...London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, in his response to the bombings, and the forces behind them, declared: "That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is." These words, in their determination to pry the bombings away from any political or ideological context, encapsulate the problem.....

....The result of this for me was the spending of more dreary evenings than I care to remember in obscure mosques in working-class areas of the city, listening to Arab Islamist exiles such as the Syrian-born Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, and the Saudi Mohammed Masari, exhorting small audiences of young Muslim men toward involvement in the jihad. ...