Editorial Bear

One of the failed London bombers managed to skip the country while wearing his sister's burkha. He breezed straight through airport security without anybody checking his identity OR gender.

And today, a new burkha story hit the headlines, managing to squeeze onto Yahoo's front page in between all of Alistair Campbell revelations. A juror in a London murder trial sat smugly in the Jury Box, her burkha disguising the fact that she was listening to her iPod instead of listening to the evidence.

She's soon going to be facing a jury of her own. They've charged her with contempt of court.

Advocates of a Muslim's right to wear a burhka often talk about 'respect.' Respect for freedom of choice and sensitivity to a different culture. But respect is a two way street and this woman obviously has very little of it. She chose to listen to music, rather than evidence which might let a killer walk free, or send an innocent man to jail.

It's very simple. Whether it's at the airport or in the courtroom, there are times and places where it is completely inappropriate for a burkha to be worn and it's about time somebody established legislation to that end.

Every time they finish reading a chapter, whatever revelations Campbell made that morning find their way onto Yahoo.co.uk's news headlines.

At the time of writing, three of the six top headlines feature Campbell's comments. Yahoo must be saving a fortune on Associated Press content.

I think security has a lot to say for this. The last six years have seen an explosion in intelligence. There's now one CCTV camera in the UK for every 14 residents. You can't enter the United States without your biometric data getting whipped around the FBI, CIA and BCIS computers.

Al-Qa'eda's ability to organise and enable large scale terrorist bombings, like 9/11 or the Madrid attacks, has been fatally compromised by American and British security services.

But wiping out al-Qa'eda's organisational ability hasn't wiped out the terrorist attacks in Britain. In fact, it's just highlighted the danger Islamic Fundamentalism poses. Unlike the IRA - or perhaps any terrorist organisation in recent history - the fundamentalists are capable of operating entirely independently.

The car bombs found in London and the SUV which plowed into Glasgow Airport were home made. Simply cars stuffed with ineffective explosives, nails, screws and propane canisters. The kind of weapons blokes like me could have made.

And that's the whole point. The lack of a cohesive organisational structure has not made the Islamic Fundamentalists any less dangerous. Now, it's small groups of determined men and women (many of whom were born and raised in England) making the spontaneous decision to attack when and where they can. This will make any future attacks in England very unpredictable and dangerous.

Because the minority of Islamic fundamentalists blend in seamlessly with the majority of peaceful British Muslims, it's almost impossible to keep track of them. It creates more and more disparity between the Muslim population and the rest of an increasingly suspicious Britain.

This will make the lives of Britain's peaceful Muslims more and more difficult and, inevitably, that will make the ambitions of the al-Qa'eda taskmasters easier.