ABSTRACT

Globalisation and the ‘war on terror’ pursued in the wake of 9/11 oblige us to rethink the frameworks of classical social theory set within the terms of the nation state. It also forces us to revise the notion of the ‘international’ that has so often been imagined as a relationship between nation states. Following through different identifications of a ‘war against terror’ as a ‘war against Islam’, this chapter explores different explanations of the London bombings as a response to global injustices. In his first interview since the London bombings of 7 July 2005, Shiek Omar Bakri Mohammed, who had until recently led the al-Muhajiroun group in Britain, denounced the London bombings but insisted that Britain had brought the atrocity on itself:

The British people did not make enough effort to stop its own government committing its own atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.