Labour’s disastrous policy is radicalising a whole new generation of Muslims

The repellent spectacle of Muslims demonstrating in Luton against the British soldiers returning from Iraq does more than turn our stomach.

It tells us in graphic form that this country has not only utterly failed to combat a threat to itself from within but - astoundingly - turns not against those who threaten it but against those who seek to defend it.

When the returning troops of the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Anglian Regiment paraded through Luton they had to run the gauntlet of Muslim protesters waving placards saying: ‘Anglian soldiers: Butchers of Basra,’ and ‘Anglian soldiers: cowards, killers, extremists.’

Not surprisingly, this enraged the rest of the crowd of decent, patriotic people who had turned out to welcome the troops home. Yet the only arrests made were among those who objected to the Muslim provocation, including a man who shouted something at them.

Talk about getting things back to front! The police turn a blind eye to gross and offensive provocation which clearly poses a threat to public order, while arresting instead those who are thus provoked!

Among the protesters was a group of burka-clad women with their faces wholly concealed except for slits for the eyes. Given the menacing nature of the protest, the fact that their identities were thus concealed was highly relevant.

Yet if anyone objects to any of this, they are called ‘Islamophobic’. Just think what the reaction would be if, say, a group of Ku Klux Klansmen in full regalia took part in a demonstration by neo-Nazis in a heavily ethnic minority area. Does anyone imagine that such a direct threat to public order would be permitted?

But when it comes to Islamist extremists, it is those who protest at such gross provocation - and, indeed, treachery against their own country - who are arrested as a threat to public order while the extremists are left free to preach their hatred.

Moreover, this demonstration appears to have been organised by an extremist group directly linked to Omar Bakri Mohammed, who now preaches to his followers from Lebanon via videos posted on websites after he was barred from Britain.

Omar Bakri led the extremist group al Muhajiroun which is now banned in Britain. But one of yesterday’s protesters was Sayful Islam, the leader of the Luton branch of an organisation that has the same beliefs as al Muhajiroun, and who said ‘They can’t come here and parade where there is such a Muslim community.’ Why are the police turning a blind eye to this?

Today, the extremist preacher Anjem Choudary not only praised yesterday’s protesters but, in an inflammatory message posted on an Islamic extremist website, viciously mocked the member of the returning regiment who had been killed by friendly fire in Iraq.

Why is Anjem Choudhary still at liberty to preach such inflammatory hatred? He leads a group formed after al Muhajiroun was banned called Islam For The UK which wants Britain to be an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law.

The reason for this whole cockeyed approach lies in the government’s utterly flawed strategy for dealing with Islamist extremism. The flaw lies in its definition of the problem as ‘violent’ extremism.

It refuses to acknowledge that even people who do not themselves advocate violence but who promote extremist and seditious views, such as the overthrow of British society and the imposition of Islamic sharia law, are a threat to this country by inciting hatred and resentment, thus swelling the sea in which violence swims.

Unbelievable as this will seem to many people, the government further believes that such non-violent extremists are an antidote to violent extremism. So ministers, local councils and even the police actually use such extremists as advisers against Islamist extremism. Surreal? You bet. But all too true.

Last Monday, Policy Exchange published a devastating critique of this strategy of Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) in a pamphlet entitled ‘Choosing our Friends Wisely’ by Shiraz Maher and Martin Frampton.

This correctly observes that, far from countering extremism, this disastrous policy is actually radicalising a new generation of Muslims - sometimes with the very funds that are supposed to be countering radicalisation.

As a result, the state now funds Islamist-influenced organisations, such as the United Kingdom Islamic Mission, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Islamic Society of Britain.

Its refusal to identify all extremism as the problem produced the recent debacle of Dr Daud Abdullah, a member of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board - the government-appointed body that trains supposedly ‘moderate’ imams and is designed to curtail the activities of extremist clerics.

Yet Dr Abdullah was one of 90 Muslim leaders from around the world who signed a public declaration in support of Hamas and advocated attacks on the Royal Navy if it tried to stop arms for Hamas being smuggled into Gaza.

Worse even than the government’s use of such extremists is the fact that the police are working closely with them too. The Metropolitan Police is selecting advisers against Islamist extremism who themselves have Islamist agendas - including one who supports the creation of an Islamic state and is the subject of an Interpol ‘red notice.’

As the report states, the police are working with radicals such as Azad Ali, a supposed ‘moderate’ who sits on the Metropolitan Police’s Strategic Stop and Search Committee and Police Use of Firearms Group, as well as the Home Office’s Trust and Confidence Community Panel.

Yet Ali has recently published a series of incendiary articles on the internet fuelled by his outrage over Israeli military activity in Gaza. In one article he pours scorn on moderate Muslims, calling them ‘self-serving vultures, feeding on the dead flesh of the Palestinians.’

As the report rightly asks, how can someone like this be regarded as an appropriate ‘partner’ for the Metropolitan Police and other official organs rather than being viewed as beyond the pale?

Worse still, the police are now reflecting some of this radicalism themselves. Thus the Association of Chief Police Officers has said the police must ensure that ‘genuine grievances that contribute to violent extremism are addressed effectively and perceived grievances rebutted.’

But what are these ‘genuine grievances’ that must be thus rebutted? Criticism of Islamist extremism? Evidently so - as demonstrated by the extraordinary decision by the West Midlands Police to report Channel 4 to the broadcasting regulator Ofcom over claims that its investigation into hate preachers in some British mosques might have harmed ‘community cohesion'; or by the cautionary tale of Sgt Amar Shakoor of Strathclyde Police, who signed an open letter on behalf of the Strathclyde Muslim Police Association condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The reason behind the government’s disastrously misguided approach is the refusal by ministers and the security establishment to acknowledge that the driver of Islamist extremism is not ‘grievances’ but religious ideology.

That ideology threatens the freedom and security no less of those many British Muslims who have nothing to do with such extremism and who want to sign up to British values just like everyone else.

It was the product of the government’s dalliance with extremists and refusal to address the core of the Islamist threat to this country that was on such ugly and shocking display in Luton yesterday.

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