The day after tomorrow, Britain commemorates a sombre anniversary that is also ringing the loudest of alarm bells. On year on from last July’s London bombings by two groups of British Muslim boys, the mortal threat to Britain from Islamist terror appears to have increased many times over.

We learn from the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Anti-Terrorism Branch, Peter Clarke, that no fewer than 70 further such terrorist plots are currently under investigation. That is a simply astounding number. This is not terrorism as conventionally understood, but a war.

I beg to differ here, a war is defined as a state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties, while terrorism is defined as the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organised group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons which look to be somewhat different things to me.

It seems Mel’s trying to get into the swing of this whole business of using ‘real life’ lessons in maths that’s been ptiched of late by Education Secretary, Alan Johnson… in fact you can easily see where this is heading…

Question 5.

If it takes four Islamic terrorists three months to plan a bombing in a London nightclub, how many terrorist plots must there be to make a war?

Meanwhile an opinion poll reveals that, while the vast majority of British Muslims do not support terror, a horrifying number do so; while even more harbour the kind of extremist views which create the sea in which terrorism swims.

Many thousands of British Muslims are patriotic, law-abiding citizens. Indeed, last weekend saw the death in action of a British Muslim soldier, Jabron Hashmi, who was killed fighting for his country against the Taleban in Afghanistan.

Nice of you to remember that, Mel… for a change.

Yet according to the Populus poll, 13 per cent of Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims believe the 7/7 bombers should be regarded as martyrs; between seven and 16 per cent per cent think suicide attacks on British targets can be justified; and two per cent would be proud if a family member joined al Qaeda, with a further 16 per cent who would be indifferent.

That represents hundreds of thousands of British Muslims who either justify or support the murder of their fellow citizens. These numbers are utterly appalling.

Moreover, they are consistent with many other similar findings. Only last week, a Pew opinion poll across Europe revealed that, while Britain was more sympathetic to its Muslim minority than was any other country, British Muslims hated their own country, the west and the Jews more than Muslims anywhere else.

Yet the air is currently thick with recriminations that Britain has failed to do more to win Muslim hearts and minds. Is this true? I’m afraid this misses the point.

Misses the point? Really? So what are we saying here out fount of all wisdom, that maybe we should be quite so curious as to wonder whether we might have done something to piss a few of these people off along the way, what the little matter of Iraq in the background?

The disturbing fact is that, even after 7/7, both the political and security establishment and large parts of the Muslim community are in a lethal state of denial. They are refusing to acknowledge the true causes of the terrorist threat and taking refuge instead in various alibis.

The essence of the problem is that it is not enough — necessary as it is — to detect and thwart terrorist plots. Just as crucial is to address the hatred and lies that are driving this murderous violence.

In particular, what needs to be combated with the utmost vigour is the Muslim culture of grievance, the paranoid belief that the west is engaged in a conspiracy to aggressively attack and destroy the Islamic world.

Right, so what you’re saying is there’s no need to consider why people might just a tad pissed off, because they;re fundamentally in the wrong for being pissed off in the first place?

This delusion has meant that many Muslims misrepresent Islamist aggression as self-defence, and the west’s attempt to defend itself as aggression. This double-think means that Britain is itself blamed for the attacks mounted upon it.

Right so when Muslims attack Britain and call it self-defence, they’re wrong but when Britain invades Iraq, which had fuck all to do with Al-Qaeda until we piled in there – we’re right – and they’re the ones with exclusivity on double-think… right… now, what section of the Mental Health Act was it, again?

But as the Met’s Peter Clarke has observed, the actual causes are far deeper and more intractable. They lie in a deadly intersection between Islamist radicalism and the alienation of many British Muslims.

Okay, I’ll give you that, mainly because you’re quoting somebody else here and not putting up ideas of your own…

Many of their young are stranded in a cultural desert. On one side is the traditional culture of their families. On the other is a society bombarding them with drugs, alcohol, pornography and sexually available young women, and a governing class which constantly rubbishes Britain’s bedrock values.

Thus rootless and confused, many young Muslims are all too vulnerable to Islamist radicals seductively promising them an identity which can give them self-respect and a sense of purpose. Tragically, it is an identity based on hatred and violence.

So what you actually saying is that is our fault after all (partially) because, to the average Muslim youth, Britain has become a latter day Sodom and Gomorrah in which its impossible to develop any real sense of self-respect and purpose on account of all the drugs, booze and slappers, of whom whom the government don’t diapprove enough?

Well hang on second here – I’ve also grown to adulthood in this same society and can’t say I’ve ever had too much of a complaint over the drugs, booze and available young women (thinking back here to before I met my partner) and yet I’ve never really a problem with developing self-respect and a sense of purpose, so perhaps you could explain precisely why you think its such problem for them, but not for everyone else?

