Terrorism Has Become The English Disease

The conviction of three home-grown bombers plotting to blow up thousands in mid air, blows out of the water any pretence of an 'international' threat of terrorism. Radical Islamic terrorism has become a peculiar English disease.

The Orange Party is heartily sick of the government blaming Pakistan and Afghanistan for terrorism. The root causes should be tackled here at home, not by fighting an invisible enemy in far off lands to prop up a corrupt government.

Misguided New Labour appeasement of extreme right Islamic groups and radical politicised religions just made things worse. But to admit that would be to admit a decade of failed policies.

Pakistan is being treated as the whipping boy. The Guardian quotes a senior Pakistan diplomat pointing out the terrorists, including the airlines plotters, were "born and brought up" in Britain, not Pakistan, which is being blamed for harbouring extremists plotting to attack the UK.

They may have popped over to Pakistan to learn a few tricks of the trade. But these were UK terrorists, with bombs made in the UK, to target UK air passengers with martyrdom videos spoken with UK accents.

Many of the recent terrorist outrages against the West have a UK connection. But the government is turning a blind eye to what is going on, unwilling or unable to recognise the scale and cause of the danger facing the country.

Excuses for the Afghan war are as fraudulent as the rigged elections and just as corrupt, with lame excuses for Brown's unwinnable war spun as a mythical fight against international terrorism.

Why send troops to their deaths against an invisible enemy in the killing fields and bomb the hell out of Afghan civilians when the problem lies here at home?

Millions of Muslims live in the US. Yet they are not producing 'home-grown' bombers, despite the US led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so often cited by extremists as the root cause of their grievance.

The reason lies in the strong sense of national pride and identity which has been lost here in a mishmash of pseudo liberal claptrap and political correctness. A pride and sense of belonging to a culture is just as important as the American dream.

It takes a brave soul to speak out and to say what many people know in their hearts and from their experience, for fear of facing accusations of being racist, anti-immigrant or a fascist.

Ed Husain, author of The Islamist and founder of counter-extremist think tank, Quilliam, is one voice to which those labels cannot stick. Writing in the Mail, he says what many know but are too scared or weak to say publicly.

A radicalised and self-confessed former Islamic extremist, Husain warns we have given in to the fanatics. A toxic combination of politically correct policy, denial and fear have opened the way for hate to grow in our midst.

The so-called liberal left has a long history of losing its way lurching from one cause to another, tying itself up in knots when the goodies become the baddies and vice versa. Many on the 'decent left' free of the shackles of New Labour would agree, vividly exemplified with raw examples in Nick Cohen's polemic: What's Left? How the Left has lost its way.

The Orange Party cannot understand why anyone would want to support or pay lip service to a barbaric medieval practice which subjugates women, is openly hostile to gays and wants to wipe Jews off the face of the earth.

But that probably has its origins is a misguided misunderstanding of peace-loving Muslims worshipping one of the world's greatest religions and those preaching the hate of a fascist political movement with a god attached.

Husain believes it's time to speak out about what he sees is happening, "before a terrible act of terrorism claims yet more lives".

Many Muslims may live in the UK but their hearts are in Muslim-dominated countries. Large parts of our cities have become Muslim ghettos funded by taxpayers, without a non-Muslim face in sight. "They might as well be in Pakistan or Afghanistan for all the contact they have with ordinary Britain," says Husain.

"They can send their children to Muslim state schools, go to Muslim NHS doctors, and do business at an Islamic bank. New immigrants arrive in this country to claim free local government housing, they are given a choice of Muslim areas to settle in."

Why this is allowed beggars belief. It makes the whole problem ten times worse. What is so wrong about offering new arrivals housing where they can integrate with people from our well-established rich mix of cultures?

Fresh from the ghettos, prisons and mosques have become recruiting centres for radical imams, or Islamic priests, highlighted in the excellent Channel 4 Dispatches documentaries.

Instead of protecting gullible young minds from brainwashing and radicalisation, the system encourages and directs them towards extremism.

"Time and time again," Husain points out, "I have seen Muslims go into prison as young Asian men, and return to their communities as something very different."

Satellite TV and the internet freely transmit the radical Islamic message straight into homes with thousands of UK Muslims preferring to get their news from foreign sponsored and owned Islam channels.

Pitched battles on the streets are becoming common place with the usual suspects whipping up a fanatical frenzy for their own political ends.

Damaging policies that have made the UK a seedbed for terrorists can be reversed. But unless that happens, warns Husain, "we will see further carnage on the streets."

But that means looking at the issues in the context of a 'sociological imagination", not through the eyes of a flawed politically-correct, wishy-washy pseudo-liberal nor through the eyes of a blinkered, racist bigot.

Top picture: Tanvir Hussain, Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar found guilty of the airline bomb plot