EVENTS

Date:	Monday, July 11, 2005
Time:	2:00 PM -- 3:30 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

July 2005

AEI Briefing on the London Terrorist Attacks

As world leaders gathered in Gleneagles, Scotland, for their annual G-8 summit, a wave of coordinated terrorist bombings struck London, killing dozens. These attacks and their aftermath were the subject of a July 11 AEI briefing.

Peter Bergen
New America Foundation

The problem with solving the London attacks is that there is no case. The 9/11 hijackers’ names were known within twenty-four hours. The Spanish government had obtained their bombers’ names soon after the Madrid attacks. Despite the abundance of closed-circuit television cameras and vigilant police, MI-5 has yet to produce anything. It is difficult then to speak about the perpetrators’ motivations and goals of their attack.

Part of the reason the attacks were launched against London may have had to do with London’s liberal asylum laws. “Londonistan” is now home to several opposition leaders and radical clerics who have active ties with terrorist leaders and groups. These clerics are allowed to operate with impunity.

But why does this happen at all? The answer lies in integration. Europeans are having increasing difficulty integrating Muslims into the general population at the same time that increasing numbers of Muslims are immigrating to Europe. European Muslims feel alienated, and this problem will become worse before it gets better.

Michael Rubin
AEI

The Muslim Brotherhood’s development of European roots can be traced to the beginning of the Cold War.  West Germany granted asylum to Egyptian and Syrian dissidents not as a matter of supporting peace and resistance but rather as a strategy of estranging the Eastern bloc. As a result, Germany and Switzerland became centers for the Brotherhood, promoting its evolution over the decades.  The Muslim Brotherhood has since focused on youth recruitment and has succeeded in establishing connections throughout the European Union.  Several European Muslim youth groups are now associated with the Saudi-supported World Assembly of Muslim Youth.

The Tablighi Jamaat has been called “an apolitical quietist movement,” and “apolitical and law-abiding,” but 6,000 Tablighis are in Harakat mujahedin camps. This development poses a fundamental question: what kind of Islam is preached and spread through “apolitical quietist” groups? Interestingly, the BBC never characterized the London bombings as a terrorist attack. Instead, the event was explained as a militant strike. What kind of message or ideology were the militants following? Since the militant ideology is never discussed or acknowledged, the silent majority of Europe’s Muslims remain unseparated from the extremists. As such, the root of the problem is not addressed.

Incitement is a dangerous issue. One of the vehicles of the Islamic incitement against other cultures is the translation of the Koran itself.  In one particular passage, a standard translation reads, “Guide us to the straight path, the path of those whom you have favored, not of those who have incurred your wrath, nor of those who have gone astray.” Another translation of the Koran, subsidized by the Saudi Arabian government, reads, “Guide us to the straight path, the way of those on whom you have bestowed your grace, not those of whom have earned your anger, such as the Jews, nor of those who went astray, such as the Christians.”

Frederick Kagan
AEI

This is an ideological struggle which is not unlike the ideological battles waged throughout the Cold War.  Islamic radicals have been feeding on coherent, radical ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and Sayyid Qutb. Although the London bombers were probably only loosely affiliated with al Qaeda, they certainly adopted the same ideological beliefs. What, then, are the tenets of this ideology? It is not positive, but instead destructive and filled with hate. Such hatred may very well contribute to the failure of Islamic fundamentalism in the long run, for it has already made the ideology of the Iraqi insurgents less appealing than that of the United States.

The only published claim of responsibility thus far links the British presence in both Afghanistan and Iraq to the London attacks, yet the British regard the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with dramatically different attitudes. Iraq has become increasingly unpopular, but the British populace has seen Britain’s role in Afghanistan as vital to the process of reconstruction.  By linking the London attacks to the operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the terrorists suggest that there is no way for the British to integrate peacefully into the Islamic world.

The ideology of the radical Islamists dictates that Western democratic states cannot acceptably or legitimately involve themselves in the Muslim world. As such, jihadis have declared war against all states. As a consequence, President George W. Bush must encourage the spread of the West’s positive ideology and pit this ideology against that of the fundamentalist Islamists.  The West must continue to fight against the Islamist ideology of hatred and intolerance by wielding an ideology of openness, democracy, and positivity.

William Kristol
The Weekly Standard

This planned attack against London was most likely an opportunistic attack, not an attack playing a role in a larger plan.  Instead, the objective of the London bombings is intimidation, a goal which has to some extent been achieved.  The attacks signal an important moment in the debate on how we must fight terrorism and whether law enforcement in the style of the Patriot Act is necessary in England. There is a sense in Europe that all is not well, and the failure of France and the Netherlands to ratify the European Union Constitution indicates just this.
 
There is a case to be made that Western Islam may in fact be more radical than Islam as practiced in the Middle East.  It appears that extremist and radicalized versions of Islam have been exported from the Middle East to the West. In addition, the moderates of the Middle East are resurfacing and increasing while Western Europe serves as a breeding ground for radicalism.

Despite the variety of attacks executed by Islamists around the world, we are clearly fighting a single war.  The first two years of the global war on terror went well for the West, but from late 2003 to mid-2004 events took a turn for the worse.  From the Afghan elections in October to approximately last April, the situation improved in Iraq.  President Bush’s reelection in the middle of the war indicated American popular support for action. The Lebanese revolution and progress on Palestinian issues was also heartening. The future lies in Iraq and the creation of democracy.

This summary was prepared by AEI research assistant Melissa Ann Wisner.