Have we ever faced an enemy more stupid than Muslim terrorists?

Austin Barry

Indeed. The whole pathetic culture of the narcissistic, dim respec' tribe is encapsulated in its punctuative use of the querulous affirmative, in'it?

Roy

What fills us with fear are the continuing insane policies of government that fist started bringing these people into the country and continue to do so. These people may look harmless but next time the 9/11 planes or the London underground bombers could quite well be carrying a nuclear devise! Funny, stupid, or fearful, it's not nice. Perhaps on a few occasions it’s better to be safe than sorry, and not give them a second chance.

Marc O'Polo

Brilliant! Spot on.

Ken

.... insistence that they have been egregiously transgressed and are therefore duty-bound to exact some sort of primitive revenge...

and, MSc notwithstanding, educated so sumptuously that they struggle to formulate with any coherence let alone the eloquence above.

A. MacAulay

Nothing can demonstrate better the absolute success in integrating these people than that they are actively participating in their Warholian 15 minutes of fame.

A Big Brother series from a training camp in Waziristan is coming up, after this!

Dwight Vandryver

To answer the question: well, yes, we have, and they are the eco-evangelists ironically called "Greenpeace". Readers may recall that in a landmark case the jury acquitted six eco-vandals from the charge of criminal damage at the Kingsnorth power plant on the grounds that they had the "lawful excuse" of preventing global warming.
Energy is vital to support a population of 61 million. Cut off all energy sources today and famine, disease, and rioting would follow with a fortnight. Thus it is essential that energy independence is achieved quickly by whatever means, such as nuclear and coal.
The case sets a precedent and Greenpeace will now use every trick, whether legal or illegal, to block such developments. It is a form of terrorism, since the future of many will be held to ransom by the stupidity of the few.

eric

Rod, you've surpassed yourself- witty & right... how do you do it? Respec'.

Miri

Dear Rod Liddle,

1)I can't believe you got away with using the word "spastic" in your rant

2)Have you actually read the Quran? (Let me guess, your best mates a muslim, right?)

3)Its a shame because your article is spot on in places terrorists are stupid but blaming a book for peoples stupidity is in itself stupid.

Louise

“They did not rail at the judge and the jury that this was a court they did not recognise, that Allah would be their judge and that they were wholly, incontestably justified in what they were doing. Nope, instead they whined that they just wished to make tiny little explosions somewhere harmless — not actually hurt anybody — in order to gain public attention.”

So we should take every criminal defendant at their word? The jury’s guilty verdict on these three men means that at the very least they are of bad character and all that this implies. Prosecutors will ask a second jury whether they think all that wasn’t just a cowardly excuse to get out of jail as soon as possible to get out and have another try. That scenario would be consistent with taqyya. We shall see.

You are an eminently sensible writer, but if you are right, why are there so many Islamic terror convictions and why are so many Muslims under surveillance? We’ve been lucky, that’s all.

Worse, the laissez faire attitude to the terrorism is belied on a week like this when many will be mouring for the dead of 9/11 – they only need to get one job right again to prove your argument woefully wrong, Rod. Would your editor have let you publish this a month after 7/7? Would you have written this a month after 7/7? This essay exhibits exactly the mindset of many pre 7/7 – despite figures like Dhiren Barot.

The worst part of arguments like this is that it breeds complacency about what the goal of the terror is: cultural subjugation to Islam. Just look at what they’ve achieved. We have the head of the Christian church calling for Shariah law.

There is a new age of deference upon us. It is deference to Islam. “It’s their culture, innit?” And our culture? It needs to be more “sensitive” to theirs – not the other way round. That’s the biggest terror of all.

Tom

"blaming a book for peoples stupidity is in itself stupid"

Oh really, Miri?

Have you heard of a book called Mein Kampf? Do you know what would happen if someone were to carry out what it says inside it?

You claim to be familiar with The Koran.

Do you know what would happen if someone were to carry out the instructions in it like: “Make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate.”?

Or are you just in denial?

I think we all know that if someone wrote a similar sentence directed at Muslims, people like you would be shrieking up and down at them.

Now look who’s stupid?

Joe Camel

This week's issue has been available on line since early this morning (late last night?), it's now mid-afternoon, there are a half-dozen or more posts on the talkback and . . . nobody has yet spoken the magic word that begins with "is" and ends with "obia". Amazing! A becoming restraint on the part of the aforementioned community? Or might they be planning something else instead, something more spectacular, perhaps? Keep your eye out for bulldozers with Israeli number plates.

