Melanie Phillips thinks that the Forest Gate police raid may have involved terrorism after all. She suggests that Al-Qaida could have fed false information to the authorities in order to “lead the security forces up the garden path. This is because it is a core al Qaeda strategy to use dissimulation and false trails to confuse its terrorist targets. Drawing on the Islamic principle that lies or omissions for the ‘greater good’ of Islam are permissible, al Qaeda training manuals carry detailed instructions on the use of deception…. The aim of sowing such confusion is to produce precisely what is now happening in Britain. The security services are humiliated and made to look incompetent, with the result that people increasingly conclude that the terrorist threat is exaggerated. Warnings of the severity of such a threat are thus increasingly disbelieved, and with the nation’s guard lowered it becomes far easier to mount a truly deadly attack.”

Daily Mail, 12 June 2006