7/7: Unanswered Questions

Once the chorus of admiration for the emergency services died down, as the attacks of 7/7/2005 became a distant memory, a chorus of public disapproval rose to fill the silence it left.

People wanted answers, and the most pressing question was also the simplest: why? Why, and how, could four, British born, educated young men, seemingly with everything to live for, decide to blow themselves up on crowded commuter trains? What had caused them to abandon their reason, their lives and the lives of so many others in such a way?

This is a question that the British government has been keen to avoid answering. Tony Blair and his government have, thus far, stuck to the somewhat fanciful line that the London attacks and the Iraq war were totally unrelated. The government here has been just as staunch in its rejection of demands for a public enquiry into the attacks, seeking to answer the public's questions with an official narration, rather than an explanation.

For those who seek the latter over the former, a new book, 7/7: The London Bombings, Islam and the Iraq War, by Milan Rai, (reviewed in depth here) seeks to provide the explanation for the attacks that the public so obviously craves.

The book provides an overview of modern Islam and the diverse forms it is evolving into amongst different generations of British Muslims; it walks us through the lives of the bombers and the victims, in doing so hoping to discern What Went Wrong.

Its epigraph is a quote from Rachel North (a pseudonym), a victim of the attacks who has risen to prominence in the British media through by blogging her experiences of 7/7. She says:

"I think the bombers were not born evil…they fell into a trap of hate and despair and alienation. I believe any of us could fall into the same black hole, but there is a way out the darkness."

Ms. North is one of the many advocates, journalists and victims groups calling for a public enquiry into 7/7, a demand that Rai's book clearly echoes.

Amid the clamour for an explanation, I think it is pertinent to ask if such an explanation is actually possible, or weather it would be useful. Though I am personally quite critical of the government's reluctance to conduct public enquiries about anything, I think they may have got it right in this case.

Even if the public were offered the 'explanation' they crave for the London bombings, and if a public enquiry took place, it would, in the end simply be an attempt to make sense out of a senseless act.

Rai's book, and indeed the public at large, projects their own humanity onto the bombers. Commentators ask what could have put the bombers into such a state of despair that they would take their own lives in this way? A look at the suicide video of Shehzad Tanweer that emerged yesterday, or that of Mohammad Sidique Khan reveal little of the despair that people project onto them. In fact they seem to be revelling in the carnage that they know they will unleash

Tony Blair's comment on the today programme was, in my view, quite accurate when, in response to a question about why there should be no public enquiry, he replied "because all it will tell us is what we already know: four people did this."

The unpalatable truth of the matter is that the explanation that the victims, their families, activists and writers crave for the motivations behind the London bombings died with the bombers that morning. We may, in future speculate about why they did what they did, but we will never know for sure – and that is not the government's fault, but the fault of four people who decided to take their secrets to the grave, while taking many innocent Londoners with them.