Saudi Arabia has pumped hundreds of ,millions of dollars into promoting this agenda of holy war against the west throughout the world. This money funds extremism in many British Muslim institutions, and has helped produce a climate of such irrationality that many British Muslims actually believe that 9/11 was an American or Zionist plot.

But instead of fighting these warped ideas, many in the British establishment are appeasing them. The Labour MPs Sadiq Khan and John Denham, who also chairs the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, have blamed the government for failing to act on the recommendations of the committees of Muslims set up to advise it on combating Muslim extremism.

*cough* – If you’re concerned about the effects of sucking up to the Saudis then, really Mel, you do need to looking about 3,000 miles or so west of here at a guy named George. Just a tip, you understand…

But these committees blamed this extremism almost entirely on Islamophobia, poverty and foreign policy. Yesterday, no less a person than the Prime Minister said they were wrong. Specifically he urged instead an attack upon distorted Islamist ideology. The problem is that at every turn his government seeks to appease the extremist agenda.

So Blair’s out of step with the view of other party members and blaming everyone but himself for this whole mess – and that’s news? Seems like business as usual.

BTW – are you actually going to get to point anytime soon, Mel, or this whole piece just an unstructed bitch-fest? Just thought I’d ask as you seem to be labouring the point a bit already…

What is little realised is that the committees on extremism were actually packed with Islamist extremists — and even worse, other radicals have been recruited as advisers into Whitehall.

Well then, whats the problem here – if that’s really the case we can simply arrest all the committees and advisers and end the so-called war, can’t we. Oh right, they’re extremists but not those extremists – dear me I do wish you’d make your mind up? There I was under the impression the impression that no one in Whitehal had noticed an Under-Secretary Bin Laden on the Home Office’s books, but clearly I’ve got the wrong end of the stick.

Meanwhile, the establishment — which, in the name of multiculturalism, has a long record of appeasing minorities — is terrified to identify the cause of this terrorism as religious fanaticism, because it fears this might tar all Muslims with the same brush.

But this doesn’t follow at all. Indeed, the Populus poll revealed that more than half of all British Muslims want the government to do much more to root out the extremism being practised in the name of their religion.

So they want the government to much more to root out extremism – how? And isn;t that the kind of thing you want?

It is beyond belief, for example, that what is hailed as the biggest mosque in Europe is planned to be built on the east London site of the Olympic village — and it is being funded by the Tablighi Jamaat, said by the FBI and French intelligence to be the biggest recruiters for al Qaeda in Europe.

What before or after the Olympics? and is this part of the something more that Muslim want or not – you’re not making sense here Mel?

It is beyond belief that nothing is being done to stop the recruitment and incitement to violence taking place not just in mosques and madrassahs but on campus, in youth clubs and in prisons.

Didn’t we just have yet another shitload of laws passed to try an do exactly that? Did I miss something here, or did you?

It was concern over the depth of Britain’s denial that caused me to write my book ‘Londonistan’ — which was almost not published in Britain because publishers thought it was not ‘politically correct’ — precisely to sound the alarm over a widespread state of denial which, if unchecked, will have deadly consequences.

Right, so we get to the payoff – youre actually trying to plug you book here, after all. And are you absolutely sure that publishers said ‘not political correct’ and not ‘not playing with a full deck’ – you’re absolutely sure here? No, me neither…

Instead of appeasing extremism, the government should be seeking out, promoting and protecting the growing number of truly moderate Muslims — many of them young professionals — who are wholly opposed to their radicalised institutions and desperate to rid their community of the extremism that so disfigures it.

Yep, you too can become a fully state-approved moderate Muslim, just text the Home Office for details – calls cost one pound plus your service providers normal rate and 50% of the proceeds go direct to the Tony Blair ‘Oh fuck, we can’t flog peerages anymore’ election fund…

The Government should send Muslims the message that they are welcome and respected members of the community who are free to practise their faith — but that the abuse of that faith to incite violence or hatred will not be tolerated.

That means finding out what is being taught and preached in mosques and madrassahs, on campus and in prisons, and where this is inciting violence or hatred ensuring that those responsible will be prosecuted or thrown out of the country.

And at the same time, it must also end the cultural cringe of multiculturalism and reassert British national identity rooted in the particulars of this island’s history, laws religion and culture.

So what you want is a combination of the thought police and a state-sanctioned sense national identity to which everyone will be compelled to subscribe… or else

Funny I seem to heard that kind of thing before a few years back – funny looking guy, it was – parting on the wrong side and the oddest looking moustache. Can’t recall the guy’s name but I don’t he would have been too keen on you…

Oh, well, never mind, the name’ll come to me at some point.

The July bombings were a wake-up call that has not yet been heeded. Only if Britain wakes up from its trance will it avoid even worse tragedies to come.

Or I could just go back to ignoring you, which seem much the best option…