I’m afraid the culture that produced ‘Londonistan’ is rather more sinister than the opportunism that the Director-General of Al-Arabiya TV offers as an explanation in the post below. Carol Gould wrote this prescient article last month:

‘The fundamental problem is that in the USA nobody, not even the most erudite and highly placed, understands that it is NOT just al Jazeera that is affecting world and Muslim opinion but the British and European news media, who powerfully influence the 15-odd million highly literate Muslims living in the UK and continental Europe. What, one may ask, does an irate columnist in a London tabloid have to say that could inspire an otherwise rational young man or woman to strap themselves with explosives or arm themselves with box cutters bent on bombing or hijacking Americans and Jews?

‘For the past five years in the UK AN Wilson; Brian Sewell; Polly Toynbee, the 'Daily Mirror' and its own John Pilger; 'The New Statesman' of 'Kosher Conspiracy' fame; Margaret Drabble; Richard Ingrams; Robert Fisk, Sir David Hare; Ahdaf Soueif; Faisal Bodi and many others including Kate Adie of BBC Radio 4 and Jon Snow of Channel Four have waged a biased and often vituperative campaign of journalistic vilification of the USA, Israel and the 'Zionist cabal' running America. Often their content is distorted and flawed; one fears the exaggerated claims of Zionist and American imperialism being promulgated across Britain and Europe by these journalists does indeed have a profound effect on impressionable young minds across the globe. I believe that a group of young Muslims -- we have already seen this in Brixton-based Richard Reid and Zaccarious Moussaoui -- being fed a daily dose of invective about Jews, Israelis and evil Americans will eventually commit acts to express their outrage.

‘The world wide web enables anyone to click onto a piece that suggests the United States is a rogue state (John Pilger in the July 4th 2002 edition of ‘The Daily Mirror’) and to an editorial by Faisal Bodi in ‘The Guardian’ (January 2001) that exhorts ‘Israel Simply Has no Right to Exist.‘ Virtually every day and evening, someone from an angry Muslim sect or pressure group is on TV or radio in the UK and Europe hosted by a grovelling anchor, ranting about American genocide and oppression and about the 'soiling' of Muslim lands when Americans set foot there. Very rarely do moderate Muslims, or those like Walid Shoebat, who admire the way Israel has risen form the ashes of Auschwitz to be a beacon of advancement and culture in the desert, have a voice in an increasingly anti-American and anti-Jewish Europe…

‘The head of Scotland Yard has expressed his despair that he believes 100 al Qaeda operatives are flourishing in Britain. I have met white, well-heeled citizens who have expressed enthusiasm for Hamas and who have said they wish more Jews and Americans would die in the next terror attacks. One somehow feels Tony Blair no longer possesses the power to deal with this situation, as an entire generation of young Muslims and indeed young Britons is being force-fed one viewpoint about the evil empire USA and its Zionist-apartheid supporters.'