At the end of last month news came through from Brussels that EU officials had compiled a lexicon of words that should and should not be used. Specifically aiming to avoid mention of ‘Islam’ and ‘terrorism’ in the same sentence, the lexicon banned words such as ‘Islamic’ and ‘fundamentalist’. Any mention of ‘jihad’ is apparently right out.
Evidently copies of the EU’s lexicon were not distributed widely enough. For instance, word appears not to have reached terrorists in Algeria, who this morning claimed responsibility for yesterday’s double-bombing in Algiers which killed 45 people.
Algeria’s main Islamist group had a word-change of their own in January when they announced that after an application for the franchise to Osama bin Laden himself, they had become the Algerian branch of Al-Qaeda.
The EU’s message has also mysteriously failed to get through to the group of terrorists whose trial in Lebanon began yesterday. Among them are Youssef al Hajdib and Jihad [no relation] Hamad - accused of planting two bombs on German trains last July. The bombs fortunately failed to go off, but as Spiegel reported:
‘If they had, they would have created a fireball up to 15 meters wide and hurled deadly shrapnel up to 100 meters… It could have been the worst terrorist attack on German soil in the country’s history.’
Authorities believe that the bombers planned the bombs to demonstrate to Al-Qaeda that they were up to the task, and then continue their jihad – sorry, personal struggle – elsewhere. This seems confirmed by an email from Hajdib to Hamad before the attack, calling for patience:
‘…until we have totally made it and passed the initiation test. Then we’ll travel to Iraq together.’
Meanwhile, the bodies of four young British personnel have today been brought back from Iraq.
Whilst officials in Brussels spend their time calling for ‘Islamic terrorism’ to be reclassified as acts committed by ‘terrorists who abusively invoke Islam’, the terrorists themselves are devoted to far more practical matters. They are serious. When will we be able to say the same of Brussels?