Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Britain: a homebase and crossroads for militant Islam in Europe

It's amazing to me that the express and repeatedly stated aims of the apostles of militant Islam, who openly invoke others to murder, are not taken more seriously from the get-go! The British cultural imperative of free speech, and as the article below points out, its "deep tradition of civil liberties and protection of political activists have made the country a haven for terrorists." Until recently, such cultural attitudes seem to have outweighed a commonsense mandate to protect citizens from the jihadists within Britain itself. The same unrealistic cultural viewpoints often color debate within the United States as well. We all have to wait to be slaughtered.

Often people in the West are blinded by their own Judeo-Christian worldview, and automatically extend that worldview to all others. Not everyone's thinking is culturally conditioned within such a framework.

NYTimes.com

For a Decade, London Thrived as a Busy Crossroads of Terror

By ELAINE SCIOLINO and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

Published: July 10, 2005

LONDON, July 9 - Long before bombings ripped through London on Thursday, Britain had become a breeding ground for hate, fed by a militant version of Islam.

For two years, extremists like Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, a 47-year-old Syrian-born cleric, have played to ever-larger crowds, calling for holy war against Britain and exhorting young Muslim men to join the insurgency in Iraq. In a newspaper interview in April 2004, he warned that "a very well-organized" London-based group, Al Qaeda Europe, was "on the verge of launching a big operation" here.

In a sermon attended by more than 500 people in a central London meeting hall last December, Sheik Omar vowed that if Western governments did not change their policies, Muslims would give them "a 9/11, day after day after day."

If London became a magnet for fiery preachers, it also became a destination for men willing to carry out their threats. For a decade, the city has been a crossroads for would-be terrorists who used it as a home base, where they could raise money, recruit members and draw inspiration from the militant messages.

Among them were terrorists involved in attacks in Madrid, Casablanca, Saudi Arabia, Israel and in the Sept. 11 plot. Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged in the United States in the 9/11 attacks, and Richard C. Reid, the convicted shoe-bomber, both prayed at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London. The mosque's former leader, Abu Hamza al-Masri openly preached violence for years before the authorities arrested him in April 2004.

Although Britain has passed a series of antiterrorist and immigration laws and made nearly 800 arrests since Sept. 11, 2001, critics have charged that its deep tradition of civil liberties and protection of political activists have made the country a haven for terrorists. The British government has drawn particular criticism from other countries over its refusal to extradite terrorism suspects.

For years, there was a widely held belief that Britain's tolerance helped stave off any Islamic attacks at home. But the anger of London's militant clerics turned on Britain after it offered unwavering support for the American-led invasion of Iraq. On Thursday morning, an attack long foreseen by worried counterterrorism officials became a reality.

"The terrorists have come home," said a senior intelligence official based in Europe, who works often with British officials. "It is payback time for a policy that was, in my opinion, an irresponsible policy of the British government to allow these networks to flourish inside Britain."

Those policies have been a matter of intense debate within the government, with the courts, the Blair government and members of Parliament frequently opposing one another.

For example, when the Parliament considered a bill in March that would have allowed the government to impose tough controls on terror suspects - like house arrests, curfews and electronic tagging - some legislators objected, saying it would erode civil liberties. "It does not secure the nation," William Cash, of the House of Commons, said of the bill. "It is liable to create further trouble and dissension among those whom we are seeking to control - the terrorists." The measure is still pending.

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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 11:12 AM