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It is more important than ever to understand the origins of that danger; and John Reid, the Home Secretary, was correct in a speech delivered hours before the arrests to say that many still do not ‘get it’. Last weekend a group of Muslim MPs, peers and community organisations published an open letter warning that ‘the government must not ignore the role of its foreign policy’, which allegedly provides ‘ammunition to extremists who threaten us all’. Referring to Iraq and Lebanon, the letter urged the Prime Minister ‘to show the world that we value the lives of civilians wherever they live and whatever their religion’.
Veterans of the Cold War will recognise the old trick of ‘moral equivalence’: the letter implicitly equated a plot to blow up airliners on their way to America with the unintended killing of Lebanese civilians by the Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah. Even worse was the idea that Western ‘foreign policy’ is the cause of Islamist terrorism. It is true, of course, that militant Muslims cite the invasion of Iraq or the action against Hezbollah as justification for their murderous actions — just as they cite the end of the Caliphate, the Balfour Declaration and the creation of Israel. None of these is what lawyers would call the causa causans — the original cause — of 21st-century Islamic terrorism.
At its heart, as Stephen Schwartz argues in this issue, is a terrible mutation of a great world religion: a ferocious system of ideas that seeks theocracy at any price, regards mass murder as divinely ordained and wills not only the destruction of the Jewish state but the overthrow of modern Western society. By definition, those who adhere to such ideas cannot be appeased.
What links the militiamen of Hezbollah with the young British Muslims plotting bloodshed in the country of their birth is contempt for the West and often astonishing reserves of will. Their determination to secure victory — not immediately, but across generations — contrasts alarmingly with the stop-go fickleness of the Western response. In the wake of an attack like 7/7 or a foiled atrocity such as this alleged plot, we hear much tough rhetoric, promises of action, and warnings that the ‘rules of the game have changed’. Then the caravan of politics moves on, and another spree of ‘eye-catching initiatives’ is announced.
David Cameron was right, therefore, to demand ‘firmness and follow-through’ from the government in its strategic response to this emergency. As Leader of the Opposition, he is not only entitled but obliged to insist that the government makes good its promises. The quid pro quo is that the Conservative party must be open-minded when new security measures are proposed, and accept more readily than it has recently that a balance must be struck between the claims of ancestral liberty and the security of the modern citizen. It is not yet clear whether ministers will put their 90-day detention plan before Parliament again. But Tory MPs — so thrilled last year when they defeated the proposal — should consider the new context if they are asked to vote again. The sheer scale of the alleged plot and the disclosure that dozens of compar-able conspiracies are under surveillance illustrates the complexity of the work now being undertaken by the police and security services, most of it covert. Would MPs be comfortable if terrorist suspects walked free after 28 days before such a conspiracy had been completely unravelled?
Similar controversy is already swirling around the issue of ‘passenger profiling’ — the targeting of specific categories of passengers by airport security. In this case, the main criterion should not be whether such a procedure would cause offence to those of Muslim appearance or make life easier for non-Muslims, but whether it would make all passengers safer. The Israeli airline El Al swears by passenger profiling. On the other hand, the presence of at least three Muslim converts among the arrested suspects in this alleged plot suggests that the terrorists may be thinking ahead and looking for ways of slipping through a net that has not even been put in place. Profiling might prove necessary. But it will provide no panacea: in this struggle there are no panaceas.
When a new threat looms it is tempting to deny its existence and to explain it away using old language and outdated analysis. There is never a shortage of commentators claiming de haut en bas that they have seen it all before: firm action is grandly deplored as overreaction, concern as hysteria. No matter: as our poll shows, the British people understand intuitively how much is at stake, and how much more must be done. They, at least, ‘get it’.
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