Friends of Shehzed Tanweer, the Mercedes-driving-London-suicide-bomber, talking to a WashPost reporter:

"Shehzad definitely opened his eyes because of September 11th," said Ashid, a friend who did not give his last name out of fear that police might question him. "That's when many young people got back into Islam around here"

The murder of 3,000 civilians got "many young people" in the UK back into Islam? Good grief.

Hint to Ashid: Blame it on Iraq if you gotta blame it something, dude. Or, you could try the usual reasons for religious conversion, like realizing there is a greater power in the universe than yourself, who wants us all to treat each other a little better than we usually do. But 9/11? Not so rhetorically effective, really.

On a recent Wednesday, some of Tanweer's Muslim friends were playing soccer in Cross Flats Park. Others who said they had known him watched from a bench, some of them smoking marijuana. In conversations with a reporter, they spoke about conspiracy theories they had downloaded from radical Web sites. There was no plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Nor did any bring the twin towers down. It was an American plot, they said.

I understand, a little, how you can believe this crap if you are a goat herder in rural Yemen and have never been exposed to the 21st century. But living in the UK? Does. Not. Compute.

Meanwhile, according to a recent poll of 500 muslims in the UK:

• 6% feel that the London bombings were fully justified (extrapolated to all muslims in the UK, that's on the order of 100K people!)
  
• 24% have some sympathy with the feelings and motives of the suicide bombers
  
• 67% doubt that anyone brought to justice in connection with the bombings would receive a fair trial

God save the Queen (or whatever the heck it is we need to save to win this battle of hearts and minds against the 7th century).  ¶ 2:45 PM