Op-Ed: The West v Islam?
There are some in Britain, the US and elsewhere who are intent on portraying the West and Islam as a clash of civilisations or as democracy versus the forces of darkness, but is this really the case?
It may be a cliché, but the world really did change forever on September 11, 2001. For those people in Britain who had no strong connection with the United States, that change could no longer be denied when on July 7, 2005, a “lesser” outrage occurred in London. Four suicide bombers from outside the capital boarded a train at Luton, and shortly murdered 52 innocent people as well as injuring hundreds; the victims included foreign tourists. The 7/7 cell consisted of 4 Moslems; 3 of Asian extraction, and one black. The Asians had all been born and raised in West Yorkshire, and the black, Germaine Lindsay (aka Abdullah Shaheed Jamal) although a native of Jamaica, had also grown up in Yorkshire. Under other circumstances they might have regarded themselves as Yorkshiremen, and would probably have been accepted as such by most of their white neighbours, albeit at times with some reservations.
