There are so many terrorist cells in Britain, the authorities are having trouble keeping track of them

From today's New York Times:

[T]errorism trials have become almost commonplace; Britain is awash in them. More than 100 people have recently been convicted, or are currently on trial, awaiting trial or facing verdicts in more than two dozen terrorism-related cases here.

A verdict is expected soon in one of the biggest cases: that of six men accused of the botched suicide bombing attempts on London’s subways and buses on July 21, 2005. The failed attacks — in which the bombs did not explode — took place exactly two weeks after the July 7 attacks that killed 56 people, including four perpetrators.

Another big case, that of the suspects accused in the audacious plot to use liquid bombs to blow up planes over the Atlantic last summer, has not yet gone to trial.

Meanwhile, seven men were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 15 to 26 years last month for their roles as accomplices to a Qaeda terrorist planning attacks on targets in Britain and the United States, including the New York Stock Exchange and the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And in April, five men were found guilty of planning fertilizer-bomb attacks on targets around London, including a major suburban shopping center and a popular London nightclub.

The sheer number of cases shows how difficult it is for the authorities to keep on top of the activities of would-be terrorists in this country.

As the Times points out, these plots are not just the work of lonely crazy individuals or groups of crazies either:

While many of the suspects appear to be motivated by the same ideology — hatred of the West and support for violent jihad directed at targets symbolizing what they regard as Western power or decadence — the individual plots are hard to unravel. Relationships are complicated. Suspects work together or individually, with other Britons or people from abroad, often connected by evidence on computers or cellphones that requires painstaking investigation before charges can be brought.

“We are not looking at discrete terrorist cells that can be investigated, isolated and dismantled,” Peter Clarke, the senior antiterrorism officer at Scotland Yard, said in a speech in April. “We are seeing networks within networks, connections within connections, and links between individuals that cross local, national and international lines.”

I would say that now is the time for the Muslim community to rout out the criminals who live among them. If you wait for the police, innocent Muslims will surely suffer.

Surely it now has to be abundantly clear that the only one way to restore the community's good standing in the eyes of the world is to get rid of this criminal element among you.

(Even Hamas seems to be coming around to this way of thinking.)

Think of what the families of the London-Glasgow doctor-bombers must now be going through. So turn in those otherwise good sons and daughters before it's really too late.