Wow. A breathtakingly ridiculous article from Daniel Pipes on terrorism in Europe.

The piece’s thesis is that Britain is soft on terror and terrorists, while France is hardcore. His evidence for this thesis is that we allow a load of nutters to preach silly things and allow schoolgirls to wear headscarves, whereas the French deport or jail nutters who preach silly things, and expel schoolgirls who wear headscarves.

The particularly astute may be able to detect a small flaw in Mr Pipes’s argument: it has fuck all to do with terrorists or terrorism. The guy calls himself a Middle East expert, but he can’t even understand the difference between expressing unpleasant views and blowing shit up.

Out of the manic mosque preachers that Britain has tolerated, approximately none have been involved in any terrorist attacks. Terrorists, oddly enough, tend to plan their attacks in secret, which means that they *don’t* go out in public to talk about re-establishing the Caliphate.

None of this means that the British authorities are any good at catching terrorists, or that the French aren’t. But it’s telling that Pipes can provide no evidence at all for this theory, but plenty of evidence that he thinks counterterrorism consists entirely of the oppression of all Muslims. Nice chap…