And, more to the point, who we must watch.

There are lessons to be drawn from the German terrorism arrests yesterday.

Some obvious points: these men are educated, two of three are German nationals, all seem to have been trained not in Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, a putative ally. It is hard to see how the Iraq war - whether a failure or a success - would have any impact on this tiny cell's attempt at mass murder in the name of God. This is simply the religious violence we have to contend with for the indefinite future. All we can do is what the Germans did: keep up surveillance (with protections against abuse), and run as many to ground as we can.

And this means, unfortunately, greater surveillance of mosques and other Muslim groups, no matter what their composition. It means a willingness to look at the Muslim community intensively, because that is where the violence and terrorism has taken root.

This is not to say that all Muslims are terrorists -- far from it. But unfortunately, the bulk of terrorists today are Muslims of one stripe or another, and we cannot ignore that fact. And as long as Muslim groups run to the defense of any accused individual, and as long as the Muslim community silently allows such extremism to grow in its midst, an cloud of suspicion will unfortunately hang over the community as a whole.

Posted by: Greg at 10:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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