The Spectator’s Notes | 16 June 2007

Anyone who believes British Muslim hostility to the war in Iraq is the big motivator of terrorism should read the fascinating cover piece by Shiv Malik in the latest edition of Prospect. Investigating the background of the 7 July London bombings for a television drama (which the BBC, of course, eventually rejected as ‘anti-Muslim’), Malik found how Wahhabist Islamism did its work. Ten years ago, it took hold of the young Mohammad Sidique Khan. It was he who eventually led the suicide plot. What emerges from Malik’s inquiry is that Islamism, far from being a ‘mediaeval’ doctrine, as it is often described in the West, can be seen by its adherents as enticingly modern. One of the great issues among Pakistani immigrants here is whom they may marry. Their families usually uphold marriages arranged in the interests of tribal kinship. Islamism told Sidique Khan, who wanted to marry an Indian Muslim from a different tradition for love, that it was Islamic to do so.