While Britain Slept - Londonistan

On July 7, the United Kingdom observed the first anniversary of the bus and Underground attacks in London that claimed fifty-two lives. One year later, according to the New York Times, "Britons are still asking what inspired the onslaught by British-born Muslims and whether the dark undercurrents of July 7, 2005, could resurface in a new attack."

If they really are asking whether such an attack could happen again, there's a new book they ought to read. It is titled Londonistan, by British journalist Melanie Phillips. It is Phillips's response to what she calls Britain's state of denial regarding the threat posed to the nation by radical Islam.

As the title suggests, the Islamists Britain should be worried about are already residing in the United Kingdom. Phillips cites British security experts' estimates that "no fewer than 1,200 Islamist terrorists are biding their time within British suburbs."

To put that in perspective, that's sixty times as many as were needed to pull off September 11, and this in a country with one-fifth the population of the United States. Many of these terrorists, like the July 7 bombers, were born and raised in Britain. These are the kind of numbers that ought to cause Britons to lose sleep.

How did this happen? Phillips cites what she calls Britain's "dirty little secret": During the 1990s, Islamist radicals were "given free rein in Britain" as part of a "gentlemen's agreement." This agreement said that if the Brits left them alone, the Islamists would not attack their hosts. This created what Phillips calls "Londonistan" and turned Britain into the "hub of al-Qaeda in Europe."

This "intelligence debacle" was accompanied by a "cultural pathology" caused by a "profound loss of cultural nerve" among Britain's elites. Their "systematic onslaught . . . against the country's own identity and values" has left Britain increasingly unable to confront and condemn Islamist radicals, even when these radicals threatened basic democratic values.

The other factor that gave rise to "Londonistan" was the elites' "refusal to acknowledge that Islamist extremism is rooted in religion." They ignored "the statements and signs that show unequivocally that the aim is to Islamicise the West." Instead, they convinced themselves that the Islamists were motivated by issues like the Palestinians or Iraq.

Phillips calls the result of this denial "utterly appalling": Thirteen percent of British Muslims regard the July 7 bombers as martyrs, and "between seven and 16 percent think suicide attacks on British targets can be justified."

It's difficult to imagine a clearer example of the threat posed by a destructive worldview. I don't mean Islam—I mean the cultural relativism and secularism of Western elites. It's not surprising that a post-Christian elite could not appreciate how seriously other people take their religion.

The question is: Will America follow in Britain's footsteps? Not if Christians make it clear what the war against Islamic extremism is all about. Not if we keep our elites from slipping into the kind of denial that made July 7 memorable for all the wrong reasons.

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THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

"As I said, if you're right, it's something everyone should know. However, I need sources, Sir."

British and Nigerian Muslims the most alienated: The United Kingdom stands out as a paradoxical country. Non-Muslims there have strikingly more favorable views of Islam and Muslims than elsewhere in the West; for example, only 32 percent of the British sample view Muslims as violent, significantly less their counterparts in France (41 percent), Germany (52 percent) or Spain (60 percent). In the Muhammad cartoon dispute, Britons showed more sympathy for the Muslim outlook than did other Europeans. More broadly, Britons blame Muslims less for the poor state of Western-Muslim relations.

But British Muslims return the favor with the most malign anti-Western attitudes found in Europe. Many more of them regard Westerners as violent, greedy, immoral and arrogant than do their counterparts in France, Germany, and Spain. In addition, whether asked about their attitudes toward Jews, responsibility for 9/11, or the place of women in Western societies, their views are notably more extreme.

The situation in Britain reflects the "Londonistan" phenomenon, whereby Britons preemptively cringe and Muslims respond to this weakness with aggression.

http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=4/b/iv/030720061

Londonistan (Arabic spelling áäÏäÓÊÇä) is an insult referring to the British capital of London, used since the 1990s by French counter-terrorism agents, as well as by the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, because of the number of exiled Islamist groups that established political headquarters in the city, from which they may seek to overthrow governments they consider oppressive or heretical, or plan terror attacks on other European countries. The term is considered to be racist by many, especially when it was taken up as a title for a book perpetuating these racist myths, by Melanie Phillips who was notoriously voted most Islamophobic Journalist by the Islamic Human Rights Commission[2] in 2003.

Britain's attractions for Islamist dissidents are said to include its historical commitment to freedom of speech and perceptions that victims of political repression receive asylum, access to temporary accommodation and some monetary support. 13,026 asylum seekers were being accommodated in London on 25 March 2005, according to the latest available statistics from the London Asylum Seekers Consortium. [3]

The British government's perceived unwillingness to prosecute or extradite terrorist suspects provoked tensions with countries in which attacks occurred. Allegations of a British policy of appeasement of Islamists were made and denied; should such a policy have existed, it could no longer be considered a success.

..........

Foreign governments were particularly angered when the head of Al-Muhajiroun, Omar Bakri Muhammad, claimed he lived in the UK under a "covenant of security", whereby he was left alone by the authorities so long as he did not sanction attacks on British soil. The British government denied the claim. Some suspects of the 1995 attacks on Paris have fled to the United Kingdom; Rachid Ramda was eventually put into French custody on the 1 December 2005. Several non-British major newspapers have echoed the claim that the UK intentionally tolerates radical Muslims and hinders extradition of suspects in order to buy peace from terrorists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londonistan_(term)

The most "successful" recruiter for Al Qaeda, responsible for both the terrorist conversion of Moussaoui, Robert Reid, and many others and also supporting the assassins of Afghan anti-Taliban leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, was Abu Qatada, a Palestinian from Jordan, sentenced there for terrorist plots. He and the second most important recruiter, one Al Faisal, apparently of Jamaican origin, were both based in England, and both managed to slip away from the Scotland Yard recently. Indeed, the UK is clearly the center of fundamentalist Islam in Europe, followed closely by Germany.

