UPDATE, 14/7:
"Have we learned the lessons of 7/7? So begins every trite radio and TV discussion today as we mark 20 years since four homegrown jihadists blew themselves up on London’s transport network and took 52 innocent souls with them.
"Going by much of the commentary, you’d think this was a purely logistical, security question. There’s a long piece on the BBC website, talking about how the police and the security services were forced to up their game after the London Bombings, the new powers they now enjoy as a consequence, the attendant concerns over civil liberties, etc.
"The words ‘Islamist’ and ‘jihadist’ do not appear once in the piece, even as it details the evolving ‘extremist’ threat posed first by al-Qaeda and then the ‘self-styled Islamic State’. There is often a stubborn refusal, a stammering hesitation, to mention what flavour of ‘extremism’ most menaces us – a cowardly tic that was skewered best by Morrissey: ‘An extreme what? An extreme rabbit?’
"This attempt to brush over the I-word – to blithely ignore the religious, ideological character of those hellish bombings two decades ago – is everywhere today. The deadliest terror attack on UK soil since Lockerbie – the deadliest terror attack on London ever – is being talked about as if it were motivated by some vaguely defined form of ‘hate’ or ‘division’, rather than a global Islamist movement."
"'Business as usual.' That was the phrase of stoic courage made famous in the London blitz, and
typified in the photo to the right. 'Business as usual' is the quiet bravery of offering two fingers to
aggressors who simply do not understand what makes human life sacred, and human effort valuable.
"The main reason so many people fear Islam is all the terrorism carried out by Muslims. The London bombings of twenty years ago are but one entry in a long, long list. Muslims are much more prone to commit acts of terrorism than any other group in the world. This has been true for forty years.
"No, this does not mean that all or most Muslims are terrorists. As I have often said, some of the bravest people in the world are Muslims who know that the terrorists can find them and their families and fight them anyway.
"No, this does not mean it is decent behaviour to buttonhole your Muslim work colleague and harangue him or her for the crimes of their co-religionists.
"It does mean that unless and until the Muslim world confronts the fact that most terrorism is Islamic terrorism, the non-Muslim world is rational to view Muslims with extra suspicion and to discriminate against them in matters of security. The idealistic refusal of the Western part of the non-Islamic world (or rather its political class) to do this is folly, a folly that will eventually backfire on Muslims living in the West.
"Clearly 'the whole of Islam' did not bomb London, or Madrid, or Istanbul, or Jakarta, or Bali, or New York. But there is a world-wide trend there, don't you think, that we should not ignore. One that needs to be taken seriously, that needs to be condemned.
"The culture of Islam fundamentalism needs to be condemned, as I argued here briefly just the other day before all this happened, and here some weeks ago. ...
"But it's not enough to just condemn it. Islam must be reformed, and the hate-success, clitorectomies-for-everybody, kill-the-west culture that has fomented nothing but hatred and poverty across the Muslim world firmly rejected. Witness the effect that the sisters of Robert McCartney had in speaking out against Irish violence — by saying "NO MORE!" they brought the hope of ending what once seemed un-ending. Only a like rejection from within is ever going to change the culture of Islam.
"Second, Islam needs a Reformation. Urgently. As I pointed out here and here four years ago to noisy dissent, unlike the West, Islam never had a Reformation, and 1.4 billion Muslims and at least 750 Londoners are the poorer for that today. Islam never had a Renaissance. It never had an Aquinas to liberate science, thought and life from its religious shackles. Crikey, Islam doesn't even have a New Testament saying that all the God-awful and God-ordained killing in that earlier collection of papyrus is no longer necessary. Islamic culture needs to embrace Enlightenment values, and it needs to do so damn quickly.
"It needs its own McCartney sisters and its own Aquinas. Until it gets them the culture stands condemned, with smoking ruins and a trail of corpses across the west as sad monuments to its destructive power."
"The Islamic terrorists who commit these atrocities are not the poor or downtrodden of the Muslim world, they are its best and brightest. What sort of culture has its best and brightest commit multiple murder, while its poor and downtrodden flee (when they can) to find a better life.
"Freedom's enemies have many faces, but one fundamental evil: hatred of the good for being the good. The lietmotif of nihilist hatred is a "radical rejection of the good, absolutely and in principle; rejection of what is good by any standard and by all standards, rejection of good as such. The emotional expression of nihilism is 'hatred of the good for being the good'."
"Good guys can't believe nihilism. They can't imagine that anyone could accept nihilism, let alone try to practice nihilism, let alone cultivate in himself a hatred of the good. The good guys' naiveté on this point is their main strategic weakness: how do you fight enemies you can't even believe exist?"
- "Londoners are so wonderfully calm under this sort of pressure. Grace under pressure.
- "52 people killed. 700 injured. I hope some of those killed were the perpetrators.
- "London stock exchange down, and then straight back up again. Business as usual.
- "Given the planning that this attack displays, the good news is the relatively low loss of life. Despite the easy, soft targets they chose to rip apart with their explosives, it seems the cowardly, destructive fuckers were unable to acquire the materiel to kill and destroy at the level of Madrid, New York or Bali, or the coordination to kill on an even greater scale. Is that some sort of blessing? Are these people weaker in their destructive powere than we give them credit for?
- At times like these, isn't it a reminder that (despite their mixed premises and many political differences between us—and with significant low-life exceptions such as George Galloway and Keith Locke) western people and politicians actually share more than we differ. Tony Blair's words at midday London time could hardly be bettered: "It is important, however, that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world. Whatever they do, it is our determination they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations around the world.”
- The solidarity shown by western leaders at Gleneagles was something to see. Thirteen leaders including Jacques Chirac, George Bush, Kofi Annan and [even] Vladimir Putin stood shoulder-to-shoulder on stage behind Tony Blair has he decried the outrage, and promised to defend our values. I hope they mean it.
- Once again we see the lesson that you can not kill terrorism, you can only choke off its means of supply by hunting down those who support them and give them succour. At times such as these it becomes even more important that those who value human life and the ideas that support life do make a stand for the values of liberty and freedom.
- Those people that commit these atrocities and those who support them have exactly nothing to offer us except bloodshed , tears and death. Nothing."
~ Me from my post 'Grace Under Pressure'
"Many years ago I was working in The City [of London] and there were two events that made travel into work almost impossible.
"The first was a series of storms that brought down power lines, blocked train routes and so on. Not surprisingly, the place was empty the next day. Why bother to struggle through?
"The other event was an IRA bomb which caused massive damage and loss of life. Trains were disrupted, travel to work the next day was horribly difficult and yet there were more people at work than on a normal day. There was no co-ordination to this, no instructions went out, but it appeared that people were crawling off their sick beds in order to be there at work the next day, thrusting their mewling and pewling infants into the arms of anyone at all so that they could be there.
"Yes, we’ll take an excuse for a day off, throw a sickie. But you threaten us, try to kill us? Kill and injure some of us?
"'Fuck you, sunshine.
"'We’ll not be having that. '
"No grand demonstrations, few warlike chants, a desire for revenge, of course, but the reaction of the average man and woman in the street? Yes, you’ve tried it now bugger off. We’re not scared, no, you won’t change us. Even if we are scared, you can still bugger off."
