Yet another “home grown” terrorist

Abdul Mutallab’s attempt to murder nearly 300 people by blowing himself up on a Detroit-bound plane failed. But his attack does show how mortally wounded Britain’s society is.

Mutallab was no poor, deprived victim of supposed evil Western oppression—as the media often portrays terrorists. Instead he was a well-off and well-educated young man. Mutallab studied engineering at University College, London (ucl)—a member of the British equivalent of the Ivy League. He is the son of a former Nigerian minister and prominent banker. His family has a home in Central London. He did not grow up in Britain—and he left Britain when he finished studying at ucl. Even at high school he had a reputation for his extreme views.

He went on to try to be a suicide bomber after studying at one of Britain’s top universities.

“So once again we see the foolishness of complaceniks who drone the fatuous clichés about how ‘in this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs,’” wrote Mark Steyn—quoting Sen. John McCain. “The men eager to self-detonate on infidel airliners are not goatherds from the caves of Waziristan but educated middle-class Muslims who have had the most exposure to the Western world and could be pulling down six-figure salaries almost anywhere on the planet. And don’t look to ‘assimilation’ to work its magic, either. We’re witnessing a process of generational de-assimilation: In this family, yet again, the dad is an entirely assimilated member of the transnational elite. His son wants a global caliphate run on Wahhabist lines.”

British education did not fix Mutallab’s radicalism. This man did not attack because he was poor and frustrated. This terrorist attack proves that our governments do not know what causes the problem of radical Islam, or how to fix it. To understand the problem of radical Islam in Britain, see our article “The Sickness in Britain’s Heart.”