The Italian government was rightly pleased with the performance of its police and security services in finding and arresting Hussein Osman (Hamdi Isaac) who had fled to Rome following the failed bombing attacks in London on 21 July. He was picked up quickly as a result of good cooperation, not only internationally but nationally as well.
But while the arrest of Hussein Osman was of great importance in taking out of circulation a potential murderer and in providing some reassurance to British citizens who could be his targets, its value may prove as great in helping us to understand what drives young men of his sort to commit suicide while taking the lives of others in such an indiscriminate and brutal way.
One interesting feature of suicide bombers is that unlike others who commit suicide, they leave no note to tell us why they did it. We normally associate individual suicides with anger or despair, but the pictures taken of the July 7 London bombers as they began their train journey on the morning of their lethal attacks, suggest four normal men setting off on an expedition in an up-beat and relaxed frame of mind, much as if they were off white water rafting as it appears may have been the case a few months earlier.
So why did they leave no note of explanation? Either they thought that their reasons and objectives were so obvious that they did not need to be spelled out, or they could not articulate precisely why they had decided to take such drastic action, or they simply did not care whether people understood or not, being entirely confident in their own minds that what they were about to do was right. But I for one did not find their reasons and objectives obvious, and I still do not, and many others must be equally perplexed. And I do not believe that four men such as those responsible for the July 7 bombings, or those who might have faced a similar death on July 21, were confused and doubtful about the reasons for their actions. I have to conclude that the bombers were confident that they were doing the right thing, and did not care whether or not I understood their reasons.
But such violent political protest is even more pointless unless it has some political consequence. A possible result of the Atocha attacks of 11 March 2004 was the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq, and we are led to believe that this might have been part of the motive behind them, though I doubt that the group responsible would have stopped their campaign having achieved that aim. But there was no possibility of the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq or Afghanistan following the London bombings, and no clear linkage was made at the time, nor has been subsequently, by those directly or indirectly involved.
So what drove these young men so eagerly towards death? What made them believe that their short lives would be given real purpose by their killing themselves along with a typically multi-ethnic group of people in London, who were special only in their individual ways, and whose death can have had no other result than the tragic sadness of their families and friends? What did they want as their legacy? How did they imagine they would be seen by their own family and friends? The wife they kissed goodbye? The young child who would grow up and spend her life in the shadow of their crime? They must surely have let some thought of these issues pass through their minds, but their sense of purpose seems to have been able to overcome any sense of doubt.
The certainty of their righteousness and the disregard for the opinion of others displayed by these terrorists suggest that their acts were more than political. They must have been seen by their perpetrators as an act of faith, just as Mohammed Bouyeri saw his murder of Theo van Gogh in November 2004 in Amsterdam as the performance of a religious duty that he had no option but fulfil. But no world religion can condone murder as an act of faith, and it is clear that Islam does not do so. There can be no doubt that when scholars say that the ideology behind these crimes is a distortion of Islam, they are right. No one questions this. But several subsidiary questions remain unanswered.

First: why do people from so many very different societies, ethnic backgrounds and social conditions, who share nothing but their religious belief, appear to pursue an identical terrorist strategy with apparently the same objective, however ill-expressed? Why do these acts, occurring in many areas of the world and obviously inexcusable by any standards of legitimate protest, find so many sympathisers among people who only have their religion in common? How can these acts of senseless violence have any legitimacy whatsoever? Why are they not condemned outright by every faith or community leader?
These are questions which some, but not yet all, in the Muslim world are beginning to answer. And they need to do so. They owe it to the great mass of their peaceful co-religionists who are outraged by the destructive hi-jacking of their religion, as well as to the non-Muslim communities whose perplexed anxiety contains dangerous seeds. They need to isolate the extremists and those that prey on the disaffected and impressionable young people who commit these crimes, and excommunicate them from their societies. If they fear that by doing so they will compromise their own beliefs, they need to ask themselves some very serious questions. If they are concerned that they may lose all contact with the young and opportunity to guide them back to a true path, they need to consider urgently why these young people are so much in need of leadership and a sense of purpose that they follow the ideas of terrorists. It is not the responsibility of others to deal with these issues, it is the responsibility of everyone but it demands immediate action from the Islamic community.
Muslim leaders must explain to the rest of us how their religion came to be so abused and distorted by men of weak learning but strong conviction. And why did these men decide to teach others to hate?
How did they manage to persuade people to follow their teaching and what happened to the countering influences?
The term moderate Islam gives legitimacy to the idea of radical Islam. Is there not one true teaching of Islam? Must we believe that the duty of jihad, can, in some circumstances, include the murder of civilians, even if they themselves are believers? Are we to believe that a modern religion can accept that the death of a non believer is less important than the death of a believer? Are there no longer any moral absolutes in Islam?
What is lacking is a strong and strengthening expression of Islamic opinion that exposes these acts for what they are and casts them in purely criminal terms without any religious overtones. Until it is possible and even routine to do this, those who recruit suicide bombers will be able to continue to present murder as the expression of a religious duty. If Islamic teachers argue that the religious justifications for these attacks are a distortion of Islam, then they should be able to declare those responsible as the enemies of Islam. They should be as concerned by the actions themselves as they are by the possible anti-Islam reaction that they may provoke. They should not even suggest that there may be political or social factors that mitigate these crimes, especially not by citing causes for terrorism which are not expressed by the bombers themselves.

