Islamic Terrorism: How can we stop this?

Just over 16 years ago the world faced the where was you moment of our generation. 2
weeks previously me and my dad had gone on holiday to New York City from London. I remember
taking the walk from our hotel on Canal Street down to the tip of Lower Manhattan and gazing up
with utter awe at the imposing silhouette of the iconic World Trade Centre towers. We went into the
plaza and entered the South tower so we could descend the elevators up into the Windows of the
World observation deck. When I say the queue was around the block I am not exaggerating, we were
told it would take us two hours to be able to have the opportunity to be able to go to the top. Me
and my dad were eager to see more of New York and only having a very limited time, we thought to
ourselves Oh well, maybe next time, its not like we cant come back to them one day, and we left
to explore more of the Big Apple.

Fast forward two weeks later. In my mum and my dads generation the moment everyone
remembers where they were so to speak was either the moon landing or the Kennedy assassination.
My generation was about to have theirs. I remember exactly where I was. I was sitting in my
bedroom of my London home and I was playing Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PS2 when my dad called
up to me and said Put the news on look what has happened in New York, reluctantly I left my
game and switched my TV over to the BBC news, what I saw would be an image that still resonates
through society today. Not five minutes into me seeing the image of a gaping hole in the side of
North Tower of the World Trade Centre, I watched as a second plane barrelled into the side of the
South Tower. There was no doubt anymore. America, the greatest superpower this world has ever
seen was coming under an attack of unthinkable proportion. I watched the TV, glued to the screen
for what felt like hours, after about an hour and a half of the first plane hitting the Towers, the South
Tower collapsed under the weight of itself and hit the ground, causing a mushroom cloud of dust to
envelop Manhattan on streets that I had walked just two weeks previously. The world had changed
forever in front of all of our eyes.

After 9/11, the world was plunged into the war of our times. In its early days under the Bush
administration it was referred to as The war on terror. Subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and
Iraq in the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden would come to shape the decade of the noughties. The Iraq
war turned out to be an absolute disaster of governance as the WMD claims made by the Bush
administration turned out to be inaccurate. Although this problem felt real, and many people around
the world were scared, it still felt to me as if it was a problem that was a world away.

For me this changed in the summer of 2005. A year previously, Europe had been hit by its first
large scale Islamic terrorist attack in the form of the Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people.
In London, we had been given warnings that we were going to soon face the carnage that had been
witnessed in cities such as Madrid and Istanbul. On the morning of 7th July 2005, a day after it was
announced that London would host the 2012 Olympics, 4 British Born suicide bombers detonated
devices on 3 Tube trains and a bus, killing 52 people. I remember that morning vividly as well, I was
due to go into the centre of the city that morning but I woke up late. There is every chance that if I
hadnt of woken up late that I might have been on a Piccadilly Line train that travelled through Kings
Cross and was struck by a bomb which killed 26 of the 52 victims.

It had come to my doorstep, but this wasnt what made it feel completely real to me, another
event would let me know that this enemy was creeping behind the shadows in every community of
our nations. 2 weeks later, 5 men tried to detonate suicide bombs on the tube, by the grace of god
the bombs were poorly constructed and they failed to completely detonate. This became known as
the 21/7 attempted attacks. A manhunt was launched across the capital, the city felt as if it was in a
state of lockdown and fear ran through the minds of most Londoners, myself included as a 16-year-
old who travelled all around the city on a regular basis. The police frantically searched for the
perpetrators before they could strike again, during the frantic pursuit the Metropolitan Police
mistakenly shot dead a Brazilian called Jean Charles De Menezes who they wrongly believed to be a
suicide bomber. After about a week of searching the men responsible were eventually caught and
taken into custody. The city could breathe again.

In the media the names and photos of those involved in this attack began to surface. With one of
my friends one day we noticed a face in there. To my complete and utter shock, a man by the name
of Manfo Asiedu was reported as being one of the attempted bombers, apparently, he had tried to
detonate a bomb on a train near Wormwood Scrubs on the Circle Line. When I saw the picture, our
jaws dropped, this man called Manfo Asiedu was a man that we knew as George. Me and my friends
used to see him in our local neighbourhood, he was often seen riding a red bicycle and he would
often come up and talk to us. There was absolutely no indication that this man was a terrorist in
disguise, he made no indication as to his religious affiliation and we had even seen him on many
occasion smoking weed and drinking alcohol. If he was a Muslim, he certainly wasnt a very devout
one. In the media it was reported that a block of flats, one of the many that me and my friends were
often hanging around in was the bomb factory. This now was not just a news story, this was part of
all of our lives and in my mind from now on, a potential terrorist could literally be anywhere.

So, as the years went by, terrorism flittered in and out of the news. After 2005, the attacks
seemed to die down a bit, in the West anyway. In the Middle East it was a different matter, the
failed intervention in Iraq and the instability caused by the 2011 uprisings of the Arab Springs
allowed different Islamist groups to thrive and fight for territory. Back in the noughties the threat
from Islamic Terrorism was solely attributed to Osama Bin-Ladens Al-Qaeda and other affiliated
groups. After the death of Bin-Laden at the hands of U.S Marines in Pakistan, Al Qaeda seemed to
lose prominence and another group in recent years has come to the fore and come represent all of
our fear around this topic. Islamic State, or ISIS have become the new bogey man that us in the West
fear and with good reason. Starting back in 2015, many European countries have been hit by a wave
of attacks that have either been co-ordinated by or influenced by ISIS. Now, on Halloween in New
York City, that phenomenon that has plagued Europe for the last two years has crossed the Atlantic
and reared its ugly head, ironically just blocks from the scene of the event that started this macabre
period of our history. That is why I write this blog, I hear a lot of reasons being discussed as to why
this is happening, but I rarely ever hear solutions of how to stop this.

