According to recent reports, several Muslims from Britain were involved in the terror plot in Mumbai, India, in which at least 155 people were killed this week. 

Indian sources say that eight terrorists were taken captive by commandos who stormed the Taj Mahal Hotel and center for Orthodox Jews in Mumbai, two of whom were Pakistanis living in Britain.

According to the Daily Mail, as many as seven of the terrorists may have been from Britain. They could very well be from the same cities, Leeds and Bradford, as the extremists who gave Britain its own 9/11, namely 7/7.

It is not for the first time that Pakistani-Brits were involved in a major terrorist attack. 7/7 too was carried out, mostly, by British Muslims from Pakistani origins. 

Britain truly has a massive extremist problem. For decades, the British government prided itself in its willingness and ‘ability’ to provide a home for extremists of all stripes. These individuals were chased out of the countries they were born in (in the Middle East, southeast Asia, Iran, etc.) because the governments feared them and their views. Britain thought it could control such extremists, keep them in check.

Slowly but surely even the country’s Labor Party has to wake up to the reality that no one can keep extremists ‘in check.’ As the blog the Jawa Report words it: “And if British born Pakistanis were involved, you can bet that they were indoctrinated into the Salfi jihadist worldview at home and down at the local mosque. And judging from their ages, it’s probably a good bet that they found a virtual community online which shared their jihadi views and encouraged this type of atrocity.”

“Britain has big problems. Wouldn’t want to be in their shoes,” the blog’s Rusty Shackleford rightfully writes.

Sadly, Labor seems to draw the wrong lessons from the different terrorist attacks. Instead of treating extremism with zero tolerance, increasingly more Laborites are preparing to “incorporate Sharia into the British legal system.” 

The reasoning behind this idea is that Laborites think they can appease extremists by giving them their own courts, and their own rules to live by. In effect, you could say that the Brits are thinking about adopting the old Ottoman Millet system in which different (religious) groups lived by different rules and in different communities. This way, Laborites seem to believe, extremists get what they want and all can live happily ever after. Except for Muslims who do not want to live under Sharia of course.

As the Brits will learn pretty quickly, that is distinctly not how extremists think. Fundamentalists and extremists are not the same thing; fundamentalists want to live as they believe ‘true Muslims / Christians / Jews / Hindus’ should do, mostly as they did back in the early days of the religion they belong to. They do not care much about others. It is all about their own way of life. 

Extremists, on the other hand, want others to live in the same way as well. Whether those others like it or not, and whether those others are Muslim / Christian / Jew / Hindu or not is irrelevant. Unbelievers have to live like extremist believers tell them to. The same goes, needless to say, for moderate or normal believers. 

Giving these groups what they want is exactly the wrong approach. They will become worse, they will be emboldened, telling themselves (and rightfully so) that terrorism works. More terrorist attacks will be carried out, British extremists will become increasingly aggressive. They will start by dominating and truly ruling over immigrant communities, where all non-extremists are oppressed, threatened, beaten up and worse. Once they are in control of these communities, they will try to force their way of life on the average Brit who either is not very religious at all or Christian.

There is only one right way to respond to these attacks and demands: crush extremists. 

And before Laborites tell me that this would probably anger moderate Muslims: if you do it without declaring war on Islam as a whole, and without giving people the idea that you’re targeting all Muslims not just extremists, it will not anger moderate Muslims. In fact, they are the ones who are considered the first and true enemy of extremists. 

You see, extremists believe that for ‘glorious times’ to arrive, they need to force the ummah (community of believers) to live like extremists think the early Muslims did. They have to ‘clean up’ the community itself. This means that those Muslims who are ‘moderate’ either have to be forced to accept the rule of extremists or killed. The latter, of course, has the preference; killing some moderates results in the rest of the moderates at least pretending to be extremist if only to stay alive.

So no, a good, rational but aggressive policy towards the extremist problem will not necessarily result in angering moderate Muslims at all. Instead, if you reach out to those moderates, communicate with them, show them and the rest of the country that you support them and respect their view on Islam, and that only the extremists are the target, they will be grateful and supportive. 

The British government should act quickly in the manner described above. If it does not, my guess is that we will see many more attacks like the ones in Mumbai earlier this week; and not just in India, but also in Britain itself.