Bluewater: hated by Islamists and liberals

The beliefs of radical Muslims are similar to those of the chattering classes, says Brendan O'Neill

Why do radical Islamists have such violent hatred for the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent? Last week, Saeed Ghafoor (right) of Southampton pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to threatening to cause criminal damage at Bluewater. He wanted to park three limousines there, packed with explosives.

The 'Crawley plotters' - five men from Sussex who were found guilty last year of conspiring to bomb targets in the UK - also had Bluewater in their sights. So keen were they to bomb the shopping centre that in one conversation recorded by the police, a Crawley plotter was heard saying: "Let's do it tomorrow."

This desire to attack one of the biggest, busiest shopping centres in Europe gives the lie to the notion that radical Islamists are politically minded activists. In fact, they come across as anti-consumerist, anti-hedonist killjoys who want to punish the allegedly greedy, feckless, fun-hunting masses of the

UK.

The Crawley plotters also discussed poisoning beer and burgers at a football stadium and selling them to unwitting football fans. They wanted to bomb the Ministry of Sound in London, one of Britain's biggest nightclubs, arguing that "no one can turn around and say 'oh they were innocent', those slags dancing around".

Last year, alleged jihadists, aiming to incinerate more 'slags', planted a car packed with explosives outside Tiger, Tiger nightclub in London on ladies night.

At a time when it is de rigueur in chattering-class circles to slate the young women who get drunk in city centres, and commentators attack the 'cult of consumerism', especially amongst the sort of 'chavs' who frequent Bluewater - 'the most chav-infested place on the face of the Earth', where 'zombies shuffling aimlessly around, making inhuman noises', according to an online magazine that keeps track of 'chav towns' - radical Islamists reveal themselves to be more mainstream than people think.

They appear to be not so much alien outsiders as the armed wing of today's mainstream chav-bashing, slag-obsessed culture.