So, lets analyse the reasons as to why this might be occurring. One matter I often hear mentioned
is that of Islamic immigration to the West. In America, under Obama and in Europe following the
migrant crisis, waves of immigrants from the Middle East have entered our shores, pouring out of
the warzones of Syria and Afghanistan, bringing with them their own customs and cultures, some of
which I must admit are not entirely compatible with what we deem to be Western values.
Immigration is a big factor, as we have seen, even in the case of the most recent attack in New York,
the perpetrator turned out to be a recent arrival to U.S shores under a Diversity Visa which was
signed into law by Chuck Schumer in the 1990s. We have seen this in Europe as well, as members of
the Paris and Brussels cell were double agents who made the journey with the waves of migrants
who left the Middle East in 2015. But this issue of immigration goes back further than recent arrivals.
In my own country of the U.K, we have had two great periods of mass arrivals to our shores, during
the 50s after the war, leading up into the 70s and in the early 2000s under Tony Blairs Labour
government. Many of those arrivals were from Muslim countries such as Bangladesh, Somalia and
Pakistan. People from these second or third generation arrivals have also been involved in terrorist
incidents. This tells me that our political class, motivated by greed to enhance a globalized economy,
imported value systems into our country that were vastly different from ours and they were
ignorant to the ramifications of this. Immigration is certainly a factor in these terrorist attacks.

Another reason I hear stated is theology. I want to make this point I am no theologian, but when
you hear terrorists stating that the reason they commit these attacks is due to a fundamental
reading of the scriptures of the Quran, I think we should take their word for it seeing as it is coming
from the horses mouth. Ideology is probably the most important factor in this. People commit evil
deeds for all sorts of reasons, and people doing this under the banner of Islam are no different from
a Christian blowing up an abortion clinic, but this ideology seems to be pushing more young men and
women to commit these deeds than any other in the world today and that is the reason why the
ideology inspiring these people is the most relevant factor as to why these people are committing
these acts of terror.

The third main reason I hear touted as a potential reason is the West. The actions of the West
have radicalised people and that is why they are doing it. There is some credence to this argument.
The failed intervention in Iraq, the Western coalitions participation in the fall of the Libyan regime
and the countless innocent men, women and children killed by drone strikes among other things has
added fuel to this fire. This cannot be denied when trying to establish why these people do the
things they do, but this argument, particularly from those on the Left of politics is held up as the
main factor as to why these atrocities occur. This is a cheap, narrow and potentially dangerous
argument, because in ignoring the other two factors and laying the blame solely at our door will not
serve to help us to combat this problem.

So, what do we do? I have heard some more firebrand voices say we should deport all Muslims. I
am not a fan of this, because when you start talking about mass deportations this can lead to some
very dangerous outcomes, 1930s Germany should show us that. This is my solution. There are some
dire problems in sections of the Islamic community when it comes to conflicting values that do exist.
This is a fact that cannot be denied and anyone who does is either a liar or has not done their
homework. We need to stop the numbers of Islamic immigration from coming into Europe and the
U.S so we can work with the communities we have. If our political class allow unregulated
immigration from countries that have vastly different cultural and ideological beliefs to keep coming
onto our shores for the purpose of furthering their agenda of a global economy, we may not have a
Western world to defend in a couple of generations.

My second solution is arguably the most important. We need to empower those voices in the
Islamic community who want to see a genuine reform in their religion. It has been over 500 years
since the reformation of the Catholic Church in Europe, bringing about the 30-years war in which
millions of people died. Europe then proceeded to go through an Enlightenment period in which the
old fundamentalism of the past was replaced by philosophy of logic and science. The religion of
Islam has never undergone a period such as this since its inception in A.D 642. In the Islamic world at
this moment, there are those that are trying to bring about a more liberal interpretation of scripture
at a great risk to themselves. There have been many cases of Muslims advocating for a more secular
and liberal interpretation of scriptures who have been murdered by fundamentalists in countries
such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. These people need to be protected and helped by us in the West,
we cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the fate of some of these people and continue to excuse
fundamentalism in our own communities under the guise of societal cohesion because this hasnt
worked. There are parts of my own country of Britain that have begun to see communities that are
beginning to slide into a form of parallel governance through the proliferation of Islamic Sharia
Courts and Madrasas. 25 years ago, this fight was not ours, really it shouldnt be our problem, but
whether we like it or not it is ours now. This may be our only way out of this mess, to empower
people that have a better knowledge of their own faith than us to make a change, so we can all live
together as functioning societies. If our political classes dont take some of the actions I have
suggested to you in this blog, what we saw in New York yesterday will be commonplace in our
society for years to come.

By Luke Moran

If you enjoyed reading this buy my book P.C gone mad: How political correctness aided the rise of
right-wing populism On Amazon. Follow me on Twitter @LukeM_PCwatch.