Traps and Targets

Submitted by Jacob Olidort (United States), Jul 11, 2005 at 20:02

I found the statistic on number of London's Muslim community partaking in extremist Muslim activity in London to be quite shocking and speaks volumes on the West's vulnerable position.

For those interested in an analysis of the techniques used during this attack, I highly recommend reading David Frum's piece in the 9 July edition of the Canadian National Post titled "Why Were London's Muslims Targeted as Well?"

Among other observations, Frum notes that certain details about how the attack was carried out- planting a relatively unassuming and unsophisticated explosive in the trains as opposed to performing the standard suicide attack- and the location of one of the attacks- at Edgeware Road station, what he calls "the central thoroughfare of London Islam"- all point to another dimension of this event. That it is a source of fragmentation among Islamists. Why, for example, could the masterminds of this attack recruit a young British Muslim youth to assist in their mission? Frum states "the London bombings look like the work of an international terrorist network that is losing its effectiveness, its cohesion and some of its ideological attractiveness to radical Muslims in the West and worldwide."

This is not to say that such events, and when they occur, should progressively cease worrying the West. Rather, it points to a grander cultural confrontation between various streams of extremism causing another level of war- ideological which, with a purely on-the-ground law enforcement-based approach, may be sorely overlooked.

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