Could it be that young Muslim people are being radicalised by the facts? "We" (the British state) first invaded Iraq 100 years ago. The last time we repeated the favour we killed a million people, many of them children (according to The Lancet; the figures were initially disputed by the Ministry of "Defence" to much press fanfare, but they later conceded that they had been calculated faithfully according to the army's own methods — to much less press attention).

Closer to home we can find hundreds of billions to support troubled banks while closing hospitals because "we can't afford them". In recent years more people in the US have been killed by the police than in foreign wars while 48,000 US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are homeless. And these are just examples plucked from the top of my head at random.

I think I read some Chomsky a while back that talked about The Age of Fear — permanent war, provocation of terrorism, growing poverty and government-sponsored ignorance, not to mention the inability of The System to count the rape of the planet as of sufficient significance to warrant challenging Shareholder Value. It's no wonder half the population are taking prescription drugs!

I feel pretty radicalised myself. The shame is not that young people are feeling so disgusted with all this that they consider desperate measures1, but that there aren't more obvious alternative directions for their anger. Time for a Rɘvo⅃ution, perhaps?!

Footnotes

  1. Still, free nutella makes an attractive offer!