The Good Fence

I'm supposed to be working - I have a meeting in an hour's time - but I had to get this down quickly. Today's news only reinforces the British spirit. We will not be swayed, made fearful or alter our course because of the actions of a few idiots who conspire "to commit mass murder on an uprecedented scale". It does also highlight the historically-developed difference between UK and US intelligence.

But do not blame Islam or all Muslims. Like Christians, as a whole, like Jews, as a whole, like Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Taoist and Confucianists - as a whole - the faith condemns these actions. Blame instead a perverted, misrepresented, fanatical, absolutist, fundamentalist form of Islam. An Islam that has no place in the modern world and threatens the good people of the Islamic faith around the world. Saying an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist represents all Muslims is rather like saying Gerry Adams represents all Catholics. I'm sure Benedict XVI would have something to say about that. While I'm in the area, shall we perhaps touch on the fundamentalist nature of the American midwest Bible belt, where children in some states are not allowed to be taught Darwinian evolution theory, as it contradicts Genesis? Who's zooming who, here?

But consider this: there are fanatics everywhere. Many of them have been elected to power. Christianity has its IRA, its ETA, its November 17. All of these groups had a political aim, albeit a more localised one. al-Qaeda has it's aims too, shared by many small, disparate groups loosely held together in philosophy, and no doubt funding. But there aren't any International Annual General Meetings of the corporation. Just mobile phones, codenames and codewords, embedded intelligence in emails, photos. The very place-less nature of modern communication methods only helps their diasporic form. Those media; simple, home-made bombs; and the religious will to do what they feel they must do: that's where the battle lines are, and one's very tricky to change.

Of course, today there have been several arrests, mostly in London but a couple in Birmingham and one in High Wycombe. They won't have been made on a hunch. I applaud the security and police forces for executing an aviation lock-down on a national scale so swiftly. I applaud the arrest of 21 individuals who, it may later prove, were allegedly attempting to bring ten 'planes out of the sky over the Atlantic. I applaud the stout attitudes of the travellers facing massive delays at the airports, and I applaud the continued vigilance of this nation in the face of fools who think they can bomb their way to some religious utopia. Looking at the way things have been handled today, it would appear we've got a good fence.