Paranoia over Woolwich murder may store up trouble for the future

YESTERDAY, the British Government let it be known that they were thinking again about a funding cut they made a while back.

They had slashed the amount of money devoted to bodies seeking to prevent the radicalisation of young Muslims, and, in the aftermath of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, that didn’t seem to have been a great idea. If the butchers of Woolwich hadn’t been radicalised, goes the thinking, they wouldn’t have been out on the streets with cleavers.

It is, on the face of it, an appealing argument. Set up or support organisations to show young Muslims that their religion is fine and dandy as long as it doesn’t lead to personal or collective jihad. Convince them, early on, that they can live a happier, more fulfilled life in the mainstream than as part of a violent minority. It’s a variant of the anti-drugs approach. Except that, as we know, a few teenagers always slip through the most fine-woven support system to become addicts, and a few teenagers will also slip through the anti-radicalism net to become violent killers.