Excerpts. Read the whole thing.
Let’s not be parochial. The world is in the grip of an epidemic of Islamist terror. Of the last 16 years, the worst year was 2014, with 93 countries experiencing attacks and close to 33,000 people killed. The second worst was 2015, with over 29,000 victims. In that year, four radical Islamic groups were responsible for three quarters of all deaths from terrorism: Islamic State, Boko Haram, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda.
Although Muslim-majority countries suffer the most from jihadist violence, the West is increasingly under attack. There were 64 ISIS-affiliated attacks in Western countries in 2015, including the massacres in Paris (137 dead) and Orlando (50 dead). Thus far, Britain has got off lightly.
No doubt there will whining about security lapses in the Masood case. But the reality is that only the constant vigilance of the UK security services has stopped many more people from being killed in the past dozen years. In 2014 and 2015, there were more terrorism-related arrests than in any year since 2000. What we must face is that even this intensified effort cannot pre-empt every jihadist.
The term “lone wolf” is a misleading one. No one becomes a jihadist all by himself, just by watching beheading videos. As my wife Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues in a powerful new report, jihad is always preceded by dawa — the process of non-violent but toxic radicalization that transforms the petty criminal into a zealot.
The network of dawa takes many different forms. In the UK a key role was played by the organization Al Muhajiroun (The Emigrants), to which Anjem Choudary belonged before his arrest. But there are many less visible organizations busily spreading the mind-poison.