Daniel Pipes draws attention to an excellent document produced by the New York Police Department on Muslim radicalisation in the west. This reveals a sound and sophisticated grasp of what drives western Muslims into the arms of the Islamists:

The trans-national phenomenon of radicalization in the West is largely a function of the people and the environment they live in. Much different from the Israeli- Palestinian equation, the transformation of a Western-based individual to a terrorist is not triggered by oppression, suffering, revenge, or desperation. Rather, it is a phenomenon that occurs because the individual is looking for an identity and a cause and unfortunately, often finds them in the extremist Islam…

The jihadist ideology combines the extreme and minority interpretation [jihadi- Salafi] of Islam with an activist-like commitment or responsibility to solve global political grievances through violence. Ultimately, the jihadist envisions a world in which jihadi-Salafi Islam is dominant and is the basis of government. This ideology is proliferating in Western democracies at a logarithmic rate. Salafi literature, jihadi videotapes, extremist-sponsored trips to radical madrassas and militant training camps abroad have served as ‘extremist incubators’ for young, susceptible Muslims — especially ones living in diaspora communities in the West.

How refreshing to find a police force that does not take refuge in idiotic euphemisms or western-hating excuses for Islamist terrorism, as do the British police, but gets to the point. Unlike their British counterparts, the NYPD has now realised that the threat to the west does not arise with the terrorist plot but far, far earlier, when the process of radicalisation begins. And it’s that process that the west has so conspicuously failed to address.

It’s the ideology, stupid…