‘And this is why they did it’

“There are many Muslims who believe that the idea that all other faiths have been ‘abrogated’ and that the whole of mankind should be united under the banner of Islam must be dropped as a dangerous anachronism. But to the Islamist those Muslims who think like that are themselves regarded as lapsed, and deserving of death.”

Right-wing Iranian exile Amir Taheri, one of the “thinkers” promoted by the neocon PR company Benador Associates, offers his explanation of the motives behind the London bombings. Note that Taheri adopts the same approach as the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty – blurring the difference between political Islam and terrorism in order to suggest that all “Islamists” are terrorists.

Times, 8 July 2005

Indeed, for Taheri, there is a clear overlap between mainstream Islam and terrorism: “Go to any mosque in the West (let alone in the Islamic countries) on any Friday and you are sure to hear a litany of woes about how the ‘cross-worshippers’ have allied themselves with the ‘plotting Jews’ in order to destroy Islam, which, as God’s final message, is the only true faith.”

New York Post, 8 July 2005