This is no time to undermine security services trying to protect Britain
SIR – While we are all shocked by the carnage in Manchester, no rightminded person in Britain should be surprised. We had accepted that this was always going to be “when”, not “if ”.
But now, the usual criticisms of the security services are coming from many people who have no idea about the huge amount of hard work that goes on day after day, to keep us safe.
Yes of course there will be lessons to learn from this dreadful incident, but let us congratulate those who have foiled innumerable attacks, and give them our support, encouragement and heartfelt thanks. Francis Eastwood
London SE9
SIR – The question is: how many soldiers and police officers does it take to stop a suicide-bomber from succeeding? Tore Fauske
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
SIR – It is of comfort to us that, as part of Operation Temperer, there are soldiers carrying out guarding and patrolling duties with the police. But it is surprising to see pictures of two or three police with soldiers here and there, and not teams of each.
Soldiers and the police alike spend weeks and years training together to achieve unit cohesion. Is it not detrimental to effectiveness when people who only met this morning are carrying firearms side-by-side?
I also think that the freedoms we experience should come with a clear understanding of the rules of engagement and powers of arrest that result from this quasi-martial law that we are now living under. Dale Fletcher
Gosport, Hampshire
SIR – I’m curious who thought it was a good idea to arrange for half a dozen soldiers to patrol up Downing Street in a photo opportunity.
I support the deployment of troops now, but I think this specific sight sent the wrong signal to the world – that Downing Street is under siege; that even the huge security already in place there is thought inadequate; that the terrorists have succeeded in putting fear into the Government. Christopher Read
Guildford, Surrey
SIR – This may be a minority view, but I believe the Prime Minister made a mistake in cancelling campaigning because of the bomb in Manchester.
She has proved to terrorists everywhere, be they Jeremy Corbyn’s friends in the IRA or theological fascists like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), that they can disrupt the democratic process. The reality is that we can never stop these lunatics and the best way to defeat them is to show they have no effect.
Both my parents served throughout the Second World War, my mother driving a fire engine during the Blitz. I recall her stories of how, even after a night of heavy bombing, the milk and post would be delivered as usual, even where buildings had been bombed.
We seem to have lost our backbone in this country. I had hoped that a Tory Prime Minister, of all people, would have set a better example. John Allen
Northampton
SIR – Not to have suspended the campaigning would have ignored one vital fact: a fault-line between the parties on the way to deal with terrorism.
The terrorists are at war with us, but Jeremy Corbyn does not want us to be at war with them. He says our military activities have “failed”. He opposes our military attacks on Isil and wants us to negotiate with its leaders. It is an attitude consistent with the one he took to the IRA, the last group to bomb Manchester.
For many people these are signs that he is unfit to be a prime minister and this will need to be said, but a respite from such issues was more important. James Pullen
St Ives, Huntingdonshire
SIR – It is ridiculous of the Home Secretary to insist that the security forces are doing a wonderful job, when our citizens are being slaughtered on a regular basis.
These atrocities have been carried out by people already known to them. Those people should have been detained, not simply watched. Peter Stevenson
Poole, Dorset
SIR – Making finger-hearts against the sky and chanting “we are strong” will not make it true. With the fear of offending the wider Muslim “community” being greater than that of a continued flow of terrorist outrages, the politicians and authorities have absolutely no intention of addressing the threat.
It’s as plain as the nose on your face to ordinary people, but, as our leaders never speak its name or do anything, we just remain awash with platitudes while being as feeble as we are now. Martin Burgess
Beckenham, Kent
SIR – I know this is an impossible hope – as freedom of the press in Britain is (rightly) sacrosanct – but how effective might it be if the perpetrators of these terrible crimes received no coverage whatsoever in the media? Audree Abbott
Thame, Oxfordshire
SIR – The suicide bombing was atrocious and utterly reprehensible; but cowardly? Not in my book – that’s what makes it so unsettling. David Robb
London SW6
SIR – Linking terrorist acts by members of the Muslim community to their faith makes as much sense as linking the atrocities of the IRA to the Catholic Church. We didn’t do that then, and we should not do so now. Peter Lee
Liverpool SIR – When I suggest in the Lords that our Muslim leaders should “reexamine” the violence in the Koran and in Mohammed’s life, I am vilified for stirring up hatred.
We won’t defeat Islamism until we understand Islam. And we won’t understand Islam if we are not allowed to talk about it.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
Rannoch, Perthshire
SIR – Andrew Roberts (Comment, May 24) was quite right to call for the banning of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 in Egypt to restore the principles of Islam by recreating the social order that the Koran prescribes and the Caliphate of Baghdad enforced in the eighth century.
From its inception, it totally rejected the entire world-order of plurality and secular nation states. Hassan al-banna, its founder, originally espoused moderation. But after his assassination in 1949 he was followed by Sayyid Qutb, who wrote in prison in Egypt in 1964 an influential work called Milestones. It declared war against the entire world-order and became a foundational text of modern Islamism.
To quote Henry Kissinger: “In Qutb’s view, Islam was a universal system offering the only true form of freedom from the governance by other men and man-made doctrines.”
These views were considered so extreme that no one in the Western world thought them worthy of attention, but they are a rallying cry for all today’s jihadists, inspiring al-qaeda, Hamas, the Taliban, Hizb ut-tahrir, Iran’s clerical regime, Nigeria’s Boko Haram, Syria’s extremist militia Jabhat al-nusra and Isil. Theirs was the militant doctrine of the Egyptian radicals who assassinated Anwar al-sadat for daring to make peace with Israel in 1979.
After the appalling massacre on Monday by a British-born Libyan, whose parents were given sanctuary in this country from the persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood by Colonel Gaddafi, we should call time on this intolerant Brotherhood, which has scarred the governance of the entire Middle East, if not the world, and now our own country. Mina Bowater
Blandford Forum, Dorset