A terror so great we forgot it at once

9 December 2006

Dhiren Barot’s case faded because it revealed unbearable truths

Terrifying and astounding as all this was, the real significance of the case lay in the way it punctured the myths fuelling Britain’s state of denial over Islamist terrorism.

Myth one is that Britain is only threatened by such terror because the war in Iraq has radicalised British Muslims. Yet Barot was laying his infernal plans before 9/11, let alone the fall of Saddam. As long ago as 1999 he advocated bringing Western countries to their knees. Significantly, he observed that this could only be achieved by Muslims living in Western countries, because only they understood the culture, geography and common practices of the people among whom they lived.

He also acknowledged the crucial reality that the British still do not grasp: that the single greatest recruiter to terror is terror itself. The reason terrorism was a religious duty, he wrote, was that ‘terror works’. That is why, as the head of MI5 Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller has noted, the scale and speed of radicalisation among British Muslims increased after the 7/7 bombings.

While the government tells itself inanely that it needs to tailor its foreign policy to address Muslim ‘grievances’ around the world, Islamist terrorists themselves say that the inspiration for further acts of jihad is the way in which such terrorism produces precisely that reaction.

Myth two is that British Muslims turn to terror because they live segregated lives or are poor and alienated. But Barot, a middle-class, suburban, former-grammar-school pupil, was born and raised as a Hindu, converting to Islam only at the age of 20.

Myth three is that President Bush and the world Zionist conspiracy are to blame for fuelling Islamist terror. In 1995 Barot attended a terrorist training camp in Kashmir. George W. Bush’s presidency was not yet even a twinkle in a neocon eye; the sainted Bill Clinton was in the White House, and US interests had already been under attack by the Islamic jihad for years.

For Barot, a former Hindu, to be radicalised to Islamist extremism by the issue of Kashmir — the totemic dispute between Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan — not only suggests a highly complex personal pathology at work, but also shows the utter absurdity of blaming British Muslim radicalisation on America, Israel or Iraq.