Take care.

Austin Barry

Rod, after this piece, respec', you will have to walk in danger-dodging zig-zags through the Muslim Lands of Walthamstowe, in'it.

H.C.

Tom, I would just like to give you a round of applause for that outstanding comment.
Denial. Truely a key word in this
entire international situation.

Herbert Thornton

Ron argues that Muslim terrorists are quite exceptionally stupid, but I think that misses the point. It can equally well be argued that the huge numbers of British infantrymen who in World War I were slaughtered after they were ordered to leave their trenches in hopeless charges, and were then mown down by machine gun fire, were also exceptionally stupid, as were their Generals. As for some of the terrorists turning out to be cowards or incompetents - that is certainly our good fortune, but it is no reason to dismiss the rest so lightly.

I think that Ron makes the mistake of viewing our enemy through the prism of our own present, fashionable, cultural norms. These norms include the profound mistake of believing that all cultures are of equal value. They take no account of the fact that one of the tactics that Islam has used to wage war on Infidels is the traditional Arab one of making war by means of hit-and-run attacks - a factor that has been pointed out repeatedly by Sir John Keegan. They ignore the fact that those tactics have worked very effectively for many centuries - as the percentage of the world's population that has submitted to Islam demonstrates. And they ignore the ruthlessness, abilities and fanaticism of those (such as Osama bin Laden) who direct and organise the terrorism

One of the most dangerous features of our own culture is its universal and compulsory tolerance of other cultures. This is being taken maximum advantage of by a culture which has the proclaimed aim, and determination, to utterly destroy and replace our culture by whatever means will work.

If we can be persuaded that Islam is no threat - on the grounds that a few of its young men are exceptionally stupid - then I believe we are being naive and gullible.

It makes me wonder what it will take to persuade people to be more realistic. If a cell (whether composed of a few young science graduates in Britain, or composed of a few other young men from the madrassas and training camps) becomes well enough trained to succeed in detonating a nuclear bomb that destroys one of our cities, then the stupidity of the young men concerned will be irrelevant. It will, on the other hand, demonstrate that we ourselves have been not just exceptionally stupid - but, so far as fanatical Islamic extremists are concerned, very useful idiots indeed.

chris hart

Great article Rod-but at least 50+ families who lost relatives,friends and/or loved ones won`t enjoy the jokes.7/7(sic) did occur and their videos ought to remind us that they need only get it right once to inflict carnage for some poor souls.That said, you have laid open the whole culture that these cretins live in( as do many of our kids too)and your scorn is well heaped on the authorities who let Sophies murderers film their intent for an example.Hope you will shaft a cringing legal system that can`t bring in a guilty verdict on a case like this...or does the jury trial need to be spared for the liberal narrative to stay intact for the next Saddiq Khan and his quarterwits?

miri

Dear Tom,

You could do with thinking about a little word called "interpretation". People can find justification for what ever they want from what ever they want. I am assuming you don't know how to read Syro-aramiac, therefore your interpretation is groundless just like the terrorists.

Ps. Mein Kamp was written by a psycho the Quran, as is the Bible, is supposed to be a moral guide. Don't be so ridiculous in your methods of comparison.

Robert Vincent

Rod Liddle in his excellent rant may not have forgotten that Evangelical Christians adore staying alive in order to proselytise whereas Islamic terrorists are eager to die for their beliefs. Because of that it would seem the latter are beyond retribution but has any thought been given to salvaging parts of their exploded remains and interring them with something their faith classifies as unclean? If this were understood as being a consequence it might just inhibit their eagerness for immolation by providing cause for pause.

Ian C

Rod - love the irreverance and you and one J Clarkson should have a column each on the same page so we can have double the laugh at the same time.

But chris hart and others are right that there will be quite a few families of those with loved ones killed and maimed by terrorists who can't find it funny enough.

I remember saying, after I had done alot of reasearch around 9/11 seven years ago, that "they got lucky. It is very unlikely that anything this big will happen again - unless they get their hands on a dirty or nuclear bomb." That is the fear - that a few acknowledged moronic, spastic egotistical self-centred nutters, inspired by virgins and a book, get lucky. They've done it before and they'll get lucky again.

I imagine that the security services who tracked down the fizzy-pop idiots would have a different angle from yours, amusingly as you have put it.

