exploring muslim identities in europe & north america

Today, in The Guardian's ' Comment is Free ' columns, Seumas Milne argues 'denying a link between western wars in the Muslim world and the backlash on our streets only fuels Islamophobia and bloodshed'.  In what will be seen by many as a controversial argument, Milne re-establishes the obvious (or what should have been obvious) link between the war on terror , its 'dehumanization' and transmutation into a war where borders are irrelevant on the one hand and terrorist attacks such as the one that took place in Woolwich last May. To say these attacks are about "foreign policy" prettifies the reality. They are the predicted consequence of an avalanche of violence unleashed by the US, Britain and others in eight direct military interventions in Arab and Muslim countries that have left hundreds of thousands of dead. Only the willfully blind or ignorant can be shocked when there is blowback from that onslaught at home. The surprise should be

A couple of days before the horrific Woolwich events, I was checking the Quilliam Foundation website - a site that has proved to be a reliable barometer of trends in  a government-sponsored industry that claims to have the answer to  islamic radicalism. The 'in the media' section of the website featured on the entry page was dominated by a striking headline on Boston:  Boston, the latest 'Triumph' of a Global Jihad Brand . Less than 48 hours later, the terrible news of the Woolwich attack on the unfortunate British soldier reached me  My first reaction was one of horror, and I think I was not alone in feeling and thinking in this way. How can something like this happen in the middle of a busy neighbourhood in the capital of the country? Especially after Boston, is this 'solitary' type of violence going to become the pattern of 'terrorism'? And, upon reflection, could one speak of a terrorist crime in this instance? In some ways, the effect of th