IT is extremely fortunate and astonishing that the explosive devise detonated on a Tube train in south-west London during Friday’s morning rush hour did not lead to a single fatality. The bomb appeared not to have gone fully off. Had it worked as intended, it would have killed everyone around it and maimed everyone else in the train carriage. In the end, 29 people were treated in hospitals, mostly for burns, but no serious injuries. However, the thought of what might have been and what might be next has forced Britain to upgrade its terror threat to the highest level, from severe to critical — meaning an attack is expected imminently.
This is the fifth terrorist attack in England in 2017, coming on top of three incidents in London and one in Manchester from March to June, with a combined death toll of 36. It’s the only one this year in which nobody has died, however, for Britons who had reason to feel reasonably safe from the recent wave of terror on continental Europe, Friday’s attack in Parsons Green train station is a deeply troubling development, for it is part of the most sustained period of terrorist activity in England in recent times.
The authorities are doing all they can. They have foiled six terrorist plots since the Westminster atrocity in March. Terrorist-related arrests in Britain have hit a new record high, with suspects held at a rate of more than one every day. Police and MI5 are running 500 investigations involving 3,000 individuals at any one time, while there are also 20,000 former subjects of interest whose risk must be kept under review.
This is a huge anti-terrorism effort to be commended. Still, despite all the attacks and their counter-measures, Britain still does not appear to have a mechanism of forecasting the next attempt. As a result, it is engaging in a damage-limitation exercise. It always looks like it is playing catch-up, like looking for a black cat in a dark room. Along with the nuts and bolts of detentions, stop and search, surveillance and CCTV cameras — operations which definitely lessen terrorist attacks — Britain also needs to address the broader, ideological environment in which radicalization takes place.
Daesh (the so-called Islamic State) has taken responsibility for the blast, despite the fact that this bomb had a timer, meaning its perpetrator wanted to stay alive after the explosion, unlike the rest who are ready and willing to die for their religion. As in all previous attacks, Daesh exploits Islam to justify its acts of murder and destruction. Its proponents have constructed around Islam ideas shaped by warped interpretations of Qur’anic texts. When carrying out their indiscriminate campaigns of murder in the West, terrorists will say that those societies are heretical. This, they claim, justifies the bloodshed.
Just as the British public is aware that some terrorist elements will always slip through the cracks, they should also recognize the vast difference between Islam which is a religion with a mission of mercy and compassion for all mankind, and the ideas in the minds of extremists that drive them to acts of terror. These acts are rejected by Islam and by the overwhelming majority of the Muslim people.
You can only manage a crisis if you can predict with some accuracy the behavior of its various players. Although we do not know much about what takes place in the decision-making corridors of terrorist organizations, the recent attacks are a sign that terrorist forces are spreading across the world to wreak the greatest possible unrest and cause the biggest number of deaths. These terrorists believe that they and they alone represent Islam. The lie that they live shapes every aspect of their bloodthirsty behavior that flies in the face of all the teachings of the religion.
