Basing himself on Shiv Malik’s “exceptionally penetrating article” in Prospect magazine – based on “research” that the BBC had the nerve to reject as “anti-Muslim” – Alasdair Palmer asserts that the problem of home-grown terrorism arises from allowing people from backward barbaric cultures into “our” liberal secular society:
“The central fantasy has been that immigrants from very different cultures to our own share our commitment to tolerance, personal freedom and the separation of politics from religion that has evolved in this country over the past 300 years…. One of the remarkable things about Mr Malik’s piece is that it is based around a recognition that it is impossible to explain how Khan, Tanweer and Hussain became suicide bombers without examining the culture from which they came…. Mr Malik’s article shows in arresting detail how a conflict within the culture of an immigrant group can lead to the radicalisation of the next generation. British foreign policy, which has been blamed for the creation of home-grown Islamic terrorists, has had very little to do with it…
“The reality is not all doom and gloom. The right to pursue happiness will surely eventually take root in a less violent and more liberal form among people from cultures that are inimical to it…. There are things that can be done to speed up the rate at which that happens, such as … ensuring that new arrivals learn English. Education is not an immediate panacea, however: the fundamentalist, tribal mentality has a remarkable ability to persist even after a successful education….
“The conflict between our culture and one that insists a father is obliged to kill his daughter if she marries outside her tribe, or which says that democracy should be forcibly replaced by theocracy, is a conflict for which there cannot be a compromise solution…. Government policy still seems based on the myth of multiculturalism: denying that the conflict is real. The Government has not even found the heart to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group that openly recruits Muslims to violent jihad. It may even be on the receiving end of a government grant.”
Sunday Telegraph, 17 June 2007
For an alternative view of the causes of terrorism, see the Scotsman, 17 June 2007