Brits address the causes of terrorism
Most say Muslims need to do more, but many others also say terrorism is a problem for all to solve.
Millions of people around the world, and almost the entire country of Britain, puased for two minutes at noon Thursday to
remember the terrorist attacks of a week earlier that have claimed 52 lives so far.
CNN reports that at King's Cross station, scene of the deadliest train bombing, "a ceremony [was held] involving rescuers, staff from London Underground and Network Rail and members of the public."
The
Scotsman reports that British police says they have identified the "mastermind" behind the attacks. They say he is a 30 year-old man, born in Britain, of Pakistani origin. He had been living outside Britain, but
returned a month ago and "visited the bombers in Leeds, identified their targets on the Tube and taught them how to trigger their rucksack bombs at the same time." He is believed to have fled Britain the day before the attacks, and to also have links to Al Qaeda operatives in the United States.
The British public is also
coming to grips with the fact that the bombers were British Muslims of Pakistani origin. While Prime Minister Tony Blair has made
extraordinary efforts to say that last weeks attacks were the result of the actions of a small group of extremists and do not represent the views of the larger Muslim community, the
Associated Press reports there have also been over
100 attacks against Muslims in Britain in the past few days.
The
Houston Chronicle reports that Blair met with a group of Muslim members of Parliament in recent days in an effort
to calm the situation.
After the meeting with Blair, Shahid Malik, a Muslim member of Parliament from Blair's Labor Party, said the revelations amounted to a wake-up call for the estimated 1.5 million Muslims who live in a country of 60 million people.
"The challenge is straightforward," he said, promising a communitywide effort to stem the influence of radical militants. "Those voices that we have tolerated will no longer be tolerated."
But how to confront those voices of intolerance remains the main question. Mansoor Ijaz, chairman of New York-based Crescent Investment Management LLC, writes in
The Christian Science Monitor that it's time for
moderate Muslims to do more.
Al Qaeda's success defines the central failure within moderate Islam to identify, control, and stamp out its extremists. The enemy, it appears, is already among us. This is why the London bombings represent a milestone for moderate Muslims. They can either stand up now and fight Islam's radical fringes from within or sit haplessly by while Western governments do it for them. But British Labor MP, Sadiq Khan, writing in the
Guardian, says that addressing the issue behind the London attacks is not something
that can be done alone by the British Muslim community alone.
The issues surrounding the attacks need to be in the mainstream, and so do the solutions. Muslim organizations and community leaders are doing a good job with limited resources, skills and infrastructure – but it is simply not possible for them to influence the sections of society in which the extremism that motivated the bombings is being harnessed ... The Muslim community has been taking the threat of terrorism in the UK extremely seriously for some time, and the attacks in London have shown that we cannot take responsibility alone. This problem has to be faced by all of us. Mr. Khan also said that "Just as it had taken a generation for these problems to develop, so it would take a generation for them to be solved."
Another Labor MP Khalid Mahmood, who has "
faced fierce criticism from religious extremists in his community," said people need to recognize that people like the bombers are "in the equivalent of a religious cult."
The extremists have no negotiating demands. They are not like Hamas or the IRA. They don't have a foreign policy agenda save hate and some kind of revolution. These organizations are not just operating in Britain. They are in Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have been operating well before the invasion of Iraq. Many of the organisations that get hold of these youngsters are involved in criminal network though corruption or credit card fraud. We need more people to confront these organisations and challenge their thinking. It is too easy to go [with] the flow, so all Muslim leaders have a responsibility. Mr. Mahmood also criticized the quality of religious education that often takes place after regular school in Britain, calling it "unregulated and ... of low quality."
Writing in
Newsweek International a few days ago, editor Fareed Zakaria, writes that the fundamental difference between 9/11 and the London bombings has been the
response of the Muslim community.
For months after 9/11, I kept writing that it was sad and disturbing that Muslims were reluctant to condemn the attacks. This time is different. Major Muslim groups in Britain have unambiguously denounced the bombings. Even the so-called fundamentalist organizations have condemned it. The Muslim Association of Britain, a hard-line group with alleged ties to militants in the Middle East, called the bombings "heinous and repulsive" and urged Muslims to help the emergency services and police. "We have faith in Britain and British people that we as a country will not be defeated by this," said its spokesman, Anas Altikriti.
The response outside Britain has also been much stronger than ever before. The grand imam of Al-Azhar, Shaikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, condemned the bombers but went further, rejecting the argument that this attack could be justified as an attempt to force Britain out of Iraq. "This is illogical and cannot be the motive for killing innocent civilians," he said. More striking have been the condemnations from radical groups like Hamas, Hizbullah and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, all of which have denounced the bombings.
Mr. Zakaria says that Muslims seems to be moving "toward recognizing that there is a great dysfunction in the world of Islam, which has allowed Muslims to concoct wild conspiracy theories, blame others for their problems and, worst of all, condone grotesque violence."
YOUR VIEWS
How can Europe prevent homegrown terror?
Edward Walker, the president of the Middle East Institute in Washington and a former United States ambassador to Egypt and Israel, writes for
bitterlemons.org (an Internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns) that part of the problem lies in the West's attitudes towards Islam, which makes the radicals' job that much easier to accomplish.
The violent jihadist minority would not have had such a profound impact on our attitudes had we not been already predisposed to think the worst of Islam. If we are going to defeat this vicious brand of intolerance and the resulting threat of terrorism against us, then we have to start by recognizing that religion is not the problem and, specifically, that Islam is not the problem. We need to be able to say "so what?" when it comes to our neighbors going to the mosque in greater numbers, whether they live next door or in a country apart, and to welcome them for what they are and do. Meanwhile
The Times of London reported earlier this week that the US military chiefs
lifted a ban of US Air Force personnel visiting London after last week's bombings because the ban was being seen as a "a victory for the terrorists."
Bob Kiley, the London transport commissioner who is a US citizen, said that the directive had been in place too long. The former CIA agent said: "Maybe the instruction had some logic to it on Friday when it was given on Thursday, but inasmuch as that order is still in effect now, there's a major or a colonel or a brigadier general whose future is very much at stake as we speak. Not smart."
FInally, the
BBC reports that British Home Secretary Charles Clarke is
denying a comment by French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy that "some of the London bomb suspects had been arrested last year.' Mr. Clarke said Mr. Sarkizy's remarks, made at an EU terrorist meeting, were "completely and totally untrue."
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