Don’t mention the ideology

Alasdair Palmer has a piece that is well worth reading in the Sunday Telegraph about the leaked MI5 report on what turns people into terrorists. Here’ the key section of his argument:

“It conspicuously fails to mention the potential terrorist’s most obvious “vulnerability”: adherence to an extremist form of radical Islamism. It stresses that “far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practice their faith regularly; many lack religious literacy and could be regarded as religious novices.” Which may be true, but does not alter the fundamental fact that all of the suicide bombers in the UK, and all of those who have been involved in helping them plan and execute their attacks, have claimed that they were motivated by commitment to an extreme form of Islam. No one from any other faith has perpetrated a suicide bombing in Britain, or said anything to suggest that such terrorism would or could be justified. Does MI5’s behavioural science unit really believe that, if the ideology of extreme Islamism did not exist, the people who blew themselves up on July 7, 2005 would have found another justification for it and done it anyway?”

The terrorist threat comes from an enemy motivated by ideology. To ignore that ideology in our attempt to combat it is perverse.