little john speaks out

Losing your legs on 7/7 justifies a £500,000 payout... losing your liberty for a few days doesn't, says RICHARD LITTLEJOHN.
The two men arrested as terror suspects in Forest Gate are reported to be in line for compensation payments up to £500,000.
Why?
They have been released, declared innocent and left Paddington Green police station without, as the saying goes, a stain on their character.
Background• Terror raid: the backlash• Comment: MI5, the police and the inside story of a raid that went wrong
It is now glaringly apparent that the police acted on faulty or deliberately misleading intelligence.
No one believes these men are guilty. Their reputations have not been traduced. Most of us don't even know who they are. So how could we possibly ostracise them socially?
In fact, to some they will now become heroes and can expect lucrative newspaper, book and television deals for the story of their ordeal.
If anyone comes out of this with an omelette on their helmet, it is the police, even though they were only doing their job. They have apologised publicly to the men and their family.
There might be a case for a small amount of compensation, particularly to the brother who suffered a minor gunshot wound. And, clearly, Scotland Yard will have to send in the builders to repair broken doors and windows and torn-up floorboards.
But talk of half a million pounds is ludicrous. A couple of grand should cover any inconvenience and loss of earnings.
Unfortunately, the Yard's track record in doling out largesse isn't encouraging. Their instinct is always to break the bank to assuage any slight, real or perceived, to the ethnic communities.
If we are to believe what we are told, the eventual bill should be passed on to the Funny People. The intelligence failure has been laid at the door of MI5. Let's hope the spooks take it out on their informant's kneecaps.
Ultimately, any compensation to these two men will come out of public funds. And the public — even those of us who fully supported the raid — will rightly come to the conclusion that enough money has been wasted already.
If these men weren't Muslim and were, say, suspected bank robbers detained for a week after a dawn raid, they wouldn't now be looking at a windfall in the region of half a million.
That's the kind of settlement which is likely to be paid to survivors and relatives of those killed in the 7/ 7 bombings. No one is going to convince me that losing your liberty for a few days equates to losing your legs, losing your life or losing a loved one.
Yet the authorities are so terrified of upsetting the 'community' that they will inevitably throw a parachute-bag full of money at it.
There have been a couple of halfhearted demonstrations accusing the police of targeting young Muslim men. I'm afraid that's an unfortunate consequence of the war on terror.
Most young Muslim men are decent, respectable members of society. But a sizeable minority are not, as we saw during the Danish cartoons demonstration in London, which gleefully threatened more terrorist attacks on British soil and included the brother of the two men arrested in Forest Gate.
Those who attacked London on 7/ 7 and those who tried to repeat that carnage two weeks later were all Muslims.
And the one thing that the terrorist murderers of 9/ 11, Madrid and Bali all have in common is the M-word. And we're not talking Methodist.
The preachers of death and hatred are all Muslims, too. You can argue that they're the 'wrong kind' of Muslims, but the antiterrorist squad can be forgiven for not concentrating their attention on Baptists or Rastafarians.
There are Muslims living in Britain who wish us harm. This weekend, I picked up my local newspaper, which was leading its front page on a concerted campaign by Islamic extremists to take over the North Finchley mosque.
It can't be much fun for young Muslims to feel under constant suspicion, but the fault for that lies not with the police or the wider population but with their own co-religionists.
Nor is the situation helped by the posturing and politicking of self-appointed, rent-a-gob 'community leaders' like in the ginger syrup who now runs the Muslim Council and who in a newspaper interview this weekend complained that Britain was not Islamic enough and should adopt arranged marriages.
Talk about winning friends and influencing people. He should be asserting that Britain is a liberal, tolerant country with an honourable history of religious freedom, its own laws and customs and one in which we all have duties as well as rights. If anyone here wants to live under Sharia law, they should move to a country more to their liking.
If he really wants to break down tensions, he should be urging Muslims to abandon the grievance culture, assimilate into British society, get involved in democratic local and national politics, join the police and security services and shop the troublemakers and terrorists in their midst to the authorities.
If that happens — and don't hold your breath — then maybe, just maybe, we will be able to prevent not just another 7/ 7, but also stop a monumental cock-up such as Forest Gate from happening again.

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