Twenty years have passed since four British Islamist extremists boarded trains and a bus in London, carrying with them bombs and a belief that mass murder was a sacred duty. Fifty-two innocent lives were extinguished on 7 July 2005, in what remains the deadliest jihadist terrorist attack on British soil. And yet, two decades on, the official commemoration of that atrocity has been clouded by a stubborn refusal to name what truly happened and why.
The political ritual around terror attacks is now familiar: solemn remembrance, hymns to unity and a mantra repeated with near-liturgical certainty: ‘They tried to divide us.’ King Charles and prime minister Keir Starmer each echoed this line on Monday, lauding British resilience and reaffirming national values of democracy and freedom. Their words were dignified, compassionate, even moving. But they were also misleading. The terrorists were not trying to ‘divide’ Britain. They were trying to kill Britons. And they did.
Mohammad Sidique Khan, the ringleader of the 7/7 cell, and all the other bombers were raised in the UK and educated in jihadist ideology. They used foreign policy to frame their worldview and believed the UK was at war against Muslims.
7/7 was not an act of nihilism. It was not madness. It was a deliberate, ideologically driven act of war, waged from within, in the name of a global Islamist ideology. Similar attacks have taken place the world over, using similar techniques, by adherents to the same religious fanaticism.
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