Kiffa

Miri, it is time muslims had the courage to question their prophet and therefore aspects of the Koran. Islamic reformation required.
Mohammed was a genius; but he was also self-serving and vainglorious with not a few psychopathic tendencies of his own. Funny how only after he was rejected by the Jews at Mecca ('call yourself a prophet? You can't even find your camel in the desert'), Allah started not liking Jews... You do know don't you, that if it wasn't for St Paul's lie about who killed Jesus, and more respect to Mohammed, we'd all be Jewish? Or don't you know your Islamic history?
The West has the most successfull societies (why are you and yours here) because our laws and philosophy are based on a long history of being prepared to question and examine things. A good reference is the speech Pope Benedict made! Sorry Miri, no disrespect but not being allowed to question things [your apostacy laws, so many of which involve questioning the prophet, punishable by death or being sent to hell] is something you guys are a bit famous for. Why are your countries [India v. Pakistan, once one country] failing dungheaps despite having the world's most valuable commodity underneath them, if there is not some conflict within the prevailing ethos and laws? YOUR problem, don't make it ours

Iftikhar Ahmad

Muslim youths are angry, frustrated and extremist because they have been mis-educated and de-educated by the British schooling. Muslim children are confused because they are being educated in a wrong place at a wrong time in state schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers. They face lots of problems of growing up in two distinctive cultural traditions and value systems, which may come into conflict over issues such as the role of women in the society, and adherence to religious and cultural traditions. The conflicting demands made by home and schools on behaviour, loyalties and obligations can be a source of psychological conflict and tension in Muslim youngsters. There are also the issues of racial prejudice and discrimination to deal with, in education and employment. They have been victim of racism and bullying in all walks of life. According to DCSF, 56% of Pakistanis and 54% of Bangladeshi children has been victims of bullies. The first wave of Muslim migrants were happy to send their children to state schools, thinking their children would get a much better education. Than little by little, the overt and covert discrimination in the system turned them off. There are fifteen areas where Muslim parents find themselves offended by state schools.

The right to education in one’s own comfort zone is a fundamental and inalienable human right that should be available to all people irrespective of their ethnicity or religious background. Schools do not belong to state, they belong to parents. It is the parents’ choice to have faith schools for their children. Bilingual Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim teacher or a child in a Muslim school. There are hundreds of state schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be designated as Muslim community schools. An ICM Poll of British Muslims showed that nearly half wanted their children to attend Muslim schools. There are only 143 Muslim schools. A state funded Muslim school in Birmingham has 220 pupils and more than 1000 applicants chasing just 60.

Majority of anti-Muslim stories are not about terrorism but about Muslim
culture--the hijab, Muslim schools, family life and religiosity. Muslims in the west ought to be recognised as a western community, not as an alien culture.
Iftikhar Ahmad
www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk

Dodgy Geezer

Ron Liddle makes a strident case that the grave danger of terrorism we are currently facing is actually less than awe-inspiring. He puts this down to the incompetence of the terrorists.

I would go further. As far as I can see, there are no terrorists. There are occasional idiots who believe the first thing they are told by the broadcasters, there are kids who like the idea of making a bang in a field, there are people who download 'interesting' files from the net, and who write simplistic poetry on till rolls from W H Smiths. But there is no evidence whatsoever of any coordinated or competent attack.

What we have is an unholy alliance of broadcasters, government and security services, all anxious to overegg the threat pudding. So kids who would have been told by the chemistry master to stop blowing up bushes on the heath in the 1960s are now sent down for 20 years.

One might almost think that the authorities were trying to encourage a Moslem backlash so that they could justify their existence?

Bob

Rod, this is an article of the most ineffable beauty! I'm of the left-liberal persuasion on economic and social issues, and I normally hate what the Speccie churns out, but when it comes to the fight against the jihadists, I have a neo-con spine. And your article has set my spine a-tingling. The ramifications of your article for government policy are interesting. I would love a British PM, whether Brown (unfortunately unlikely, although I had hopes last year), Miliband or indeed Cameron, to stand up and say "we're not dealing with sophisticated global terrorists here but a set of criminal plonkers who will all be either hoist on their own petards or arrested in due course." Only David Aaronovitch comes close to rivalling your brilliance, Rod. Soon after the 7/7 bombings, he penned an article with this general theme: "Is that it, you idiots? Is that the worst you can do?" You and David belong in the pantheon of satirical, mocking anti-Islamists. All power to you both.

sandy

Iftikhar Ahmad

"Muslims in the west ought to be recognised as a western community not as an alien culture."

Not behaving like an alien culture would be a start.

Paul Carlin

"The right to education in one’s own comfort zone is a fundamental and inalienable human right..."