Islam should also ask where the arrogance and self-glorification of suicide bombers and their obsession with death comes from. These are not uneducated people with no future, they are not simple minded men with no alternative means of protest at their disposal, they are deeply versed in the same Koran that guides the rest of Islam. The bombers represent a revolutionary movement with typically middle class appeal; the planning and execution of their attacks are leisure time activities.
Their protest fills a philosophical vacuum and satisfies a need for action and for belonging. But this is a revolutionary movement which has no interest in any other form of protest. There is no graduation from public protest through loud demonstration to violent action.
There have been comments subsequent to the London bombings that explain them as the result of British policy in Iraq or Afghanistan, or of asylum laws that allow fiery preachers to establish themselves in the United Kingdom, or of a failure to integrate immigrant communities, or of too much liberalism, or not enough. But this is all complete conjecture when it comes to the bombers themselves who may have found many British policies or social conditions unacceptable, but did nothing, even by their deaths, to promote their reform. Indeed, Hussein Osman has told Italian investigators that the 21 July bombers were prompted to do what they did because of the ‘bad looks’ they got in the street following the 7 July attacks. Even if we discount this banal explanation as a pathetic attempt to elicit sympathy, it suggests that he could not immediately think of any more compelling and socially acceptable reason.
But I do not believe this form of terrorism is motiveless. It is too widespread and appeals to too many educated individuals, all of whom have found their own way to the conclusion that their life is given meaning and value by the manner of their death. It seems more likely that these people see their act as an expression of faith, or at least see it as a political act in defence of their faith. They are hitting back at the enemies of Islam and do not mind if their acts are counter-productive, nor do they care if no one follows their example, they are making a purely individual gesture which will lead them to an enjoyment of paradise that they see no reason to delay and every reason to accelerate.
These attitudes cannot be addressed politically; they have to be addressed through their religion and by their co-religionists. The condemnation of terrorism and total rejection of it as a valid weapon in defence of the faith need not imply any judgement about the root causes, social or political, that people may believe lie behind it.
Already in some Muslim countries there has been a real effort to undermine the religious arguments used by the supporters of terrorism, but this is not just a secular duty.
Muslim communities everywhere should be doing the same. It is hard to engage the young when they know what they do not want but find it hard to articulate what they do want. It is hard to persuade religious communities to change their practices or give up their traditions, but unless Muslim communities at the local, national and global levels all face up to the threat from violent extremism, the future for us all, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, will be bleak.
If Islamic authorities must lead this effort, the international community, both Muslim and non-Muslim, must offer all possible support. The threat of growing Islamophobia is a real one, and the perpetrators of these atrocities will be glad to see it. One of their objectives seems to be to stir the Muslim world into action against what they regard as aggressive global influences that are deliberately inimical to Islam, and by creating a sense of conflict on both sides, they believe that they will accelerate their victory. The United Nations has an obvious role.

Even without a definition of terrorism, the United Nations position is clear. The Secretary General has invited the international community to join his complete condemnation of violence against civilians, and there can be no argument against this. In addition, the frequent resolutions of the Security Council on terrorism are unambiguous. The Conventions against terrorism are an expression of the position of the great majority of the membership of the General Assembly and there is hope that agreement may be reached this year on a comprehensive convention, which would include a definition of terrorism. But even without it, no State argues that the form of terrorism that we brand as Al-Qaida, or see as inspired by the message of Al-Qaida, has any justification or value.
This rare international unanimity provides a base on which to build.
The operational work of countering terrorism has to be done primarily by national authorities, though with help from others to reflect the reality of a threat which does not respect borders.
The international community can provide a helpful environment by identifying and agreeing things that should be done by all States and by obliging all States to recognise and fulfil their obligations in this regard. The international community can also help to ensure that all States are able to carry out these tasks.
Beyond promoting effective and practical measures against terrorism, the United Nations can offer its moral authority and its voice on the world stage to help transmit the message that terrorism cannot hide beneath a cloak of religion.
The message has to be loud and clear, and the voice that transmits it must be recognised as the voice of Islam, with the United Nations providing a forum in which its Muslim members can articulate the message and a means to ensure that it reaches all parts of the world.
The United Nations can then help identify the true reasons behind this form of terrorism, and promote ways to deal with them.