Terrorists, aiming to commit “mass murder on an unimaginable scale” were thwarted last week, according to Scotland Yard. They had planned to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.
As the plot reveals Britain's struggle to contain Muslim extremism, a more worrying trend has emerged that reveals the threat reaches out across Europe.
Following the discovery of the terrorist plot, the Archbishop of York, the Most Rev John Sentamu, said he believes that disenfranchised young Muslims turn to extremism not because of Islam, but “because they are alienated, because they have been given a vision which is so imaginatively wicked”.
A large surge in radical Islam has revealed a tiny but dangerous minority of people who testify they are followers of the Muslim faith and who are explaining their actions by stating they have been called to respond to Jihad.
The observation is not new that from west to east Europe a number of dissatisfied Muslims living in poorer areas are being targeted by mainstream fanatics looking for new recruits to join them as foot soldiers in the “holy war”.
Counter-terrorist police across Europe have warned that the worrying trend is not just isolated to a few major cities across Europe but that the problem has is much more deeply rooted than that.
Since the 7/7 bombings in London last year, the shocking image of “homegrown” militants with a commission to wreak havoc among innocent civilian populations has been an increasing concern.
And the threat, it seems, has not been alleviated by the endless attempts at interreligious dialogue evident since the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, and even since the 9/11 attacks in the US.The wisdom for building peaceful relations on the national and international levels, between one group and another group of people, is that they cannot be maintained by such lawful, ‘eye-for-an-eye’ relationships.
Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Islamic studies at Sarah Lawrence College in New York stated in an Associated Press report: “Their numbers are still relatively small, but I fear they could become larger as more young Muslims embrace militancy.”
Gerges reported that it is entirely appropriate to describe the extremists as ‘the Jihad generation’ - converts to extremism in Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and elsewhere who are becoming radicalised, with many stating that it is a response to the conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
