British Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday said that militants based in Syria and Iraq from the Islamic State (IS) — formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — were planning specific attacks against Britain and posed an existential threat to the West.
Cameron was speaking after an assailant killed up to 30 British tourists in an attack on Friday that British politicians have described as the single worst assault on Britons since the bombing of the London underground in 2005.
“It is an existential threat because what is happening here is the perversion of a great religion and the creation of this poisonous death cult is seducing too many young minds,” Cameron told BBC Radio 4’s Today program. “There are people in Iraq and Syria who are plotting to carry out terrible acts in Britain and elsewhere and as long as ISIL exists in those two countries we are at threat.”
“They have declared war on us and they are attacking our people at home and overseas whether we like it or not,” the prime minister said. “I don’t think you can hide from this.”
Britain’s international terror threat is currently set at “severe,” its second-highest level, and a rung which means an attack is “highly likely.”
British police said they have launched one of their largest counter-terrorism operations in a decade after the murders in the Tunisian beach resort of Sousse on Friday.
British Home Secretary Theresa May and Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood traveled to Tunisia yesterday for meetings with the government to discuss the attack and the response. A British Royal Air Force C-17 is also flying to the country to bring wounded holidaymakers home.
Cameron was set to make a full response to parliament at about 3:30pm. In his interview, he repeated his view, made in a speech earlier this month, that Muslims in Britain must no longer “quietly condone” views that lend credibility to extremists.
“There are some organizations and some people who buy not the terrorism, but they buy a lot of the extremist narrative,” he said. “To those people we have got to say that is not an acceptable view. We are not going to engage with people who believe there ought to be a caliphate and women should be subjugated.”
He said he had a “serious problem” with groups that back extremist preachers or believe that it is all right to be a suicide bomber in Israel.
“It’s just not all right to commit terrorist acts elsewhere,” he said.
While Britain is set to debate new anti-terrorism legislation, May said on Sunday that proposals would not be rushed. Previous attempts to give security services more access faced opposition from those wanting to safeguard personal information.
“This is about some powers that are very significant,” May said in a BBC interview on Sunday. “We want to make sure that we are going to get the regulatory framework right for the future.”
The nature of attacks and the challenges facing security services is changing, she said.
“Over the last 10 years, it is estimated that something like 40 plots have been disrupted here in the UK,” May said.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Cameron yesterday signaled he wanted authorities to take a tougher line against Muslim extremists in Britain to do more to challenge what he said were their unacceptable views.
“We must be more intolerant of intolerance — rejecting anyone whose views condone the Islamist extremist narrative,” Cameron wrote.
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