In all, 28 countries have come under assault from British-based Islamist terrorists, giving some idea of their global menace.
Britain’s largest and longest-running terrorist
investigation ended last month with the conviction of three British Muslims.
Their 2006 plot involved blowing up trans-Atlantic airliners with the hope of
killing up to 10,000 people. That near-disaster offers a pungent reminder of
the global danger poised by UK-based radical Islam.
The Heritage Foundation calls British Islamism “a direct
security threat” to the United States and The New Republic dubs it “the biggest
threat to US security.”
Officialdom agrees. The British home secretary compiled a
dossier in 2003 that acknowledged his country offered a “significant base” for
terrorism. A CIA study in 2009 concluded that British-born nationals of
Pakistani descent (who can freely enter the United States under a visa waiver
program) constitute America’s most likely source of terrorism.
Confirming, updating, and documenting these reports,
London’s Centre for Social Cohesion, run by the formidable Douglas Murray, has
just published a 535-page opus, Islamist Terrorism: The British Connections,
written by Robin Simcox, Hannah Stuart, and Houriya Ahmed. It consists mainly
of detailed biographical information on two sorts of perpetrators of what it
calls “Islamism related offences” or IROs – that is to say, incidents where
evidence points to Islamist beliefs as the primary motivator.
One listing contains information on the 127 individuals
convicted of IROs or suicides in IROs within Britain; the other provides
biographies on 88 individuals with connections to Britain who engaged in IROs
elsewhere in the world. The study covers eleven years 1999-2009.
Domestic British terrorists display a dismaying pattern
of normality. They are predominantly young (mean age: 26) and male (96
percent). Nearly half come from a South Asian background. Of those whose
educational backgrounds are known, most attended university. Of those whose
occupations are known, most have jobs or study full time. Two-thirds of them
are British nationals, two-thirds have no links to proscribed terrorist
organizations, and two-thirds never went abroad to attend terrorist training
camps.
Most IROs, in brief, are perpetrated by basically
ordinary Muslims whose minds have been seized by the coherent and powerful
ideology of Islamism. One wishes the terrorist’s numbers were limited to
psychopaths, for that would render the problem less difficult to confront and
eliminate.
BRITAIN’S SECURITY Service estimates that over 2,000
individuals residing today in Britain pose a terrorist threat, thereby implying
not only that the “covenant of security” that once partially protected the UK
from attack by its own Muslims is long defunct but that the United Kingdom may
face the worst internal terrorist menace of any Western country other than
Israel.
As for the second group – Islamists with ties to Great
Britain who engage in attacks outside the country: the report’s authors
modestly state that because their information constitutes a sampling, and not a
comprehensive list, they do not provide statistical analyses. But their sample
indicates the phenomenon’s reach, so I compiled a list of countries (and the
number of British-linked perpetrators) in which British-linked IROs have
occurred.
The center’s list includes Afghanistan (12), Algeria (3),
Australia, Azerbaijan, Belgium (2), Bosnia (4), Canada, France (7), Germany
(3), India (3), Iraq (3), Israel (2), Italy (4), Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco (2),
Netherlands, Pakistan (5), Russia (4), Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Spain (2), United
States (14), and Yemen (10). I add to the centre’s list Albania, where an
attack took place before 1999, and Bangladesh and Kenya, which seem to have
been overlooked.
In all, 28 countries have come under assault from
British-based Islamist terrorists, giving some idea of their global menace.
Other than India, the target countries divide into two distinct types, Western
and majority-Muslim.
An odd trio of the United States, Afghanistan, and Yemen
have suffered the most Britishlinked terrorists.
This documentation prompts several questions: One, how
much longer will it take for the British authorities to realize that their
current policies – trying to improve Muslims’ material circumstances while
appeasing Islamists – misses the ideological imperative? Two, evidence thus far
tends to point to IROs on balance strengthening the Islamist cause in Great
Britain; will this remain the pattern even as violence persists or will IROs
eventually incur a backlash?
Finally, what will it take in terms of destruction for
non-UK governments to focus their immigration procedures on that percentage or
two of Britons from whom the perpetrators exclusively derive – the Muslim
population? Unpleasant as this prospect is, it beats getting blown up.
**The writer (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the
Middle East Forum and a Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover
Institution of Stanford University.