Islamic Extremism

Tony Blair has published a defence of his actions in Iraq and is now arguing for more intervention due to the ISIS extremists taking over the north of the country. In rebuttal, General Sir Michael Rose accuses him of self delusion whilst Boris Johnson writes in the Telegraph 
" I have come to the conclusion that Tony Blair has finally gone mad".
He continues
"He wrote an essay on his website on Sunday that struck me as unhinged in its refusal to face facts. In discussing the disaster of modern Iraq he made assertions that are so jaw-droppingly and breathtakingly at variance with reality that he surely needs professional psychiatric help."
I do hope both Boris' and the Telegraph's lawyers passed what what was written!

To me, it seems quite clear that the war in Iraq served to cause those Islamic organisations and countries which never had any animosity towards Britain to become "anti-Western", and for many to adopt extremist attitudes. Not only do we have ISIS operating in Iraq and Syria but also Boko Harem in Nigeria as well as al-Shabaab in Kenya, all of which are Islamic extremists prepared to kill and maim anyone who doesn't agree with their creed.

The worrying part, to me, is what is happening in this country. There are some 3 million Muslims living here and in the past year about another 300,000 people have been given British citizenship, the majority, one must assume coming from our erstwhile colonies in the Indian sub-continent, as EU citizens coming here have no reason to take out British citizenship.

Now if just a tenth of 1% of those Muslims in this country are extremists, that would represent a considerable force of some 3,000 or so who, if ISIS is anything to go by, could cause considerable havoc.

In order to visualise what damage such a small force could do, you only have to look at the damage that the IRA caused here. More to the point, one has to remember that the IRA had very little support here, whereas Muslim extremists could readily hid amongst amongst their own sort, who, whilst they would not necessarily approve of the extremists' action, are unlikely to do anything to prevent them if only because their religion effectively prohibits them from "telling tales".

Remember also that the IRA did their best to avoid getting killed or captured and this would to some extent limited their possible targets. In contrast, Islamic extremists, have no concern about being killed fighting for their cause, believing that they will end up in Paradise.

As the Israelis have discovered, it is extremely difficult to deal with suicide bombers as any attempt to arrest or search them merely leads to them detonating their bomb.

I just hope our authorities have given some real though to what could happen here and have some viable plans for dealing with such a situation when potentially some 5% of the population could be giving tacit support to the such extremists.