Terror in the Skies

Panorama's Terror in the Skies is on the BBC iPlayer. Good stuff, very well done. I watched a lot of this trial and was as surprised as these guys relatives seemed to be that such mild mannered people would attempt something like this. I was also surprised that the jury believed Mohammed Gulzar. I'm not saying I didn't believe him, watching him give evidence he seemed very convincing. I'm glad I wasn't on the jury.

The last statement about "Wondering where the devil they might have been radicalized" is the usual TV terror thing which gets my goat. This seems ridiculous to me. Is the suggestion that Al-Qaeda types are spiriting around mosques with swinging pocket watches? I don't get it.

Muslim kids are growing up together, they see what is happening in Palestine, they understand that it couldn't happen without masses of US tax dollars. They see the West is propping up corrupt dictators, one after another in Muslim countries. This is common knowledge, its not a conspiracy theory. I wonder. Do they feel small? Powerless? Angry maybe? How does this shape these peoples lives? I was very surprised by 7/7, afterwards I have been more surprised how relatively few Muslims are reacting like this over here. Don't get me wrong, I could never actively support the notion of an Islamic state, it would suppress the free choice of a lot of my friends. I can see though that it must be obvious to every Muslim that an Islamic state is being actively suppressed by some major power groups worldwide, and this is what radicalizes them.