YP Letters: We need a more fundamental response to terrorism

Do faith leaders need to do more to root out extremism in Britain's mosques?

MUCH as we can take heart from the impressive response of our emergency and security services to the Manchester atrocity, we should be deeply worried by the lack of awareness of the need for a more fundamental response to this terrorism.

The ever increasing wave of Islamist terrorism in western Europe in the years since 9/11 did not spring up out of nowhere; on the contrary its ideological roots are in the Salafist school of Sunni Islamic thought, both in Saudi Arabian Wahhabism and in the Muslim Brotherhood.

This would have remained solely a problem for Muslim countries, if the Saudi Arabian state and elite had not, over decades, poured vast sums of money into founding extreme mosques to indoctrinate the Muslim diaspora in Western countries.

At home, whilst the vast majority of British Muslims find this terrorism as abhorrent as the rest of us, there are a tiny minority of radical imams, returning jihadists and other fanatics who support it. With the support of British people of every faith and belief, we should pursue them relentlessly (Bill Carmichael, The Yorkshire Post, May 26).

From: Richard Wimpenny, Kennedy Avenue, Fixby, Huddersfield.

THE disgusting rapists in Rochdale made it quite clear that they regarded young English girls as examples of the decadent West and therefore perfectly legitimate targets for their lust. That the same age group has again been targeted in nearby Manchester simply cannot be a coincidence.

Why though does these young men continue to use suicide as a weapon? We are told by our utterly inept leaders that they are terrorists or part of an extremist minority with warped views. This is simply not true. These men believe in the righteousness of what they are doing, faithfully pursuing what their religion tells them

Come on you leaders, have the guts to stand up and shout from the roof tops about the achievements of Western Civilisation. We pride ourselves on our tolerance but the time has come to cease tolerating the intolerable.

From: Ken Holmes, Cliffe Common, Selby.

REGARDING the terror attack, I saw the headline ‘Troops on the streets in Manchester’.

Anyone heard the one about “Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted”?