Not often you read something quite so slack-jawed as that. No wonder some of the recent immigrants to the UK are unhappy if their expectations are that the world owes them such "rights".

Eva

""The right to education in one’s own comfort zone is a fundamental and inalienable human right..."

I wonder how this would play in Saudi Arabia.

DT

'...Schools do not belong to state, they belong to parents. ... Bilingual Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim teacher or a child in a Muslim school.' -Iftikhar Ahmad

In-bloody-credible! Are you 'avin' a larf or wha'?! This is precisely the brand of entitlement mentality 'multiculturalism' that gives immigration a bad name.

As a South Asian-born (non-Muslim) immigrant, I absolutely cringe at those sentiments. My folks emigrated and embraced Western society, as do I. Sure, I endured my share of bullying as a kid, but it toughened me up and I gave as good as I got. I certainly didn't grow up to be an insolent wannabe mad bomber who failed dismally then exploited a legal system that is an integral institution of the very Western society that these hypocritical berks have sworn to destroy.

Perhaps you and your ilk, the Islamic supremacist crowd, should consider relocating somewhere more sympathetic, say, between Morocco and Indonesia. Put another way, if you don't like it here, just leave. Simple.

Peter March

'Oi, ye they're a bid dim but you don't have to be nasty about it.

susan

Brilliant, as usual. However, I so agree with Louise comment below:
"There is a new age of deference upon us. It is deference to Islam. “It’s their culture, innit?” And our culture? It needs to be more “sensitive” to theirs – not the other way round. That’s the biggest terror of all."

Austin Barry

Oh, dear, the sub-text of Mr Ahmad's elegant argument is really "Don't mess wid da Moozlims". Innit?

Jab

The Glasgow attacker was a doctor. Many "terrorists" have degrees and families. Calling them stupid, adolescent virgins is ignorant, complacent and a failure to explain the enemy. Rod is right to blame the many nasty teachings in Islam but wrong to dismiss the role of Western blundering in the middle-east. The fact that the only reason an attack failed is a loose wire should worry. MI5 and the police should be stopping terrorists not lady luck. This might just be me, but it wasn't funny either.

Gary Osman

Iftikhar Ahmad

Your post reeks of ghetto mentality, isolation and worst of all, complete ignorance and respect for the country that you and your co-religionists have made their home.

You are wrong on each and every count and answering you point by point will just be as silly as your post.

Let me just demonstrate to you how dumb you really sound when you say this utterly racist and intolerant thing: "There is no place for a non-Muslim teacher or a child in a Muslim school. There are hundreds of state schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be designated as Muslim community schools…"

Now how would you like it if a white, British person was to say the following: "There is no place for a Muslim in Britain. There are many Islamic countries in the world where muslims are in majority. In my opinion, all muslims should be repatriated to these muslim designated countries".

Are your opinions the same about British Law, that they shouldn't apply to muslims living in a predominantly muslim areas? What about British foreign policy, health policy, law and order? Shouldn't they apply to muslims either?

Is this what you teach your children? Any right-minded (note the small "r") British (white and especially non-white) would find your comments deeply offensive and troubling.

I fear for Britain when I hear immigrants like you so blatantly espousing intolerance towards the British, all the while calling Britain your home.

How are your views for non-muslims any different than those of BNP are for non-whites, Mr Ahmad?

It is your kind of people who give every immigrant like me a bad name. The sooner you and your ilk leave these shores, the sooner we can get on with our lives of pre 9/11.

Gary Osman

www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk

By the way, does the above school really exist? When was it last inspected? I think it should be closed down Immediately and all inspectors who have given it the all clean should be sacked!

Gary Osman

Oh dear, I've just found out that it really does exit!

Police should be informed!

A. MacAulay

In many States of the USA, children are daily obliged to pledge their allegiance to the American nation and flag. This seems to us very strange, but as a land full of immigrants it serves to bond all the disparate peoples into being US citizens. It also makes many of them take doubts or criticism by foreigners of American policy personally, which makes discussions tedious or end abruptly.

I would not suggest that Muslim and other immigrants learn an, "it's my country, right or wrong" attitude about Britain, but some awareness and pride in it's achievements might be a good place to start. Freedom of religion, opinion and equality before the law were won at a very high price, also in blood, for all citizens regardless of origin. Britain is not just a place, it is also an idea.

That the aforegoing precludes certain "cultural" traditions like arranged marriages and honour killings should be obvious, but apparently isn't. It might be fair to warn potential immigrants that they have to sacrifice these traditions if they wish to participate in our commonwealth. The decades of tolerance of arranged marriages is a black disgrace for the UK and contradicts all the aspirations and achievments of our, "constitution".

