The Homegrown UK Jihad
Charles Johnson
Sun Apr 9, 2006 at 10:50 pm PDT • Views: 195
Peaktalk looks at the new report that the London bombers had no connection to Al Qaeda:
It will forever debunk the notion that Europe’s homegrown jihadists are unemployed and impoverished youngsters with genuine economic and social grievances. One of the killers, Shehzad Tanweer worked in the fish and chips shop owned by his father and left behind an estate worth £121,000 (app. US$200,000). Initially it was believed that this sum was advanced by offshore terror groups to help fund his activities, but if the latest report proves to be accurate than Tanweer was a well-off middle-class Brit who had very little reason to be aggrieved. It once more underlines that jihadist terror is religious in its essence and that even the most creative and advanced integration policies fail to address the fundamental issue at hand: you can’t convert the converted. Not with jobs, not with a business, not with wealth and certainly not with well-meant arguments or language courses.
Secondly, these findings confirm a theory that has been doing the rounds for quite a while and it is the one that says that al-Qaeda as a terror organization has long ceased to be relevant. Yes, they may be bruised by counter-terrorism or have retreated to plan a large scale attack on a western city, but in the meantime they been successful in planting the seeds for small home-based terror groups. Any sufficiently radicalized individual with online access and a few hundred bucks is now more than able to create maximum casualties.
Frank says: