Had their plan to blow up at least 12 airplanes succeeded, it would have killed more people than the 11 September attacks.

What is more terrifying is that the people British police believe were behind this despicable plan were the boys or girls next door.

One of those under arrest is a 20-something mother of a six-month-old infant. The others include a taxi driver, a biochemistry student, a pizza shop owner and the convert son of a Conservative political official.

They are middle-class faces of British Muslims. They are citizens who have given no clue as to their alleged deadly intentions.

They have no previous convictions, no outward extremist links. They are a secret army of whom we have much to fear.

Their communities, interviewed in newspapers and on television in the last few days, had no suspicion of any al-Qaeda-type connections and no notion that a murderous terrorist plot was being hatched in their midst.

The British security services say they have thwarted 13 terrorist plots since 11 September 2001. Irish security expert Dr Tom Clonan says we in Ireland should wake up to the threat. "If I were a terrorist I would not go through Belgium or Holland to Britain.

I would be coming through Ireland, " he told Ryan Tubridy on RTE Radio One.

In this newspaper today, Ireland's chief Muslim cleric reveals events in this country that are troubling him and that should be a cause of concern for the Taoiseach, the government and every citizen. Sheikh Dr Shaheed Satardien says he is seeing a dramatic change in the attitudes and actions of young Muslims here. He describes it as an ocean of extremism.

He blames the growth in support for fundamentalist values on parents and leaders who are failing to guide young Muslims torn between two cultures and then drawn into support for terrorism, anti-semitism and a hatred of Western democracy.

He alerted the Taoiseach's department to his concerns and the basis for them 11 months ago, urging the government to introduce strict guidelines on young Irish Muslims travelling to pockets of extremism in the Middle East. And he urged the government to crack down on radical foreign clerics travelling here to spread their message of hate. Nothing has happened.

US president George Bush claimed last week that radicalised Muslim youths were being driven by "a hatred of our freedom".

His analysis is misleading as he refused to consider that his own calamitous foreign policy is also a factor. It is not a hatred of the West that is motivating radicalised Muslim youth, but a hatred of Western foreign policy that considers Muslim lives to have such little value.

We have learned, in the aftermath of the thwarted plan, that it is relatively simple to make a bomb and smuggle it on board an aircraft. Innocent-looking objects can be combined to form a deadly explosive which, combined with the air pressure in the cabin, could bring about major destruction.

The chances of a terrorist attack in Ireland are low, but that does not mean we should blind ourselves to the possibility. It is only by accurately analysing the nature of the threat that the Western world will be successful in thwarting potential attacks.

Moderate Muslim leaders like Satardien have a huge role to play in this. The Taoiseach and his government must heed his advice and act accordingly. Education and information are our best weapons in the battle to prevent fanaticism and Muslim fundamentalism taking root here too.