In 2004, Scotland Yard detectives slept on the floor of their offices as they gathered evidence that could be used in court against a terrorist network led by Dhiren Barot. The intelligence was overwhelming but it was only in the final moments of the two week time period that they were able to prevent the release of Al Qaeda terrorists onto the streets of London.

As The Telegraph noted: “Two years later, they pleaded guilty to plotting to make a dirty bomb and to kill fellow citizens in huge numbers.”

Many journalists, politicians and bloggers like to make comparisons of Islamic terrorism to the atrocities of the IRA. Former British Prime Minister Sir John Major made the astoundingly naive claim that the United Kingdom had, “faced far more regular - and no less violent - assaults from the IRA”.

What Major fails to tally up is the intent behind Islamist extremism and their global desire to destroy anything and everything that is not in their sphere of Islamic acceptability. They seek to kill in the tens of thousands, and if possible, in the millions. Unlike previous terrorists who more often than not gave some warnings, the Islamists do not and therefore the Police have to make arrests well before they have completed their investigations.

In 2005 the security services decided on 90 days as their ideal time frame for holding terror suspects but the political echelons refused. The global Jihad we now face crosses multiple continents, various language zones and is waged in a more computer related and internet savvy environment that we have not faced before. Evidence that would stand up in court has to be gleamed from hundreds, if not thousands, of computers, mosques, Islamic bookshops not just in Britain, but worldwide.

Many, like David Davies, who resigned as an MP today to force a local by-election in his constituency of Haltemprice and Howden in protest of the Terror Bill, claim that the habeus corpus has been undermined or destroyed. What they forget is that regardless of the detention limit, whether 28 days, 42 days or 90 days, a suspect must still be produced before a court within 48 hours of arrest. Scaremongering by various groups and media outlets has led to a myriad of misunderstandings and charges of Britain turning into a ‘Police State’, which are completely erroneous. What critics also forget or seem to gloss over is that the police’s powers to detain are heavily checked by the judiciary in order that a long period of detention is only used in special circumstances.

Still more critics complain that we are in danger of alienating British Muslims. This point can only remain irrelevant in that those Muslims, the majority, who are against acts of terror should feel no affinity whatsoever with those arrested for concocting the murder of innocent civilians, Muslims included. If Islamic communities are so concerned and victimised, then what does that say about their desires for integration?

Britain must adapt to the growing threat and enemy forces that face us in the 21st Century and which seek the complete destruction of our values and freedoms. I personally back 90 days.

Finally I would like to add that I disagree with the seemingly underhand manner in which the Brown government has dealt with the terror bill vote and the likely ‘paying off’ of the DUP in return for their votes. Despite it being passed as a result, it is yet another sign of the disparagement of the Labour administration.

Edward Beaman is a neoconservative writer based in the UK. He currently writes for several blogs and is posting at NeoConstant on a regular basis.