Generation Jihad (2010) BBC Two

Generation Jihad - Episode 2 (1/6)

In the second part of this series, Peter Taylor investigates how young Muslims radicalised over the internet formed themselves into a terror network that spread across three continents. Aided and abetted by two young fanatics in Britain, these cells plotted major attacks in Europe and America - culminating in a plan to explode three enormous truck bombs which, it was claimed, would dwarf the London bombings of 7/7.

Peter Taylor investigates the terrorist threat from young Muslim extremists radicalised on the internet. Generation Jihad is about young, radicalised Muslim men: the kind of men who like watching body parts fly on YouTube. When I say body parts, any nationality will do. It is a curious and repulsive kink of this particular group that it seems to get the same satisfaction from watching Palestinians being blown apart by Israelis as it does, say, American soldiers by Iraqis. In the first programme of the series (8 February), Taylor went north, to West Yorkshire, to talk to two men who, thanks to their fondness for gore tapes and al-Qaeda's nonsensical dribblings, had fallen foul of Britain's anti-terrorism laws. I'm not qualified to say whether they should indeed have served prison sentences for their activities. But they were loathsome: ignorant, boastful, utterly lacking in imagination or - and here's the irony, given their belief in the umma - any kind of empathy.