After a year of thinking hard, British criminologists have concluded that the terrorists who perpetrated the devastating suicide bombings in London on July 7, 2005, were motivated not by radical Islam, but out of a compulsion to prove their masculinity.

The Sunday Heraldreported on the academic paper presented to the British Society of Criminology’s international conference in Glasgow:

Dr. Antony Whitehead, a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Huddersfield, said: “The bombers have said that they are motivated by loyalty to Allah, which they may entirely believe. But if you are going to start to unpick their motivation, you need to consider their experience as young men as much as their adherence to Islam.”It’s a very understandable dynamic. Young Muslim men in the British culture experience a lot of internalized pressure to conform to the idea of manhood—the ideal of courage and standing up for yourself. … We are coming at this from the wrong angle. We are making the assumption that it’s all about Islam.”

This absurd conclusion is but one more piece of evidence demonstrating the almost peerlessly ridiculous, ostrich-like approach the British are taking to the massive and mounting problem with Islam in their midst.