RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the months before weeping little girls with nails in their faces were carried out of the Manchester Arena, the authorities of that city were hard at work fighting the dreaded threat of Islamophobia.

While Salman Abedi, the second-generation Muslim refugee terrorist who maimed and killed dozens in a brutal terrorist attack, stalked the streets wailing, “There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah”, Manchester police were busy with more important things.

The Greater Manchester Police are one of only two police forces to list Islamophobia as a hate crime category. Earlier this year, Chief Constable Ian Hopkins honored Tell Mama for fighting Islamophobia. Tell Mama had lost funding earlier when its claims of a plague of violent Islamophobia fell apart.

Shahid Malik, the chair of Tell Mama, had been photographed with the leader of Hamas. Appearing at the Global Peace and Unity conference, where plenty of terrorism supporters have promenaded, he boasted, “In 2005 we had four Muslim MPs. In 2009 or 2010 we’ll have eight or ten Muslim MPs. In 2014 we’ll have 16 Muslim MPs. At this rate the whole parliament will be Muslim.”

Last year, Hopkins had appeared at a Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) event at the European Islamic Centre along with Azad Ali. Ali has praised Anwar Al-Awlaki and other Al Qaeda figures. He justified the murder of British and American soldiers, he praised Hamas and Hezbollah.

Instead of arresting him, the Chief Constable appeared at the same forum with a terrorist supporter.

Also present was Greater Manchester Police Crime Commissioner and Interim Mayor Tony Lloyd who came by to talk about “eradicating hate”. This was at an event attended by Anas Altikriti of the Cordoba Foundation, who had backed terrorists murdering British soldiers and accused Jews of dual loyalty.

Tony Lloyd will be the Labour candidate in Rochdale; home of the Muslim sex grooming cover-up.

Both Manchester Mayor Burnham and Chief Constable Ian Hopkins had appeared at MEND events. MEND’s Director of Engagement is Azad Ali.

After the attack, Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham vowed on camera, “terrorists will never beat us”. The terrorists don’t need to beat Burnham. He’ll eagerly collaborate without so much as a single slap.

After hearing of the Manchester terrorist attack, politicians once more communicated their by now old-routine of “shock” and “grief” at the predictable outcome of their own policies.

Most dumbfounding of all, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she was watching the developments in Manchester “with grief and horror” and that she found the attack “incomprehensible”.

Every time a European leader publicly endorses Islam as a great faith, a “religion of peace”, or claims that violence in Islam is a “perversion of a great faith”, despite massive evidence to the contrary, they signal in the strongest way possible that with every devastating attack, the West is ripe for the taking.

When ISIS attacked the Bataclan Theater in Paris in November 2015, it did so because, in its own words, it was “where hundreds of pagans gathered for a concert of prostitution and vice.” A year earlier, ISIS had forbidden all music as haram (forbidden). Many Islamic scholars supports the idea that Islam forbids the ‘sinful’ music of the West.

It should, therefore, not be a surprise to anybody that Islamic terrorists might target a concert by the American pop singer Ariana Grande in Manchester on May 22. In addition, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned last September that terrorists are focused on concerts, sporting events and outdoor gatherings because such venues “often pursue simple, achievable attacks with an emphasis on economic impact and mass casualties”.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Manchester suicide bombing, in which a device laced with screws and bolts was detonated. Twenty-two people, children and adults, were murdered in the explosion that ripped through the Manchester concert area; more than 50 people were wounded. While the media is describing the use of nail bombs at the concert hall as a new and surprising tactic, it is in fact an extremely old one, practiced by Arab terrorists on Israelis for decades.

British police on Tuesday identified the terrorist bomber who blew himself up outside Manchester Arena on Monday night as Salman Abedi, a 22-year-old born in Manchester. This means Britain has been terrorized again by a native-born Muslim who became radicalized while enjoying the freedoms of Western society.

