The myth of al-Qu'ida

This story and an opinion piece in yesterdays independent reminded me why i hate so much of tabloid journalism, although to be fair it's not only the sensationalist tabloids that are guilty of myth making. It has suited US/UK security forces to have the image of "al-Qa'ida as a global conspiracy with tentactles in every Western capital" when the reality doesn't really match up.

Like the BBC article says the pair arrested do not appear to have had any contact with a wider terrorist network and that ties in with the opinion of James Harkin whilst writing in the independent that these recent events have been more inspired by surfing the the internet. Which seems to also fit in with earlier an blog where i was reading about possible root causes of young british muslim men being involved in terrorism.

So possibly the new terrorism laws which seek to make even looking at certain sites illegal have some basis in logic but i'd suggest that you are better of doing more than just treating the visible symptoms. Websites glorifying Jihad against the west may exist but it's not the looking at them in itself that is a problem, for one thing like watching a violent film it does not make a rational person want to kill people and secondly if the west wasn't responsible for so much that is wrong in the middle east we might have any sort of Jihadis at all. Or if we did they would be about the same sort of sad deluded individuals that make up the public image of Settler watch* in Scotland.

*I only really scanned this link, but it does seem to give the pertinent details of Settler Watch. Indeed from bit i read it suggested it wasn't even remotely as sinsiter as the press suggested it to be at the time. I'll read it more closely later.