...another good article. Makes you think that may be we should be putting more effort into making sure the moderate voices in the Muslim world are heard and acknowledged. By focussing on our common distaste for a world comprised of Islamic states where the only Law is Sharia, we can perhaps more readily isolate the terrorists, denying them future support, funds and recruits.
Imagine an Australia like this....
9 July 2005 SO WHAT DO THEY WANT? By Terrorism Expert Kevin Toolis IF the Islamic fanatics who bombed London ever achieved their aims and took power, Britain would become an Iranian-style Islamic Republic.
All contact between the sexes would be banned. Discos, bars, public swimming pools, youth clubs - anywhere women and men could meet - would be closed down. Sunbathing, beach holidays and all forms of female sport would be outlawed. Fashion magazines such as Vogue could only be published if all images of female flesh were blacked out.
It would be a crime for a woman to walk with her hair uncovered in public. Instead, all women, even girls as young as four, would be forced to wear hijab - an all-encompassing headscarf and baggy clothes to disguise her body shape even in the height of summer.
Bikinis, skimpy clothes, any garment revealing a women's curves would be suppressed.
The only men a British woman would be allowed to meet would be her immediate male relatives - although men would be allowed to marry up to four wives.
Education would be rigidly segregated and all forms of mixed entertainment banned.
The streets of every British city would be patrolled by special religious police who would enforce this Islamic dress code and arrest any suspected "courting couples".
Anyone suspected of committing adultery would be hanged or stoned to death in public at the new Wembley stadium. Britain would be ruled by a special council of Islamic Guardians who would oversee all laws and determine who could stand for Parliament.
The only people allowed to become MPs would be those deemed by these Islamic clerics to have the right attitude to the rule of Islam and the British Islamic Republic.
The Royal family would be killed or driven into exile. An Islamic Britain would declare war on the United States.
Every aspect of life - from family barbecues, to who sat next to whom in restaurants - would be determined by a strict Islamic code.
All other religious groups, from Christians to Jews, would be expected to adopt the same sort of rules. The Koran, not a constitution or a legal system, would be regarded as the only source of authority or justice.
Those who blasphemed or criticised it - such as author Salman Rushdie - would be executed. To normal people, the idea of Britain ever becoming an Islamic Republic seems insane.
But to the fanatics behind the Tube bombings, taking power in a major Western European state is just part of their holy jihad against the West.
At the root of the Islamic philosophy of Osama bin Laden and his followers is the belief that America and its allies, such as Britain, are occupying Muslim lands and waging a modern-day Christian crusade against Islam.
Osama bin Laden wants to turn the historical clock back to the 13th century when the Islamic empire of the Ottomans stretched from the deserts of China to Spain and to the gates of Vienna in Austria. These fanatics believe that the presence of US and British troops in Iraq and Saudi Arabia is just part of the United States' plan to dominate the world and control the world's oil supplies.
If they won their war of terror, bin Laden would take control of the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia, expel all American troops from Iraq and wipe the Jewish state of Israel off the map. They want Islam, not the United States, to rule the world and they are prepared to use any means - terrorism, hijacking and suicide bombing - to further their aim.
ALTHOUGH the attacks in London were deadly, they were not a repeat of 9/11. The London attackers did not have the capacity to launch the same level of attack that resulted in the Twin Towers' collapse and a huge death toll.
The relatively small amount of explosives used also suggests that the Islamic terror cell is small and isolated and without access to the sort of funds and ready supply of bomb-making material that characterised previous al-Qaeda attacks.
On the surface, these elements suggest that the London attackers are likely to come from within Britain's own Islamic communities rather than be sleeper cells sent from abroad.
Fighting such terror cells, and suicide bombers, is a huge intelligence task. By the time the terrorists are ready to plant the bombs it is too late.
In a very brutal way, a suicide bomber is just a means of delivering a bomb and a puppet of the recruiters and organisers who send him.
The only real way to stop similar terrorist outrages is to find and eliminate the leaders while they are planning their atrocities.
And the only real way to do that is to recruit a network of spies among the Islamic extremists in Britain and abroad.
The bombings hint at a failure of MI5 to counter the Islamic terror threat. At the moment, MI5 and the Metropolitan police simply don't have enough Arabic-speaking officers to infiltrate the Islamic terror cells.
They simply don't have enough people who understand the language. And if you can't understand the language, how can you expect to understand the mindset of the enemy?
The fuel for this home-grown fanaticism has been America's support for Israel in the Middle East and the invasion of Iraq.
If the Arab-Israeli conflict was successfully resolved, this would weaken support for the fanatics' cause and help stabilise an inflamed region. But it would not make the threat disappear entirely.
The men who planted bombs on London's Tube and a bus to kill and maim did so because they see everything about the West as corrupt and evil. Killing the innocent was just part of their greater crusade.
They think they are fighting for the future of the entire world, for a universal Islamic state that will rule every human life. We must do all in our power to destroy them before they try again to destroy our way of life.
