Islam

It’s not quite the “we got him” moment, as when US soldiers unearthed the fugitive Iraqi dictator. But the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a top militant commander who is said to be second in command to elusive Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mohhamad Omar, may be even more significant. By the time Saddam Hussein had been caught, the US was fighting a different enemy, though the Pentagon leadership had not realised yet. Baradar, who was in charge of the insurgency’s day-to-day operations on behalf of the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s leadership council, is very much today’s enemy - and his seizure should not be underestimated.

After the London conference, it is clear that “talking to the Taliban” will become part of the strategy in Afghanistan. But the conference left a number of important questions about what this means in practice unanswered. Talking to the Taliban is not a new idea. Even though he expelled a British and Irish diplomat for holding secret talks with Taliban in December 2007, President Karzai has become an advocate for such negotiations over the last two years. In the Spring of 2009, Saudi Arabia hosted tentative negotiations between Karzai’s representatives and former Taliban, with links to the current movement. But the idea now has a head of steam behind it.

Irony of ironies, proselytising liberal and convinced egalitarian, Anjem Choudary, told the Today programme that the banning of Islam4UK, al-Muhajiroun and their aliases is a ‘failure of democracy’. A further irony is that he is right, sort of. Alan Johnson's decision is understandable but incorrect; the surest way to silence these repugnant extremists and reactionaries is through equality and free debate, even though they hold those principles in contempt. The members of Islam4UK abuse freedom to peddle their reactionary ideals and disregard their duties towards society, but that is no reason to proscribe the group.

It is a truth, yet to be universally acknowledged, that the overwhelming majority of global terrorism is committed by radical Muslims. However, the Guardian reports that Whitehall has reached that conclusion and passenger profiling is “in the mix” of the latest airport security review. Thank God, sense prevails at last. The previous airport review, conducted in the aftermath of the liquid bomb plot, decided against profiling. What followed was a fatuous politically correct concoction. Even pilots’ toothpaste was examined; one pilot commented: “If I want to kill everyone (on board) I don’t faff around with plastic explosives, I point the nose at the ground”. Such determined absurdity should be behind us.

It is a depressing fact that the Detroit bomber appears to have been radicalised in London. Today, the New York Times takes an extensive look at the bomber’s radicalisation in London. As the paper, which is not prone to hyperbole, says: “Investigators are now, in fact, turning a sharper and retrospective eye to the passage in Mr. Abdulmutallab’s life that began immediately after his summer in Sana, Yemen, in 2005, when he enrolled as a $25,000-a-year mechanical engineering student at University College London. In recent days, officials in Washington and London have said they are focusing on the possibility that his London years, including his possible contacts with radical Muslim groups in Britain, were decisive in turning him toward Islamic extremism.