............
Not surprisingly then, terrorists recruited in England—some Britons, some French or Spaniards—were to be found in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Kosovo. Even French antiterrorist experts talk about "Londonistan," and there is a connection between one of the worst Islamic terrorists from Britain with the London School of Economics, a center of anticapitalist, anti-Western miseducation for almost a century.

http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2002_04-06/radu_londonistan/radu_londonistan.html

For decades, British policy has been to turn a blind eye to Islamist activity in our midst. Men wanted in France, in the US, in various Arab states live openly in Britain. London, in particular, seethes with militant Islamist activity. Two of the terrorists behind the massacre of schoolchildren in Beslan last year are believed to have lived in Britain, where they received spiritual training at the notorious Finsbury Park Mosque.

French intelligence services have taken to nicknaming the British capital Londonistan - a name picked up with some pride by Islamist militants in the city.

There may be as many as 3,000 potentially murderous Islamist radicals living in Britain. Certainly several hundred are suspected of training in Osama bin Laden's murder camps in Afghanistan. Of those we are certain of training in Afghanistan, Britain's authorities are equally tolerant. When six detainees captured in highly suspicious circumstances were released from Guantanamo Bay last year, Britain's media ensured they received a hero's welcome. It later emerged that it will cost £6 million each year to keep the men under 24-hour surveillance.

What if those resources could have been spent on combating terrorism in another way? France "welcomed" three Guantanamo Bay inmates not long after Britain. Rather than a media circus, with sympathetic newspapers publishing their plight and west end plays dedicated to the horrors of their internment, the French whisked the men away for questioning in a secret location where they can be held for up to three years. Barely a squeak of protest registered in France's media.

France has a dauntingly robust approach to terror within its borders, only matched by its determination to kick out clerics who stir up hatred. The authorities have an impressive range of legal tools at their disposal to ensure suspects are extremely unlikely to fulfil their jihadist fantasies, within France at least. France's top terror judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere warned that "Fighting terrorism is like the weather. You have high pressure zones and low pressure zones."

Britain has much to learn from France's approach. Some in Britain no doubt believe that tolerating Islamist radicals prevents them "fouling their nest." Thursday's attacks made a nonsense of this strategy.

http://www.eursoc.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/834/Londonistan_Calling.html

Why France lived in fear of 'Londonistan'
By Sean O'Neill
(Filed: 13/10/2001)

TERRORIST recruitment and fundraising by Islamic militants centred on a London mosque were ignored for years by the British security services, a former Special Branch informant claimed yesterday.

Reda Hassaine, an Algerian, risked his life to report to British and French authorities on alleged criminal activities, incitement to violence and the presence of terror suspects at the North London Central Mosque, in Finsbury Park.

While his British handlers preferred to keep a watching brief on the mosque, where the imam is the radical cleric Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri, the French became increasingly infuriated.

French counter-terrorism experts refer to the capital as "Londonistan" because of the number of wanted extremists who have sought and found safe haven there.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/13/nmosq13.xml

Did France have a Finsbury Mosque?

I read your post but there is nothing new, as you can see it is talking about events in the 90s.

Why did we not act in the 1990s, well here is the real reasons not all that we are too scared, too soft too politically correct.

I have a feeling that posting this may be a waste of time as people will only believe what they want to believe, and when it comes to Europe and Britain many feeepers would prefer to believe the worst because it fits into there world view and gives them a reason to look down on Europe.,

But here goes.

Why did the authorities not act sooner: Different priorities, until quite recently the majority of Britain’s anti terrorist intelligence gathering were aimed at North Ireland.

These included monitoring and fighting the

IRA

INLA

UVF

UFF.

And smaller cowboy units

MI5, Special Branch and other domestic intelligence agencies also had other priorities as well as the troubles in North Ireland.

This included surveillance of foreign hostile intelligence agencies

Domestic terrorists groups such as the Animal Rights Front, CND, and a lot of resources were also diverted to fight the renewed War on Drugs, requested by President Bush prior to Sept 11th. Other organised crime, organised crime has gone global.

With Sept 11th priorities changed, but it didn’t happen over night, why. Well Surveillance assets had to be recruited , a surveillance or undercover operative who worked in the Irish sphere would not pass muster in the local mosque.

Intelligence analysts a new orbat has to be drawn up, new faces identified, and retraining of what is and what is not important.

So what is the reality today.

Now that the intelligence system is underway in both Britain and European countries arrests have been made and networks rolled up.

New laws have come into being that cover this new terrorist threat.

It is now illegal to preach or recruit for terrorist activities anywhere in Britain and that includes the Mosques.

The Mosques listed have been investigated and a number of Islamic figures mentioned have been arrested or fled abroad.

The date is know 2006 a lot has changed since this book was written. This is an ongoing war and both sides are learning evolving and adapting, but at the moment we have the upper hand.

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