Islamic State took credit for the attack, and we’ll learn more in the days ahead about how Abedi turned to jihad. But the Manchester bombing follows the vehicular assault near Parliament in March that was also perpetrated by a native British Muslim.

This is the devilish challenge Western officials face as they attempt to stop attacks like Monday’s on teenage and preteen girls attending a show by pop star Ariana Grande. At least 22 were killed and 58 wounded in the deadliest attack in Britain since the London Underground bombings of July 7, 2005.

British security forces have a better record than many European governments in foiling terror. Prosecutors convicted 264 people on Islamism-related terror offenses between 1998 and 2015, according to an open-source study by the London-based Henry Jackson Society. The figures don’t include cases that don’t end in convictions and often remain classified.

Yet the homegrown radical who is increasingly recruited by groups like Islamic State is hard to identify and stop. This is why governments must tackle the problem at its roots in Muslim communities that are isolated from mainstream society in major cities such as Manchester, Paris and Brussels.

British opinion surveys consistently find gaps between the attitudes of Muslims and the liberal ethos of the wider culture, on everything from homosexuality to women’s rights to anti-Semitism. One survey last year found that 7% of British Muslims support an Islamic caliphate while 4% believe terrorism is an acceptable form of protest—a large pool of potential jihadists. Promoting integration involves deeper questions about belonging and identity that don’t have easy answers. But one way to start is to consistently enforce British laws in all communities.

Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday halted her re-election campaign and vowed “to take on and defeat the ideology that often fuels this violence.” Speaking in the West Bank, President Trump condemned the “evil losers in life” who carry out such violence. That note about “losers” is welcome even as it’s jarringly colloquial, since Islamists see themselves at the vanguard of a triumphant millenarian ideology. Leaders should look for opportunities to undermine that narrative.

Muslims will have to take ultimate responsibility for rooting out radicals in their midst. British Muslim groups such as the counterterror Quilliam Foundation have made strides, but they are often in the minority among imams and community leaders. As long as that continues, the failure of integration will pose a mortal threat to Europe.

The world will have to take Pyongyang’s hackers as seriously as its nuclear weapons and missile programs. That’s one conclusion from Monday’s evidence from a private cybersecurity firm that North Korean hackers are behind the Wannacry ransomware that froze computers and encrypted data around the world on May 12.

Symantec says it found the digital footprints of the Lazarus Group, a hacking syndicate that took data from Sony Entertainment in 2014 and stole $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank last year. While computer forensics can’t finger hackers with 100% certainty, the code, techniques and servers point to Pyongyang.

The Symantec findings come as Reuters published new details this week about North Korea’s growing cyberwarfare capabilities. According to a former computer-science professor who defected in 2004, a unit within the country’s spy agency hacks into foreign financial institutions to steal cash. The Wannacry worm demands that victims pay in Bitcoin to get their data back. So far it’s extorted about $100,000. But the North’s hackers are capable and persistent. They appear to have built the worm in part with hacking tools stolen from the U.S. government and released on the internet last month.

State-sponsored hacking for profit is unique to North Korea—a useful reminder that it isn’t so much a country as a criminal syndicate operating for the benefit of the Kim family. As sanctions close off other avenues for earning foreign currency, Pyongyang will likely step up its cyberattacks.

Pyongyang has suffered little retaliation for its cyberwarfare, which includes the hacking of a South Korean nuclear plant. After the Sony attack three years ago, Barack Obama promised to retaliate: “We will respond proportionally, and we’ll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose.” But the follow-through was underwhelming: A few North Korean institutions and individuals were barred from doing business in the U.S.

Last year Congress passed Rep. Ed Royce’s bill to sanction banks facilitating North Korea’s finances, and the Trump Administration can move to implement it. This month a new bill from Rep. Royce to toughen sanctions on the North’s shipping and exports of slave labor passed the House with bipartisan support. That would be another good way to make Pyongyang pay a price for its criminal acts.