"This is not an isolated criminal act we are dealing with, it is an extreme
and evil ideology whose roots lie in a perverted and poisonous misinterpretation
of the religion of Islam."
– Tony Blair
In his blog Ken MacLeod states about the London bombings:
There are no excuses for terrorism, but sometimes there are
explanations. There’s a nasty meme going around that to seek
(non-party-line) explanations is to condone. A good antidote to it is
in the words of Alec Nove:
To understand is not to forgive. It is simply better than the alternative, which is not to understand.
He points to a well-argued alternative to the ‘extremist religious fanatics’ view here.
And here is a Muslim’s view of the origins of terrorism.