Hearts and minds

‘Among all criminals and murderers, the most dangerous type is the criminal physician.’

‘Among all criminals and murderers, the most dangerous type is the criminal physician.’ So said Dr Miklos Nyiszli, a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz who acted as pathologist to Josef Mengele. The unspeakable depravities of the Nazi doctors were catalogued at the Nuremberg Medical Trial, which led to the conviction of 15 German physicians and scientists.

The discovery that those arrested in connection with the planned car-bomb attacks have links with the NHS, as doctors, medical students and technicians, and that the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley appears to have been the headquarters of the cell, is deeply shocking. Yet, as Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi warn on page 20, it would be quite wrong to detect any conflict, in the warped mind of the Islamist doctor, between the solemn duties of the healer and the sacred task of the jihadi. As Canon Andrew White, a British cleric working in Baghdad, was warned: ‘Those who cure you will kill you.’

Since 9/11, the greatest peril to the West has been its own incapacity to absorb such apparently unthinkable propositions, and its consequent inclination to take comfort in old, familiar categories of thought. Gordon Brown speaks often of winning over the ‘hearts and minds’ of Muslims. But the ‘hearts and minds’ of non-Muslims are no less important if we are to prevail.

It has, for instance, been soothing to claim that the men behind the destruction of the Twin Towers have little in common with, say, the captors of the (now-released) BBC journalist Alan Johnston, or the alleged plotters of last week’s attacks. There is a strong desire in the West to see this as an essentially disaggregated phenomenon, local gangs of criminals engaged in isolated campaigns.