More About 7/7

Three men have been charged in connection with the 7/7 terrorist attacks. As a result more information has been revealed about the plot.

The Evening Standard reports that the four suicide bombers had thought about attacking Big Ben, The London Eye and even Buckingham Palace, before deciding that the Tube network was the better target.

Peter Clarke, head of Counter Terrorism Command, told the media that he knew "for a fact" that there were more people involved and compared the situation to a puzzle with thousands of pieces. He said:

It's probably fair to describe it as a complicated jigsaw with thousands of pieces. We now have enough of the pieces in the right places for us to see the picture but it is far from complete. Because of that, the search is not over. I firmly believe that there are other people who have knowledge of what lay behind the attack in July 2005 – knowledge that they have not shared with us. In fact I don't only believe it, I know it for a fact.

More worryingly, though, he revealed that people in the area where the bombers lived knew more but were being forced to keep silent. He said:

I have a simple appeal to make today. It is for those people who have information and who have not yet spoken to us, mainly in the West Yorkshire area, to come forward. I do understand that some of you will have real concerns about the consequences of telling us what you know. I also know that some of you have been actively dissuaded from speaking to us. Surely this must stop.

As The Telegraph puts it:

Winning hearts and minds is one thing. But the police need Muslims to be eyes and ears as well, because it is in their communities that the menace lurks.

Let's hope that the silent majority of Muslims will realise that labelling any attempt to link terrorism and Islam as Islamophobia will only raise suspicions further. Let's hope that Muslims decide that their faith does actually abhor the killing of innocent people. Let's hope that the normal majority will start to stand up to the bullies and reclaim their religion. Because, at the moment, the only people in the world who can effectively stop Islamic terrorism are the Muslim people themselves. It's just a question of whether they want to.