Westerners who blame their own governments unwittingly aid the terrorists, former extremist says

Westerners who blame their own governments for the rise of Islamist extremism are unwittingly doing "propaganda work" for the terrorists themselves. So says a former Islamist extremist in Britain, who blames militant ideologues who seek an Islamist state in what they see as a world of unbelievers.

"By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us," the former Islamist extremist, Hassan Butt, writes in the Daily Mail.

"More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

"The attempts to cause mass destruction in London and Glasgow are so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that they are likely to have been carried out by my former peers.

"And as with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy.

"For example, on Saturday on Radio 4's Today programme, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone [pictured], said: 'What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq.'

"I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers. But if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again.

"And though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice."