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London.

August 11, 2006

The Christian Science Monitor , from the August 11, 2006 edition:
”Security officials had a delicate task knowing when to move," said Home Secretary John Reid. "Move too early, you may not know the full scope of who is involved and you may provoke those you don't know into taking the action you don't want. If you don't move, you run the risk of terrible consequences."

But while the "underresourced and underappreciated" security services have done commendable work, says M.J. Gohel, a terrorism analyst at London's Asia Pacific Foundation, they've had less success finding out who is providing "homegrown" terrorists with direction.

British officials regularly warn the public of the threat. Wednesday, Mr. Reid said that the country faced its most sustained period of threat since World War II.

Britain is a particular target because of its backing for US foreign policy in the Middle East. RAND's Hoffman also notes that the fifth anniversary of 9/11 is looming. Despite comments that Al Qaeda may be in retreat, he says, "nothing is further from the truth. At least in Europe, Al Qaeda has put down an organizational structure to sustain these attacks."

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From Stratfor, Andrew Teekell says: “This is not Al Qaeda, but an autonomous structure with an ambitious Al Qaeda style”.

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Melanie Phillips, controversial columnist for London's Daily Mail, author of the book Londonistan, where London is seen as the European hub for Islamic terror and extremism, says: “Having allowed the country to turn into a global hub of the Islamic jihad without apparently giving it a second thought, the British establishment is still failing even now â€” despite the wake-up calls of both 9/11 and the London bomb attacks of 2005 â€” to acknowledge what it is actually facing and take the appropriate action. Instead, it is deep into a policy of appeasement of the phenomenon that threatens it, throwing sops to both radical Islamism and the Muslim community in a panic-stricken attempt to curry favour and buy off the chances of any further attacks. This disastrous policy ignores the first law of terrorism which is that it preys on weakness. …Britain has a long and inglorious history of appeasing terrorism, thus bringing true the aphorism in which its ruling class so cynically believes that "terrorism works". Now, however, this dubious national trait has been cemented even more firmly into the national psyche by the governing doctrine of multiculturalism, which has made it all but impossible even to acknowledge that this is a problem rooted within the religion of a particular minority community. …

The cultural deformities of moral relativism and victim culture that have done such damage in Britain are present in American society too. At present, they are locked in conflict with traditional values in America's culture wars. But it doesn't take too much imagination to envisage that, if a different administration were installed in the White House, Britain's already calamitous slide into cultural defeatism might boost similar forces at play in the United States.

Britain is the global leader of English speaking culture. It was Britain which first developed the western ideas of the rule of law, democracy and liberal ideals and exported them to other countries. Now Britain is leading the rout of those values, allowing its culture to become vulnerable to the predations of militant Islam. If British society goes down under this twin assault, the impact will be incalculable â€” not just for the military defence of the west against radical Islamism, but for the very continuation of western civilisation itself”.

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More cautious Dominique Thomas, author of Londonistan, la voix du Djihad.

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Gilles Kepel says: "they are not fascists. But the English experiment Engaging islamists has failed".

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Daniel Pipes says: "I do not like very much the word fascists about them. But Islam is part of the problem".

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In his book Bin Laden in Italia, Magdi Allam says that there are about 2000 fundamentalist terrorists (or extremists, or jihadists, or alquaedists), in Italy.