THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 143, August 3, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
BRITAIN'S NEW EXPORT: ISLAMIST CARNAGE
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
THE GLOBAL THREAT POISED BY ISLAMISTS BASED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: BRITAIN AS OFFERING A
SIGNIFICANT BASE FOR INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIST TERRORISM & THE GLOBAL JIHAD -- THE NEED FOR U.K. AUTHORITIES
TO RECOGNIZE THE IDEOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE THAT DRIVES THE VIOLENT BEHAVIOR OF BRITISH-BASED ISLAMIST
TERRORISTS & TO TAKE ACTION THAT EFFECTIVELY DEALS WITH THE SITUATION -- WILL ISLAMISM-RELATED OFFENSES
COMMITTED BY ISLAMISTS IN BRITAIN EVENTUALLY INCUR A BACKLASH? WHAT WILL IT TAKE, IN TERMS OF
DESTRUCTION, FOR NON-U.K. GOVERNMENTS TO FOCUS THEIR IMMIGRATION SECURITY PROCEDURES ON THAT VERY
SMALL PROPORTION OF THE BRITISH POPULATION FROM WHICH INFILTRATING ISLAMIST TERRORISTS DERIVE, NAMELY,
MUSLIMS RESIDING IN THE UNITED KINGDOM & SEEKING TO RELOCATE IN THE TARGET COUNTRIES?
FULL STORY:
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 U.K.-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 U.S. 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 United Kingdom from attack by its
own Muslims is long defunct, but that the U.K. 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 Centre's list includes Afghanistan (12), Algeria (3), Australia (1), Azerbaijan (1), Belgium (2), Bosnia (4), Canada (1),
France (7), Germany (3), India (3), Iraq (3), Israel (2), Italy (4), Jordan (1), Lebanon (1), Morocco (2), the Netherlands (1),
Pakistan (5), Russia (4), Saudi Arabia (1), Somalia (1), Spain (2), the 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 from British-linked 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-U.K. 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.
© Daniel Pipes 2010
Originally Published in National Review Online, August 3, 2010
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, August 3, 2010
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/8706/britain-export-islamist-terrorism
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Britain -- The United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland:
Mother Country & Close Ally of the United States of America
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for National Review Online, Front Page
Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and
developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network
television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the
U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately
twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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