The terrorists among us...

Niall Ferguson in the Daily Telegraph on fighting the terrorists.

No, the problem today is not immigration per se; it is the fact that a pernicious ideology has been allowed to infiltrate Europe's immigrant communities. And that has happened because we have blindly allowed our country to be a haven for fanatics.

"The whole Arab world was dangerous for me," the Egyptian Islamist, Yasser El-Sirri, was recently quoted as saying. In Egypt, he has been convicted and sentenced in absentia three times over: to 25 years of hard labour for smuggling armed terrorists into the country; to 15 years for aiding Islamic dissidents; and to death for plotting to assassinate the prime minister. Where does he now reside? In London, where he is Director of the Islamic Observation Centre.

"If al-Qaeda indeed carried out this act, it is a great victory for it," declared Dr Hani al-Siba'i in an interview on the al Jazeera satellite television channel the day after the London bombings. "It rubbed the noses of the world's eight most powerful countries in the mud." He went on to say that it was legitimate for al-Qaeda to target civilians because "the term 'civilians' does not exist in Islamic religious law in the modern Western sense. People are either of Dar al-Harb [the domain of war, meaning territory ruled by non-Muslims] or not."

And where are you most likely to bump into Dr al-Siba'i? Why, in London, where he is the Director of the al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies.

The fact is that a campaign has for some time been underway to convert young European Muslims - and non-Muslims like the Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay - to the ideology of extreme Islamism. And it is being conducted in euphemistically named "centres" all over Europe - like the government-funded Hamara Youth Access Point in Beeston in Leeds where, it seems, Shehzad Tanweer came under the influence of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the oldest of the London bombers.

Whatever their stated purpose, such centres are evidently being used as jihadist recruiting stations. They may also act as gateways to foreign training camps outside bilad al kufr (the lands of unbelief). It is surely no coincidence that at least two of the London bombers recently made trips to Pakistan.

I don't agree with everything that Ferguson has to say - I personally think we need to take a hard look at immigration. But, his article is still worth a read.