Now they’re your jihadists, not ours.

last updated 8 January 2015

Algeria

Editorial

Britain wants to dump its terrorism problem on us, said Algiers’ Liberté in an editorial. How hypocritical. For years, the Brits “tolerated, encouraged, even financed” the Islamic radicals who claimed responsibility for attacks in Algeria. “In the name of the sacrosanct principle of human rights,” criminals wanted by Algerian authorities gained asylum in Britain and even received government handouts. But now that it’s Londoners, not Africans, being blown to bits, all of a sudden the radicals are being deported. The British seem to believe that the Islamic radicals who openly used London as a base of operation are the responsibility of Islamic countries. We didn’t invent this radicalism, remember. It was Western involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s that started the whole movement. Sending the radicals back to Muslim countries now “smacks of racism,” because it implies that terrorists belong among Muslims. It may be true that the destruction of Islamic radicalism must start in Muslim countries. But “the West must also shoulder responsibility for the monster it nurtured.”