Go on, have a guess. Did the reporting on the BBC’s website focus mainly on:
a) the warped, grisly, evil fanaticism with which a group of young Muslim men callously plotted the deaths of up to 10,000 innocent people.
b) the dispiriting fact that these would-be killers were not oppressed victims of some terrible tyranny but free citizens of a tolerant multiracial country whose state apparatus bends over backwards to accommodate the needs of its minorities.
c) what we really need to accept is: we deserved it and we had it coming to us.
Yup. You guessed it. c) is the right answer.
Here according to the BBC’s analysis is WHY they did it:
“The reason can be found in their own words, writings and martyrdom videos; a simple and seething anger over British and American foreign policy, and an overwhelming belief that Muslims were its helpless victims.”
(So: no reason for them to do what everyone else does and register their strong feelings through the ballot box, then?)
And here is how it reports the reaction of the “Muslim community”:
“Prominent UK Muslims have welcomed the conviction of three men for plotting to blow up planes flying to north America – but have warned that government anti-terrorist powers should be used wisely.”
Note how the reporter can’t even wait to finish his opening paragraph before weighing in with the inevitable clause implying that the REAL victims of this episode aren’t the travellers who must now spend their every plane journey fearing the worst, and hampered by the infuriating nuisance of being unable to carry liquids on their flights. They are, rather, all those unfortunate Muslims out there who now risk being inconvenienced by government measures to crack down on, er, Muslim terrorism.
The reporter goes on to quote the Islamist pressure group the Muslim Council of Great Britain as if it were the voice of moderation.
The Muslim Council of Britain’s Inayat Bunglawala said it showed the terror threat to the UK was “very real”.
“No sensible person can now doubt that there is a real problem out there that needs to be tackled,” he said.
But then – you guessed it again – comes in that all-important exculpatory “But”:
But the UK’s role in military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq had helped radicalize the plotters, he added.
The report goes on in much the same vein:
“British Muslims are just as horrified and appalled by stories like this as ordinary Britons – perhaps more so because it reflects unfairly on themselves and their faith.”
This view was backed up by a couple speaking to BBC Asian Network on the streets of Walthamstow, north-east London, where plot leader Ahmed Ali had lived.
“I think the word ‘Muslim’ shouldn’t be attached to such an activity,” said the woman. “I think the word ‘Muslim’, ‘mosque’ and the religion he belongs to shouldn’t be attached to this activity.”
Her husband said: “There are one billion Muslims in the world, so everybody’s reputation is damaged saying a Muslim has done this.”
Phew. And there was I thinking for a nasty moment that fundamentalist Islam might have had a hand in this devious and terrible plot. But apparently not. Thank you, BBC, for revealing the truth:
It was all the fault of British foreign policy and we were jolly lucky to get off as lightly as we did.
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- How the BBC fell for a Marxist plot to destroy civilisation from within
- How The West Was Lost (ctd): the Burkini
- Islamists: funny till the bombs go off
- British Gas boss announces brilliant new scheme to make Britain even more expensive and ugly