Her Majesty's secret service.

• Author: Simon, Steven
• Position: Islamic extremism and the secret services in the UK

SHORTLY AFTER the Madrid bombings in March 2004, British security services seized a 1,000-pound cache of fertilizer used to make explosives in a raid on a self-storage facility in West London. This discovery prompted the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Home Office jointly to undertake a detailed examination--entitled "Young Muslims and Extremism" and leaked to the London Times--of the security risks posed by the UK's 1.6 million-strong Muslim population. The study drew heavily on the assessments of MIS, the UK's domestic intelligence agency.

The study's findings were highly disheartening from Her Majesty's Government's point of view. They revealed that jihadi groups were heavily recruiting educated British Muslims. Also cited were Muslims' social marginalization and a perceived anti-Islamic bias of British foreign and security policies--especially with respect to the UK's participation in the U.S.-led Iraq War and the police authorities' disproportionate arrests and detentions of Muslims--as key contributors to the inclination of some toward extremism and violence. The study identified two extremist recruiting organizations with high profiles in Britain: Hizb ut-Tahrir and its offshoot, Al-Muhajiroun. Both call for the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate. Al-Muhajiroun has additionally designated as apostate any Muslim entering the employ of the British state, extolled the 9/11 bombers as the "Magnificent 19", and endorsed the hostage-taking and massacre of children in Beslan. (1) Further, the FCO/Home Office paper cited two primary policy goals: first, "to isolate extremists within the Muslim community, and to provide support to moderates", and second, "to help prevent young Muslims from becoming ensnared or bullied into participation in terrorist or extremist activity." At the time the study was leaked, the UK government had already taken some measures to implement these policies. These included ministerial outreach to British Muslim community groups, briefings to Muslim representatives, and discussions with Muslim youth and student organizations; rigorous enforcement of anti-discrimination laws; distribution of a (purportedly) well-received "think again" CD-ROM explaining UK policies and other "mainstreaming" literature; training programs for foreign imams to give them a better understanding of problems faced by British Muslims; and tailoring financial instruments to Islamic strictures to facilitate property ownership. The British government, however, decided that UK policy needed "further consideration", which meant a concerted program with covert as well as overt elements that was "fundamentally cross-governmental ... and properly costed and resourced", to both integrate and co-opt British Muslims and reduce their threat. A program emerged, codenamed Operation Contest.

The idea was that MI5 would lead an all-out interagency effort to win Muslim hearts and minds while also more directly preventing imminent radicalization. The FCO and the Home Office continued to conduct very public community relations and anti-discrimination efforts and added focus groups to their repertoire. But MI5 and other law-enforcement and intelligence agencies also dispatched hundreds of undercover officers in regional "intelligence cells" or "Muslim Contact Units" to monitor suspected terrorists and mapped the "terrorist career path" in order to develop a comprehensive "interventions strategy" whereby government agencies would confront Muslims at "key trigger points" before they were drawn into the radical fold. The heightened British effort did not stop the horrific terrorist bombings in London on July 7 or the attempted bombings on July 21, both of which were committed by upstart groups composed mainly of British Muslims who subscribe to the worldview of Osama bin Laden. Still, there is little doubt that the mobilization of MI5 has better prepared the UK to deal with a security problem that, given the concentration of Muslims in Europe and their ability to navigate the region quietly and relatively unobtrusively, stands to become even more acute. Europe, including the UK, is nearing a tipping point at which localized Muslim insurgencies could become a fact of life. After all, the population of the European Union includes roughly 15 million Muslims (about 4 percent), and that component is set to double by 2025--a consequence of both immigration and high fertility rates.

Europe's Crisis

EUROPEAN MUSLIM terrorists are increasingly homegrown, and European intelligence agencies generally agree that most European jihadists (roughly two-thirds) are upwardly mobile. Consistent with this consensus, the UK's study notes that while extremist recruits can be underachievers who may have resorted to criminality, the other likely pool consists of university undergraduates with technical qualifications...