The global force behind Mumbai’s agony is in our midst

Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi say that LET — the Army of the Righteous — is a worldwide Islamist organisation which is well-established in Britain. The Mumbai atrocities are further proof that the march of Islamic extremism is the central fact of our time

The usual suspects are declaring that the ‘cause’ of the Mumbai bombings was Kashmir or some other local grievance. But what happened in Mumbai was no more a local event than the 7 July 2005 attacks in London or the assault in Madrid on 11 March 2004. Pakistani propaganda about its claims in Kashmir is almost entirely phony rhetoric intended to justify the predatory instincts of the Pakistani army and intelligence bureaucrats. Pakistan insists that Kashmiri Muslims are oppressed by India, but in fact Indian Muslims live better than Pakistani Muslims and have demonstrated a better capacity for true Islamic thinking.

The attacks on Mumbai are part of a global problem, which is why a passive Western policy toward the crisis is not acceptable. It may appear comforting to bien-pensant representatives of the ‘progressive’ elite. But in reality it represents an attitude of suicidal and irresponsible disengagement from confrontation with a continuing threat. In Mumbai, as in London, Madrid and New York, but also in the Islamic cities of Iraq, Istanbul and Jakarta, and in places like Peshawar and Quetta in Pakistan, a wide network of Muslim fundamentalists continue their global offensive.

The common enemies of all civilised humanity in the ongoing conflict include Saudi Wahhabism and Pakistani jihadism, the latter inspired by a fundamentalist variant of Islam called Deobandism. What Western appeasers must remember is that Pakistan, like Saudi Arabia before it, is two-faced, professing to oppose terrorism while powerful factions in its leadership espouse it.