Londonistan

Abstract

The bombings of the London transit system in July 2005, followed by the aborted plot to blow up several transatlantic flights, showed that London had become a center for Islamic extremists, many of whom were born, reared, and educated in Britain. Exploiting British liberty and tolerance and the naiveté of British officials, radical Islamists had recruited and trained jihadists eager to engage in terrorism in Britain and other countries. That these Muslim terrorists„ who were prepared to kill and maim their fellow citizens in large numbers, were radicalized, not in the religious schools of Pakistan but “within the British society that had nurtured them,” was a wake up call for British and European security agencies. Two years later, Britain faced two other terrorist attacks, one in London and the other in Glasgow, that did not succeed. The eight Muslim suspects arrested were medical professionals, seven of them foreign-born physicians residing in Britain, another sign that terrorists are often educated and far from poor. In her controversial book, Londonistan (2006), excerpted below, Melanie Phillips, a columnist for London’s Daily Mail, analyzes the rise and growth of a jihadist network in Britain.