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Britain isn't America, and journalists can't ask jurors what went through their minds in the jury room. This restriction is a pity, because the cries of despair coming from the Met and MI5 suggest that they would really like to know.
The authorities are astonished that although three men were convicted of conspiracy to murder in the plane bomb plot trial, no defendant was convicted of targeting the aircraft.
The police even had martyrdom videos in which, for instance, Umar Islam declares: "We are doing this in order to gain the pleasure of our Lord and Allah loves us to die and kill in his path."
There is likely to be a retrial, so I need to be careful what I say. I can, however, make the wider point that we as a society don't understand radical Islam - and don't want to understand it either. The dumber parts of the Left blame opposition to the second Iraq War - as if Jihadis are just Liberal Democrats with bomb belts.
They never think that the overthrow of Saddam was opposed by millions who would no more attack the London Underground than congratulate Tony Blair for supporting George W Bush.
The dumber parts of the Right blame Islam itself, as if being a Muslim were enough to make you a terrorist. Even though they have seen al Qaeda do its worst to Iraq for years, it doesn't occur to them that radical Islam is a fascistic movement whose first aim is to kill Muslims who believe in democracy, free-thinking, gay rights, women's rights or any rival version of islam that conflicts with their psychopathic theology.
Examining that theology is a treacherous task. When Channel 4's Dispatches uncovered Saudi-financed clerics preaching hatred in Birmingham and London, the Crown Prosecution Service claimed that the broadcasters had invented their footage.
The CPS had to apologise and pay libel damages but the authorities' instant reaction was instructive: this can't be true, we don't want to know. As the national broadcaster, the BBC had a duty to investigate the mass murder in London on 7/7, and it duly sent a reporting team to Leeds.
The journalists won the confidence of the bombers' families and produced a picture of a ghetto where young men rebel against the traditional Islam of their parents and get sucked into the global cult of death. I've seen the result of their investigation and it is a brilliant and disquieting examination of a hidden world.
Even though an acclaimed playwright produced five versions of a script for a drama-documentary, the BBC cancelled the project . It, too, didn't want to know.
We may be lucky and the terror threat may be passing. But the cries of disbelief coming from the police suggest otherwise. The first task in confronting it is to face our country honestly. We have nothing to lose but our preconceptions.
Reader views (5)
I also find it very hard to get my head round the fact that these guys made videos to be used after their deaths as propaganda and yet they were found either not guilty or the jury could not decide. To me that is VERY worrying and shows the utter shambles our judicial system is now in. Its time to start profilng people at airports and elsewhere. Only when the majority of muslims get sick of it will they start to target the people causing the problems for them ie the people killing innocent men women and children in the name of their religion. Muslims are the only people who can stop these people we just have to make them realsie that.
- Duncan Walker, Ex Peckham now Samui Thailand
Fantastic, level headed and spot-on article by Nick Cohen. This should be compulsory reading for all MPs including the likes of Livingstone & Galloway.
- Adam, Harrow, UK
Islamic miltants are encouraged, sponsered and paid for by the Saudi's, they are the main problem, while we rely on their oil and treat then as allies there will be no peace. Saudi Arabia is as bad a dictatorship as Iraq, it has an undemocratic ruling elite who control the life of millions.
- G S Randall, hertfordshire
An excellent article and a message that needs to be repeated again and again. The videos that the terrorist cells make and have made should be enough of a powerful message. The bombings should have been enough of a message. But the UK suffers from a residual tendency for PC and liberal inclusiveness.
Liberal inclusiveness of all races creeds and religions is a societal strength. Liberal inclusiveness of cults which preach and carry out acts of murder is a direct assault on those liberal values and does nothing other than to undermine these values. Sadly the Muslim community is also complicit in protecting those that seek to destroy our society.
I have heard Muslim friends of mine claim...'but they're not real Muslims' or 'the government invented the allegations'. Though this reflects a deep sense of a community which feels marginalised, the Muslim community should realise that it is the extreme elements within their community, and their acts which generate such marginalisation. If UK Muslim leaders were more serious in stamping out the extremists, then the whole of society would benefit. To argue that 'They aren't real Muslims' is to ignore that these elements originate from within Muslim communities.
What is needed is a similar campaign of getting rid of fascist Islamists in exactly the same way as Britain has a proud tradition of crushing the fascist BNP, a tradition which many British Muslims have also been a part, and rightly so, for many years.
- Uri Shub, London England
I think the problem goes deeper than that. In the US press there was a report that the majority of the Muslim world still believes the Israelis and the US attacked the Twin Towers in order to go to war in Iraq for their oil. This belief thus clouds their very judgement as to any blame on the Taliban or the fact that Saddam was supporting any terrorist group that attacked the US, and makes all Islam into a victim of unprovoked aggression and thus irrational, ignoring the fact that only the US mobilized to protect Muslims from attacks in Bosnia, Sudan and Kuwait.
This belief, both anti-Semitic and anti- US, has much currency in the West too. I know many people here who believe it and a study of this belief in Germany found that 30% believed this too.
In a way, this denial that Muslims could have possibly done such a terrible deed, but Israelis and Americans and British) could, is the result of a cynical anti-hero worship, and could explain why juries are so reluctant to convict.
If you believe any conspiracy theory, no matter how extreme or easy to disprove, then everything becomes a conspiracy, and so you have a good reason to stuff authority.
Sadly this state of denial also exists with the Government itself, which still relies on the Muslim Council of Britain to advise it on all things Islamic, ignoring the extremists who control it.
- Stephen Rothbart, Prague, Czech Republic
