REBELS WITHOUT A CAUSE
After the arrest of a second group of bombers, the British press announces the search for the mastermind behind the London bombs. They are bemused by the difference between the most second-generation Pakistani bombers of 7 July and the mostly East African suspects arrested for the failed bomb attack of 21 July. Clearly there must be a mastermind behind the attacks. Hussain Osman, currently detained in Italy says otherwise, claiming that his team was a copycat attack.
Recent commentators on Al Qaida in Britain like columnist Nick Cohen and TV journalist Peter Taylor have mocked the argument put by filmmaker Adam Curtis in his powerful documentary of last year The Power of Nightmares. Curtis' thesis that there is no organisation as Al Qaida seems to have been disproved by the recent 'wave' of bomb attacks on London.
In fact, Curtis' assessment is better than the critics. They need to believe in a big conspiracy and weave the bombings together organisationally. It would be convenient for them if there were one enemy that they could unite against. But the evidence is that these are isolated groups of individuals, playing out deadly conspiratorial fantasies, without any substantial support amongst Muslims in Britain or elsewhere.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, radicals in Britain have talked up the sentiment behind the bombings, to boost their case that the war in Iraq has put us all at risk. Some key members of the Stop the War Coalition have been reluctant to condemn the bombings, preferring instead to insist that they have a just cause. But the bombers' 'cause' is entirely mysterious, since they chose to make no statement, or appeal to any constituency. On their own, the bombings only say 'we hold other people in contempt'.
Contrary to many accounts, the bombings were rejected by the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Britain and elsewhere. (Indeed opinion pollsters Pew report that support for suicide bombings and for Al Qaida is at an all-time low in Middle Eastern countries as well.) Since September 11, 2001, radical Muslims have been forced out of the Finsbury Park Mosque and elsewhere. The London bombers were denounced, and in one case identified to the police, by their own families.
NO BATTLE OF IDEAS
Prime Minister Tony Blair promises to challenge extremism directly. But there is precious little sign of any 'battle of ideas'. Instead the bombings have seen London flooded with armed police, with one fatal result so far. Shopping lists of new police powers have been prepared, and the defenders of civil liberties, like Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty are so woven into the official system of consultation as to be incapable of resisting.
The Prime Minister's wife, judge Cherie Booth made a speech in Malaysia arguing that now is not the time to threaten civil liberties. But this is largely rhetorical, and the government insisted that there was no dispute between Blair and his wife. Lip-service to the idea of 'fair play' as one of the values that underscore the British way of life reduce rights to a patriotic banner.
There can be no battle of ideas with the bombers - not only because they have no ideas, but also because the Prime Minister has none. His campaign to turn Britain into a more restrictive society was already well underway before the bombings.
LONDONISTAN
The government's one political response has been to seek dialogue with conservative Mosque leaders. They hope that they can 'reform' Islam to isolate the extremists. But the idea that you can reform Islam is absurd. It is not that Islam is an intrinsically violent religion - but it is like other religions an intrinsically illiberal and obscurantist outlook. But then that is the point at which Tony Blair finds he has something in common with the Mosque leaders.
Among the stranger symptoms of this policy strategy are the frequent pronouncements from government ministers on the true meaning of Islam. It is characteristic of the government's lack of an ideological alternative that it has involved itself in scriptural exegesis of the Koran. Instead of reforming Islam, this is a move that will end up incorporating elements of that reactionary outlook into officialdom.