Is suicide bombing now a Yorkshire tradition?

Where would you rather live, Dewsbury or Bradford? I ask because it seems that there are probably some good property deals to be had in this particular corner of West Yorkshire right now, as a consequence of half the population decamping to Syria in order to blow themselves up. I mean, property was pretty cheap already — in Savile Town, Dewsbury, right in the heart of the Muslim ghetto, you can buy a nice grey stone cottage for not much more than fifty grand. Two beds, back yard, only a stone’s throw from the local sharia court and that vast mosque run by those jovial extremists Tablighi Jamaat. But it’ll be even cheaper now, I would guess.

Dewsbury in particular is getting a reputation as Detonation Central — the Muslims there seem ready to blow themselves up at the drop of a hat. Ask one of them the time of day — and boom, entrails all over your jacket. Three of the four savages who carried out the July 2005 bombings in London came from the area, as did Britain’s first really young Islamist extremist, Hammad Munshi. And now there’s Talha Asmal who, at 17, has become Britain’s youngest ever suicide bomber (sub-editors — please check this with one of the McWhirters).

Talha blew himself up near an oil refinery in Iraq, and his family are said to be distraught and shocked. ‘He was just a normal Yorkshire lad,’ one family friend commented, a little incongruously — although I suppose he was pretty much par for the course in that particular swath of the county. Eeeh bah gum, that’s a reet fine suicide belt tha’s wearing, our Iqbal. Meanwhile in Bradford, three sisters and their nine children have gone missing after a pilgrimage to Medina, in Saudi Arabia, and are believed now to be somewhere under the auspices of the Islamic State, in a voluntary capacity.