The Centre For Social Cohesion

The failed car-bombings in London and Glasgow have reminded the British public once again that the threat which they face is not going away. It has outlasted Mr Blair, and it will outlast his successor.

One of the things that Britain must prepare for is the fact that future attacks on Britain will, at some point, be more ‘successful’ in the eyes of the terrorists than the attacks last week. It is at that stage that Britain faces one of its most decisive moments, and it is as well to prepare for it now.

So far the country has been most fortunate not to have suffered any fatalities as a result of the latest wave of violent extremism that has descended upon it. We cannot yet know, however, whether all those involved in the violence have yet been rounded up.

Since the attempted attacks in London and Glasgow last week, representatives of many of the country’s largest Muslim organisations have called on British Muslims to help the police catch the perpetrators.

Even the Muslim Council of Britain – formerly reviled for its refusal to unambiguously denounce terrorism – has added its voice to the growing chorus.

All eight people terror supsects arrested in connection with last week’s attempted car bombings in London and Glasgow turn out to have been NHS employees. Five were qualified doctors, two trainee doctors, and one a hospital laboratory technician.

According to a report in today’s Daily Telegraph about the trial of three men who have pleaded guilty to charges of ‘cyber-terrorism’, as long as three years ago ‘the use of doctors for terrorist purposes was being discussed in jihadi terrorist circles’.

After a six month trial, the four wannabe suicide bombers of 21st July 2005 have been found guilty of conspiracy to murder.

Muktar Said Ibrahim, Yassin Hassan Omar, Ramzi Mohammed and Hussain Osman were found guilty at Woolwich Crown Court. Their attempt to repeat the carnage of the 7th July 2005 has been proven in court to be no mere hastily arranged ‘copy-cat’ attack, but a long-prepared effort at mass-murder.

According to a report in today’s Times, the Public Accounts Committee has condemned the government for having ‘left itself “financially exposed” over the 2012 Olympic Games and at risk of letting costs spiral put of control’. The basis for its charge has been the government's having let the original Olympic budget treble to £9 billion.

There is, however, a far more grave charge concerning the 2012 Olympics to which the government stands open. This is that, by allowing the Games to go ahead in London in the present international climate, it has exposed Londoners to a far greater risk than they need otherwise have to face of suffering some Islamist terrorist attack, both while the Games are taking place and during the run up to them.

Figures due out in the autumn from the Department of Health will reveal that 66,000 women in England and Wales have been the victims of female circumcision (otherwise known as female genital mutilation, or FGM).

Attempts to stamp out this barbaric tribal practice have failed in Africa, and – it appears – failed in the UK as well. Acts passed in 1985 and 2003 appear to have had too small an impact, with no convictions, and girls living in the UK still being put through this appalling ordeal.

Before joining Civitas, I spent over thirty years teaching philosophy and religious studies at two London so-called ‘new' universities. One was an erstwhile polytechnic in north London; the other an amalgam of ex-teachers’ training colleges in south London whose students were very similar in background to those whom I taught in the inner-city campus across the river.

Since it emerged that the attempted Glasgow and London attacks were carried out by men with links to Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global Islamic movement, calls for the government to ban the group have grown ever louder.

However supporters of a ban have given conflicting – and often less than convincing - reasons for the ban.

On Friday, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), in a farcical press conference that ended up in a curry house after the initial venue suffered a 'powercut', launched its new report entitled 'Radicalisation, Extremism & Islamism: Realities and myths in the 'War on Terror''.

In the 38-page paper, the group blamed Western colonial powers for the current state of the Muslims world by supporting "tyrannical Arab states that suppress its own masses, thus fueling extremist ideologies".

The report also said that the association between Islam and contemporary politics – often termed 'Islamism' - is part of a process that increases the Muslim community's vulnerability to the use of violence.

Three closely connected unresolved issues hold the key to peace abroad today and with that a resolution of the tensions currently posing the gravest threat to social cohesion at home.

The first such issue arises from the huge resurgence in Islam over the last quarter century. With benefit of hindsight, some may claim this resurgence was bound to have occurred with the passing of western colonialism and imperialism. But in reality it was as unexpected and un-inevitable as the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union was when it happened.

Today is the last day to sign an online petition on the Downing Street website against the so-called Mega Mosque which a Saudi group aims to build in the East End ahead of the 2012 Olympics.

The petition - which has so far received over 270,000 signatures – puts its opposition to the mosque in stark terms:

“We the Christian population of this great country England would like the proposed plan to build a Mega Mosque in East London scrapped. This will only cause terrible violence and suffering and more money should go into the NHS.”

Already the proposal has generated a great deal of heated debate but the true nature of the mosque project – funded by Tablighi Jamaat, a secretive Saudi-backed organization – can be judged by the caliber of its supporters.

A demonstration reportedly took place yesterday outside the Old Bailey in protest at the six-year sentences handed down to four men convicted of inciting hatred and violence at a demonstation held in February last year in protest at the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.

Newspaper reports about yesterday's demonstration put me in mind of two jokes about lawyers.

Just weeks after several Muslim doctors were arrested on suspicion of trying to set off bombs in central London and Glasgow, a leading Muslim doctor has called for homosexuals to be fined or punished.

The Pink News, a gay paper, said that the doctor, Muhammad Siddiq, made the suggestion in a letter to the Pulse, a magazine for GPs:

"There is punishment and fine if you throw rubbish or filth in the streets. The gays are worse than the ordinary careless citizen," Siddiq wrote in the letter.

‘The noble Lord Hannay … will understand better than most the importance of a united position around the UN principles. Our policy has not changed. We expect Hamas to adhere to the principles set by the Quartet in January 2006. These are to renounce violence, recognise Israel and accept all previous agreements and obligations, as set out in the road map. I hope that it does that and that it takes the opportunity for dialogue and progress, but a political dialogue is impossible as long as Hamas dedicates itself to violence and destruction.’

Thus remarked Baroness Royall of Blaisdon earlier this month in the House of Lords, winding up for the government there a debate on Palestine and the Occupied Territories.

The new Prime Minister has made a major speech on terrorism, announcing a number of new measures to combat the threat within the UK.

The main points involve improvements in border security. But the possibility of a review on wire-tap evidence has been dangled before the public again, as well as an extension of the time police are allowed to hold suspects (the controversial ‘90-days’ legislation).

But the most interesting aspect of the speech is Brown’s promise of an extra £70 million of funding for communities to resist extremism locally.

At the end of May of this year, delegates to the annual congress of UCU, the trade union of Britain's academics, unanimously rejected what that union described as being the government’s plan to require them to report those of their students whom they suspected of being involved in or of supporting violent extremism.

I wonder how many of these delegates, if any, choked over their cornflakes this morning when they read in their newspapers of the conviction at the Old Bailey yesterday on terror-related charges of four first-year Bradford University undergraduates, plus a run-away school-boy from London who had been recruited by the Bradford terror-ring over the internet.

The Centre for Social Cohesion has appeared twice in the press over the last few days.

The Diary column in the Spectator before the weekend.

And a double-page spread in Saturday's Express.

Both can be read by following the links.

To mark next month’s sixtieth anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan, earlier this month the BBC Asian Network commissioned a poll of 500 young British citizens of south Asian extraction, aged between 16 and 34. A control group was also polled about the same matters made up of 235 young whites of comparable age currently residing in Britain. However, the results of the poll, whch were published yesterday, leave it unclear how many of these whites were British citizens as opposed to being immigrants from the EU.

The results of the poll make very interesting reading, but not for the reasons the BBC chose to highlight in its account of the poll issued on its website yesterday.