RUTHFULLY YOURS

Have we learned the lessons of 7/7? So begins every trite radio and TV discussion today as we mark 20 years since four homegrown jihadists blew themselves up on London’s transport network and took 52 innocent souls with them.

Going by much of the commentary, you’d think this was a purely logistical, security question. There’s a long piece on the BBC website, talking about how the police and the security services were forced to up their game after the London Bombings, the new powers they now enjoy as a consequence, the attendant concerns over civil liberties, etc.

The words ‘Islamist’ and ‘jihadist’ do not appear once in the piece, even as it details the evolving ‘extremist’ threat posed first by al-Qaeda and then the ‘self-styled Islamic State’. There is often a stubborn refusal, a stammering hesitation, to mention what flavour of ‘extremism’ most menaces us – a cowardly tic that was skewered best by Morrissey: ‘An extreme what? An extreme rabbit?’

This attempt to brush over the I-word – to blithely ignore the religious, ideological character of those hellish bombings two decades ago – is everywhere today. The deadliest terror attack on UK soil since Lockerbie – the deadliest terror attack on London ever – is being talked about as if it were motivated by some vaguely defined form of ‘hate’ or ‘division’, rather than a global Islamist movement.

In his official statement today, King Charles says the attacks show the importance of ‘building a society where people of all faiths and backgrounds can live together with mutual respect and understanding’. What does this even mean? Does Charles, or his spokespeople, even know? Perhaps he thinks a well-timed interfaith meeting might have stopped those suicide bombers.

Back in 2016, the late great comedian Norm Macdonald posted a tweet for the ages: ‘What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?’ Today, as we mark 7/7, what you might call Macdonald’s Law – that any discussion of Islamic terrorism will almost immediately pivot away from the horror at hand and towards largely hypothetical fears of an anti-Muslim backlash – is once again in full effect.

‘For many in the British Muslim community, the tragedy of 7 July 2005 lives long in the memory’, reads a piece in the Guardian. By ‘tragedy’, the writer doesn’t mean those who were slain, had their legs blown off, or had their bodies sprayed with nails and glass, but the ‘feelings of suspicion, isolation and hostility’ experienced by some British Muslims after the attack.

We all know the purpose of articles like this. It isn’t to challenge anti-Muslim bigotry. It’s a brazen attempt to change the subject, from murders to feelings, from the questions the cultural elites would prefer not to discuss, to things that are totally uncontroversial, like racism being bad.

We’ve been stuck in this loop for 20 years now. 7/7 wasn’t just one particularly lethal attack, it marked the blood-soaked arrival of Islamist terror to Britain. The beginning of our horrifying new normal in which jihadist killers periodically try to blow up or stab us and our fellow citizens; soon to be followed by Woolwich, Westminster Bridge, Manchester Arena, London Bridge I, London Bridge II, Reading, David Amess’s murder, Hartlepool.

And yet the rise of this murderous, apocalyptic Islamist cult – that worships death, that hates the West, that hates us – has left the opinion-forming set staring at their shoelaces, while they mumble something about the far right being just as pressing a problem.

This brain rot goes right to the top. Over these past 20 years, Islamist terrorists have butchered 95 people in Britain. The racist right have managed three. Meanwhile, Prevent, our premier counter-extremism programme, routinely flags up more people for ‘extreme right-wing’ views than for Islamism. At last count, potential Islamic extremists made up just 11 per cent of referrals.

It’s almost darkly funny. Islamism has rained down terror on our streets for 20 years now and we’ve been indulging a moral panic about the return of the far right, which remains a pathetic and marginal force in British life. Even the brazenly Jew-hating, misogynistic and homophobic nature of Islamism has failed to wake the supposed progressives from their slumber. Apparently, it’s only fascism when white blokes in tracksuits do it.

All this deflection, and for what? Because confronting Islamism makes you feel uncomfortable? Because it might raise awkward questions about multiculturalism, and how it has helped to kindle a violent hatred of Britain among a small but menacing number of British Muslims? Because it might force you to reconsider whether uncontrolled migration is such a great thing, given we’re increasingly importing jihadists? Because you’re so afraid of being called ‘racist’ that you’d rather let the killing continue? What is it?

On this day of ‘commemoration’, all I see is contempt. Contempt for the public, who are expected to ignore the evidence of their own eyes. Contempt for British Muslims, who are treated as permanent victims, blasé about terrorism, who might become mortally offended if you try to engage them in rooting out the nihilistic killers in their midst. And contempt for the victims of 7/7, who lost their lives to an ideology that the great and good can’t even bring themselves to name.

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater