THIS IS OLD NEWS TO MOST BLOG READERS, but the Washington Post has a lengthy article on how London has become a haven for radical Islamists. Excerpt:

Abu Hamza Masri, for years a blood-curdling preacher at a North London mosque allegedly visited by shoe bomber Richard Reid and hijacker trainee Zacarias Moussaoui, listened silently Friday as his lawyer argued about his indictment last January on nine counts of incitement to murder for speeches that allegedly promoted mass violence against non-Muslims. In one speech cited in a British documentary film, Masri urged followers to get an infidel “and crush his head in your arms, so you can wring his throat. Forget wasting a bullet, cut them in half!”

Masri’s case is just one of several dozen that describe the venom, sprawling shape and deep history of al Qaeda and related extremist groups in London. Osama bin Laden opened a political and media office here as far back as 1994; it closed four years later when his local lieutenant, Khalid Fawwaz, was arrested for aiding al Qaeda’s attack on two U.S. embassies in Africa.

As bin Laden’s ideology of making war on the West spread in the years before Sept. 11, 2001, London became “the Star Wars bar scene” for Islamic radicals, as former White House counterterrorism official Steven Simon called it, attracting a polyglot group of intellectuals, preachers, financiers, arms traders, technology specialists, forgers, travel organizers and foot soldiers.

Today, al Qaeda and its offshoots retain broader connections to London than to any other city in Europe, according to evidence from terrorist prosecutions. Evidence shows at least a supporting connection to London groups or individuals in many of the al Qaeda-related attacks of the past seven years. Among them are the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; the assassination of Afghan militia leader Ahmed Shah Massoud on Sept. 9, 2001; outer rings of the Sept. 11 conspiracy, involving Moussaoui and the surveillance of financial targets in Washington and New York; Reid’s attempted shoe bomb attack in December 2001; and the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.

I suppose that some British authorities have thought it better to keep these guys where they can watch them, but I suspect they’ll be rethinking that approach. I think that we should treat Islamic hate groups the same way we’ve traditionally treated Nazi or racist hate groups: With reluctant tolerance, but with a willingness to bring the hammer down fast and hard if they cross the line, and without even pretending that there’s anything admirable about them. It’s hard to imagine the British government tolerating Christian preachers who called for the murder of Muslims in such terms for long.

Here’s more on the subject from the New York Times, which is now only about 3 years behind, say, Charles Johnson on this topic . . .

UPDATE: Dan Gillmor notes the gleeful response from many young British Muslims.

Immigrant groups used to be anxious to prove their patriotism, in part because they feared the consequences if they were thought disloyal. That seems not to be the case today.