Home grown terrorists

My image of suicide bombers used to be desperate people, perhaps born into a world where all they know is the honor of martyrdom, people who feel that the only way to speak out is to cause horrific violence for their cause. In Palestine where families hold parties for their children before they cross the border into Israel to blow innocent people apart, in Iraq where insurgent forces’ most effective weapon is random violence inflicted again on innocent people.

That view has now been all but shattered, the lives of the British suicide bombers who attacked the London transport system appear to be very normal, among then, a teaching assistant who was well liked by his pupils, a couple of teenagers finding it hard to fit in, but not unusual these days, and a young parent, married at 19 with two children. Two of them did have a mildly violent past, but nothing more than scraps in the schoolyard.

While we must pursue the terror network that allowed these people to attack London in such a horrific way, we must also start to understand why these people, some with young families and all with comfortable lives felt it necessary to commit this atrocity, only then will we stand a chance of defeating the threat.