Ruthie Blum: Westminster Carnage, Turkish Delight
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t know he was going to get so lucky on Wednesday, when a threat he issued instantly materialized.Douglas Murray: Pray for London, for Antwerp, for Nice: this is Europe’s new normal
Indeed, the Islamist leader of the former modernizing democracy was probably happily amazed at the news of the terrorist attack in London, as it came on the heels of a speech he delivered in Ankara warning, “[i]n no part of the world, no European, no Westerner will be able to take steps on the street safely and peacefully.” This fate would befall them, he said, if they “continue to behave like this.”
Of course, Erdogan was not personally responsible for the rampage of UK-born Khalid Masood, who managed to murder three people before being killed by police. Nor had he specified what he meant by claiming that the West would not be safe.
He did, however, caution that Turkey is “not a country to push, to prod, to play with its honor, to shove its ministers out of the door, drag its citizens on the floor.” He had a point; it is only Erdogan and his goons who are at liberty to drag Turkish citizens on the floor.
This was not the point he was trying to make, however. No, Erdogan denies that he imprisons anyone he considers critical of his regime. But he has to do that when he spends so much time accusing Europe of human-rights abuses.
The hashtag ‘PrayForLondon’ is trending on social media. But so is ‘Antwerp’. Because no sooner were we invited to pray for London than a man of ‘North African descent’ was narrowly prevented from doing something similar in the Belgian city. This is life as usual in Europe now, of course. But among the endless replays to date – and the endless replays yet to come – there are several things worth noting about Wednesday’s attack in London.Melanie Phillips: In the midst of grief, still confusion
The first is that the perpetrator – now identified as one Khalid Masood – was in one sense unusual. A recent comprehensive analysis published by my colleague Hannah Stuart found that among Islamist-related offences in the UK the most common age of the offender was 22. So at 52 years old Khalid Masood was some decades older than the average attacker. Although this is wholly speculative, that is a possible reason why he avoided being regarded as an imminent threat by MI5. There has only been one other individual in the UK who has sought to participate in remotely similar acts at Masood’s age.
The second thing worth noting is that by the jihadists’ own lights Masood’s attack was an expression of failure. It demonstrated once again that people inspired by Isis in the UK aren’t able to get hold of the kind of munitions they would like. Put another way, the fact that Wednesday’s attacker used a car and a knife is not a demonstration of operational strength.
After more than a decade of bomb plots successfully thwarted by our police and security services, the mass casualty bomb attack remains out of reach for Isis supporters in Britain. Likewise, although Isis recruits have been able to attack Paris with Kalashnikov rifles, a mix of geographical good luck and hard work by the authorities has meant Isis supporters have not been able to acquire such arms in the UK. Had they been, then Westminster would have been the scene of even greater carnage on Wednesday. This is not entirely good news, of course. For as in Israel in recent years, while vehicle and knife attacks show that the terrorists can’t get hold of anything else, the downside is that anyone can get hold of such weapons and there is not very much that the authorities can do to stop them.
In the aftermath of yesterday’s dreadful terror attack on the Palace of Westminster, which has so far left four victims dead and around 40 people injured, many of them seriously, the Prime Minister Theresa May today addressed the House of Commons.This Week - London Terror Attack tribute to Keith Palmer
Among other remarks by Mrs May which struck the right tone of steely calm, there was however this exchange. A Conservative MP, Michael Tomlinson, said:
“It is reported that what happened yesterday was an act of Islamic terror. Does the Prime Minister agree that what happened was not Islamic, just as the murder of Airey Neave was not Christian, and that both were perversions of religion?”
To which the Prime Minister answered:
“I absolutely agree. It is wrong to describe what happened as Islamic terrorism; it is Islamist terrorism—a perversion of a great faith.”
To which one can only groan, head in hands: here we go again. Since 9/11 the British political establishment has refused to acknowledge that the jihadi terrorism being conducted in the name of Islam is actually inspired by… Islam. Islamic jihadi terror has instead been called “un-Islamic” or even “anti-Islamic” or “ a perversion of Islam” or “a warped ideology”. Everything but what it actually is: terrorism inspired by a fanatical but legitimate interpretation of Islam.