims go in for
such training - even in the West - may be responsible for some of the
frustration and resentment that boiled over from a few obnoxious
people in their "Islamophobia" do***entary.
Muslims in Britain and the U.S. have skillfully ****trayed themselves
for years now as the victims of unjustified suspicion. The London 7
case is just the latest one to indicate that a good deal more
forthrightness, a good deal more honesty, a good deal more
transparency, ought to be forthcoming from them, if they really wish
to deflect such suspicion. Otherwise, some later "Osama bin London"
finally will top the July 2005 death count - and his grisly
achievement will stand forever as an assault on innocent people that
could have and should have been prevented, and one more step on the
way to the disintegration of the West before the jihadist onslaught.
This can be prevented. But it is getting late.
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and
the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of seven books, eight
monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic
terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically
Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About
Muhammad. His latest book is Religion of Peace?.
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