On terrorism in Europe

Here's a possible difference between today's bombings in London (if they were carried out by Al Qaeda or its affiliates) and the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Perpetrators of the latter are supposed to be foreign Arabs, while it is quite possible that at least some if not all of those responsible for today's tragedy in London are British Muslims. As Christopher Hitchens writes:

'...the cell or gang [responsible for the London attacks] was homegrown, rather than smuggled in from North Africa or elsewhere. Or it could mean coordination between the two. In any event, there are two considerations here. The first is Britain's role as a leading member of the "Coalition" in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second is its role as a host to a large and growing Muslim minority. The first British citizens to be killed in Afghanistan were fighting for the Taliban... Last year, two British Muslims pulled off a suicide attack at an Israeli beach resort.' To add to this list, the man convicted for kidnapping and killing American journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002 was British. There are a number of British Muslims facing extradition to the United States for their role in terrorism, most prominent among them Abu Hamza al-Masri.

Hitchens concludes: 'If, as one must suspect, these bombs are only the first, then Britain will start to undergo the same tensions—between a retreat to insularity and clannishness of the sort recently seen in France and Holland, and the self-segregation of the Muslim minority in both those countries—that will start to infect other European countries as well... Europe is steadily becoming a part of the civil war that is roiling the Islamic world and it will require all our cultural ingenuity to ensure that the criminals who shattered London's peace at rush hour this morning are not the ones who dictate the pace and rhythm of events from now on.'

Thus for Britain and Europe, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan or Iraq, and unlike the United States, the problem seems to be within - there is no Afghanistan or Iraq the British can wage war on in the hunt for those responsible for acts of terrorism on British soil.

One of the ways to turn the tide on this "civil war" in the Islamic world is to actively spread human rights and democracy which have for far too long been neglected and usurped by the ruling elites of many Muslim countries, even though Islam enshrines rights values not unlike those found in the Western liberal tradition (with certain significant qualifications of course). And in Europe too then, the "cultural ingenuity" that Hitchens talks about must include ensuring that human rights of Muslim minorities are not trampled in the quest for restoring peace and security.