According to the BBC, eight people arrested in connection with failed car bombings in Glasgow and London are linked to the National Health Service (NHS), and seven of them are believed to be doctors or medical students; one used to be a lab tech.

Which is how a medical syringe came to be used as part of the firing mechanism (ABC News reports that the car bomb outside the front door of London’s Tiger Tiger nightclub failed because the syringe caused a malfunction).

Why are Muslim doctors flocking to England to work in the NHS? The Daily Telegraph (London) explains:

[C]areers in medicine have become so popular in rich Middle East countries, where universal health care is a priority, that there are no longer enough jobs to go round.

It is why thousands of doctors, trained in the Middle East, have migrated to Britain and Europe, where well-paid work is easy to find.

It is now suspected that some may have come to Britain not just to save lives but to take them too. What is disturbing the police is that the NHS may have provided the network they needed to recruit to their cause.

But the plot thickens, reports the following day’s edition of The Telegraph:

A group of 45 Muslim doctors threatened to use car bombs and rocket grenades in terrorist attacks in the United States during discussions on an extremist internet chat site.

Police found details of the discussions on a site run by one of a three-strong “cyber-terrorist” gang. …

One message read: “We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake jihad and take the battle inside America. …

Investigators have found no link between the … chat room and the group of doctors and medics currently in custody over attempted car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.

However, sources said it was “definitely spooky” that the use of doctors for terrorist purposes was being discussed in jihadi terrorist circles up to three years ago. …

The three “cyber terrorists” - a British national and two who had been given the right to live in Britain - are facing lengthy jail sentences after admitting using the internet to spread al-Qa’eda propaganda inciting Muslims to a violent holy war and to murder non-believers.

They had close links with al-Qa’eda in Iraq and believed they had to fight jihad against a global conspiracy by kuffars, or non-believers, to wipe out Islam.

Why are educated Muslims – including doctors - willing jihadis? New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explains (TimesSelect subscription required):

Islam’s self-identity is that it is the most perfect and complete expression of God’s monotheistic message, and the Koran is God’s last and most perfect word. To put it another way, young Muslims are raised on the view that Islam is God 3.0. Christianity is God 2.0. Judaism is God 1.0. And Hinduism and all others are God 0.0.

One of the factors driving Muslim males, particularly educated ones, into these acts of extreme, expressive violence is that while they were taught that they have the most perfect and complete operating system, every day they’re confronted with the reality that people living by God 2.0., God 1.0 and God 0.0 are generally living much more prosperously, powerfully and democratically than those living under Islam. This creates a real dissonance and humiliation. How could this be? Who did this to us? The Crusaders! The Jews! The West! It can never be something that they failed to learn, adapt to or build. This humiliation produces a lashing out. …

Muslims have got to understand that a death cult has taken root in the bosom of their religion, feeding off it like a cancerous tumor.

This cancer is erasing basic norms of civilization. In Iraq, we’ve seen suicide bombers blow up funerals and schools. In England, seven out of the eight people detained in the latest plot are Muslim doctors or medical students. Doctors plotting mass murder? Could that be? If Muslim leaders don’t remove this cancer — and only they can — it will spread, tainting innocent Muslims and poisoning their relations with each other and the world.

Well before the London and Glasgow plots were set into motion, The Times of London reports that a British cleric was given advanced warning in the form of a cryptic message delivered by an al-Qaeda leader he met at a conference about religious reconciliation in Amman, Jordan: “[T]he people who cure you will kill you.”

Say what you will about the American healthcare system, Michael Moore – but at least when our doctors kill you it’s malpractice, not terrorism.

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