The opposite of racism is humanism. Britain is a pile of traditions, including in large part, Christianity. Traditions can in time incorporate anything that does not contradict them. Religion on this island is left in the hands of buffoons like the Archbishop of Canterbury,(a person who has had no thoughts since his student days and risen in the hierarchy because of this, which is also a very English tradition) because they can do no real harm. Our values are secular and tolerant which makes them available to all.

If Muslim youth is alienated then their integration will not be served by pandering to their confusion. If they wish to live in a land which is governed by Sharia law, then as free men, they are free to go and live there.

Augustus

So, Rod Liddle isn't convinced that radical Islam presents much of a genuine threat. If I was an intelligence services officer I would consider his thoughts extremely naive. He should have as much faith in police counter-terrorism as he has in British radical jihadis supposed inability to plot and carry out their acts of terrorism.

I fear that in reality there may well be only a thin line between almost blowing seven transatlantic airliners out of the sky, and preventing them from being blown up. The fact that the court case fell through was not the fault of the British police, but was mostly because the CIA interfered and wanted the plotters rounded up forcing Scotland Yard's hand and thus wrecking the case.

Stephen Rothbart

Ron Liddle's article is amusing, unless you live in Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. where unfofrtunately, Muslim suicide bombers are very effective indeed.

Perhaps it's a result of the poor education in the UK that our home-grown bombers are idiots. Gordon should check into this.

It is certainly not true elsewhere.

Unfortunately, while it is of course true that not all Muslims are suicide bombers, almost all suicide bombers are Muslim, which shows that something, somewhere, in this religion's make-up, something rotten must lie.

Of course the Koran can be interpreted in many ways, but it is elitist and does have passages that exhort death and dominance over non-Muslims.

If Muslims want this persecution of them to change, they have to deal with this and make sure the Koran is taught by people who accept that something written centuries ago in a different time and place, has no place in a secular or non-Muslim society (and preferably not even in Muslim ones).

Teach the good and peaceful ways, and help the authorities kick out the imams who teach the kids who use the Koran to justify their stupid causes.

While the Koran is still taught to be the undisputed word of Allah, atrocities in its name will continue.

Colin Foster

Iftikhar Ahmad your post is outrageous on just so many different levels....."inalienable human right"

LOL

Joe Camel

A lesson in religious tolerance.

Last week, Iran's Majlis ratified a bill under which any Muslim who converts to another religion would be put to death, with no possibility of pardon.

http://www.thememriblog.org/iran/blog_personal/en/9840.htm

J Dickson

Well said, Rod. All these inept self-loathing halfwits will achieve is to get them and their mates a damned good kicking from the other only slightly more intelligent feral youths wandering the same streets. And the sooner the better for all of us. Oh, it is time to stop giving greenpeace the oxygen of publicity, too, as the subject came up. Why does anyone take any notice of such self appointed nagging, interfering ideologues? It's time to ignore them and their whining rants too. JD.

Dave Barkes

Great article, well done Sir!

ian skidmore

well said

Mark Solomon

Exactly-these guys may get lucky now and then but they are hardly the threat the IRA were, yet the UK government sees fit to erase freedoms that have served us well for centuries and have cameras all over the place, not to mention the ridiculous things they do at airports these days all for supposed security (although its a lie) and to maintain the Orwellian sense of threat.

People need to wake up. The real threat is not the occasional Tube bombing or even another Twin Towers. The real threat is walking down the street all burkaed up drawing benefits and demanding Sharia law.And the government invited them in and kowtows to them.

peter forsythe, hong kong

Check out another example of Al Qa’eda’s incompetence in its “propaganda jihad” (attempts to “celebrate” 9/11)
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022775.php

BTW: Mr Liddle: I’d love to see you write something about British Sharia. See http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022743.php#comments

Jonathan Dickson

Well put, and have a good 2009. JD

Distant Smoke

I agree with Marc O'Polo. Too long have we cowered before these feckless b*stards. Anyone who feels a need to cover his face with a towel in order to slaughter people has no fundamental belief in his rightness or "mission from allah", only a criminal need to kill.

And this is the first ever article on islam to make me laugh. Best Christmas present (if a little late) I've had in quite some time.

Flu-Bird

Why do those AL QUEDA terrorists often keep their faces hidden behind those hooda and such why dont they want their faces seen what are they afraid of?