To me, one of the most interesting – and disturbing – issues surrounding the July 7 and 21 bombings in London is the fact that we’ve got British citizens, or at least naturalized persons, committing terrorist acts against their countrymen.
What are the implications of this fact? Has a line been crossed in the West with respect to native-born Muslims and a heightened scrutiny directed toward their activities and associations? In other words, if we can no longer direct our focus on illegal immigrant/terrorist suspects and must examine our local communities for possible terror threats, where does that leave us? What other options do we have?
It has no implications that I can see. Suggesting we should somehow more closely scrutinize American citizens of Middle Eastern descent smacks of when the US interred Japanese Americans during WWII. I, and I think most other Americans, view the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII as a distinct black mark on US history.
When you think about it the chances of any given person of Middle Eastern descent being a terrorist is very, very slim. Heck, it would be slim even if you were in the middle of Baghdad…the vast majority of people there are not terrorists or even violent but just average Mustafas/Mitras trying to get by like people anywhere else in the world. It only takes a very few people to cause the damage we see.
If you buy the arguments that we should more closely scrutinize Americans of Middle Eastern descent as they have a statistically higher chance of being a terrorist then we should scrutinize all men as they have a statisticaly higher likelihood of committing a violent crime than women do. It is simply silly, impratical and wrongheaded to go after a whole group because of a few bad apples in the bunch.
I think the OP is scared by the fact that British Born muslims that have lived a western lifestyle and apparently liked being british, even then accepted the role of suicide bombers.
In a way terrorism cannot be contained by simply having a very effective immigration police. I think the OP is not suggesting concentration camps or picking on them. The big implication is that extremist Islamic movements have managed to seduced young westernized muslims in what is usually a quite tolerant Britain.
In a war of hearts and minds, in a war of cultures that means the west is losing ?
Apparantly not every British Born muslim likes being British:
"THE radical cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed inflamed tensions further yesterday with an attack on Muslims who took part in inter-faith services after the bombings.
He branded any Muslims who attended the Trafalgar Square vigil last week as “hypocrites and apostates”.
In an interview, Bakri said: "God forbids us from praying with Jews and Christians side by side. These are part-time Muslims or chocolate Muslims.
“I cannot be British. I cannot be English. Even if I change my colour, like Michael Jackson, I could not be English.”
As an ideology or faith… western values and capitalism apparently have less pull than Islamic extremism. So spreading democracy or “freedom” won’t solve terrorism in other words.
is that the rest of the UK has to put up with even more London based news than before. If a large provincial English city such as Birmingham or Manchester had been completely levelled by bombs it would have rated about 5 minutes on the national news. The London media are convinced everyone in the UK wants to know every last detail about the bombings even though 52 million of us live outside the capital and 8 million in it.