Muslim terrorists are not deprived, they are depraved, says Leo McKinstry

http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/leo-mckinstry/657907/Muslim-terrorists-not-deprived-depraved-Junead-Khan-ISIS-Daesh-Leo-McKinstry

THE MORTAL threat of Islamic extremism should be met by resolute courage.

By Leo McKinstry

PUBLISHED: 00:01, Mon, Apr 4, 2016

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Junead Khan and Muhammad Emwazi, better known as Jihadi John, were both middle class

But instead, too many European commentators and politicians wallow in guilt-tripping self-hatred. Peddling their narrative of Muslim victimhood they continually make excuses for the jihadists and pin the blame for terrorism on western societies.

According to their warped analysis, violent radicalism is caused not by a barbaric, supremacist dogma but by deprivation, inequality, poor housing, unemployment or lack of education. In the wake of the Brussels massacre there has been a barrage of such rhetoric typified by the contribution from the Belgian politician MEP and federalist fanatic Guy Verhorfstadt.

To counter Islamism, he declared, “We must do much more to tackle the poverty and unemployment which prevails in so many communities. People who have no hope of employment and little opportunity are much easier to recruit”.

That is the kind of political masochism which passes for serious thought among the ranks of Europe’s elite. Yet the claim that economic factors lie behind militant Islam is a dangerous lie. 

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It has no basis in reality. Disadvantage and joblessness have nothing to do with the growing menace of jihadism in our midst, as is proved by the profiles of the terrorists. Last Friday Junead Khan from Luton was convicted of a plot to behead a US airman by the roadside in a Lee Rigby-style attack, then burn American and British flags at the scene of carnage.

But was Khan a deprived, marginalised individual without work or hope? Not at all. The son of a chef, he was employed as a driver by a pharmaceutical firm in Letchworth, that archetypal Home Counties location.

He had previously worked for several big retail chains. It was Muslim fundamentalism, not poverty, which turned him into a terrorist.

That is the pattern with extremism, contrary to all fashionable handwringing. The notorious Islamic State butcher Muhammad Emwazi, better known as Jihadi John, was brought up in affluent northwest London, graduated in business management from the University of Westminster and was regarded as an excellent salesman at the IT company where he worked.

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Osama Bin Laden came from an incredibly rich Saudi family

It is the same wherever hardline Islam rears its malignant head. Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden came from an incredibly rich Saudi family, whose wealth was estimated in 2009 at more than £5billion.

The perpetrator of the massacre on the Tunisian beach last year, in which 38 people died, was a university electrical engineering student. The cause is the warped ideology, not the economy.
A report from MI5 in 2011 revealed that two-thirds of British terror suspects were from middle-class backgrounds. “There is no simplistic relationship between poverty and involvement with Islamic extremism,” said the report.

That point is graphically illustrated by the case of Sana Ahmed Khan, who was convicted last December of plotting to become Britain’s first female suicide bomber on the tenth anniversary of the London 7/7 attacks. A “mild-mannered and polite” teaching assistant, she was brought up in suburban Reading, where her father is a chauffeur and her mother is a JP, school governor and council manager. 

The apologists always screech that “education” is the way to combat jihadism but that is just another attempt to evade reality. In fact a high level of education is one of the distinguishing features of extremists. One global study found that no fewer than 48 per cent of jihadists around the world had been through some kind of higher education.

Both the killers of Lee Rigby attended Greenwich University, while Tarik Hussane, convicted a fortnight ago of plotting a bloodbath on the streets of London, was a medical student. Nor is successful qualification any bar to terrorism: Bilal Abdullah, the leader of the Glasgow airport attack in 2007, was an NHS doctor.

The denial of the truth about radical Islam has arisen because in the fashionable circles where the creed of political correctness prevails, ethnic minorities are always held to be the victims while traditional western societies are the oppressors. So the West and its allies are really to blame for any terrorist attack they endure.

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Both the killers of Lee Rigby attended Greenwich University

Added to this is the reluctance to admit that the elite’s experiment in open borders, free movement and multiculturalism has been a disastrous failure, promoting social disintegration and the import of extremism. In the sick mindset of the apologists, if their doctrinaire approach is breeding chaos and fear then it must be the fault of the public and civic institutions for not embracing diversity with sufficient enthusiasm.

But as we can see from the mounting catalogue of atrocities, this outlook is highly dangerous. By pretending that terrorism is caused by our actions, it undermines our ability to defend our civilisation.

At the same time it provides a spurious legitimacy to the alleged grievances of the terrorists, thereby fuelling the climate of victimhood in which extremism flourishes. Moreover, the blather about poverty is profoundly insulting to people who live in genuinely tough circumstances but are never remotely inspired to murder.

The problem of radicalisation lies entirely with some branches of Islam. Europe has bent over backwards to welcome Muslims yet in every country this tolerance has been rewarded by some with seething discontent, violence and a refusal to integrate. This process will only accelerate as long as apologists have any influence.