INSTEAD of spending so long anguishing over what "turned" four outwardly respectable young men into the 7/7 bombers, why don't we just try this for size?

They were evil. They did it because they wanted to. Simple as that.

Like everyone else on this earth they had the choice to tread the path of decency and achievement and to make their community proud of them but they chose not to.

They chucked out every single value that right-thinking people hold dear and instead they plotted to kill and to maim and to cause the maximum pain to the maximum number of innocent people.

So twisted were they, so consumed with hatred, they left videotaped messages to be broadcast after their death to try and break the hearts of their victims and the bereaved all over again.

An opinion poll by Populus recently revealed that some 13 per cent of British Muslims apparently believe that the 7/7 bombers were martyrs.

No doubt there is already a committee of worthies, whingers and Guardian readers ready to plead with the 13 per cent for answers, mouthing the usual platitudes about better integration, multi-cultural awareness and asking them to pardon us for living when really, they should be told to pack their bags.

But they are only 13 per cent. What about the 87 per cent of the Muslim population and 100 per cent of everyone else who are appalled by what happened on 7/7 and want answers and action and to know they can get on a train or a bus without being blown up? When is someone going to listen to them?

It's a year since Tony Blair issued his 10-point plan for getting to grips with terrorists; all the usual bunkum about rooting out radicals and shipping out troublemakers.

Whatever. None of it has come to pass. We're still allowing TV studios to be clogged with whining so-called community leaders and letting hate-merchants like Anjem Choudary, who organised the London "protests" over the Mohammed cartoons, get off virtually scot-free.

Again, whatever. What we should be doing is paying more attention to the victims of 7/7 and to its heroes, people like Imran Choudhary, the young Underground employee who, in frenzy of courage and with no thought for himself, rescued several seriously injured people from a wrecked train carriage.

We should be thinking of people like 7/7 victim Shamsul Islam, whose father says of her: "She loved London, she loved Britain, she loved her religion."

Compare that image to the one of the ranting, soulless bomber Shehzad Tanweer, which popped up on Al-Jazeera TV recently.

Compare Tanweer's words of hate to those of the family of Lance Corporal Jabron Hashmi, the young, British, Muslim soldier described as enthusiastic, confident and immensely popular, who was killed while fighting to make a better world in Afghanistan.

"Some Muslims are suicide bombers and blow things up. We don't," says Jabron's sister, Zoubia.

Her brother, Zeeshan, who also served as a British soldier, said: "The Taliban and al-Qaeda do not represent proper Muslims. How do they justify blowing up hundreds of innocent people?"

In the days and months ahead, while the excuse-makers and the apologists for terror are paraded before us as if their opinions were valid, we should remember people like the Hashmi family, like the vivid Shamshul Islam, and listen more to them.

As for the 7/7 bombers and the sad cases who admire them, they can remember the words of George Psaradakis. Of the bomber who destroyed his Number 30 bus, he says only this: "The first victim of the evil that he allowed to overtake him was himself."