Britain’s most senior Muslim police officer has urged Islamic communities to do more to confront the “silent killer” of extremism, saying they cannot rely only on the police and security services to deal with the threat.
Mak Chishty, a Metropolitan police commander who leads the organisation’s community outreach programme, said some moderate Muslims were being deterred from opposing extremism by fundamentalists who equated assisting police with “spying”.
Chishty said the Muslim community was an “integral part of modern Britain”, but it needed to do more.
“Danger lurks within elements of our communities,” he told The Sunday Times. “This is not about stigmatising our communities. It is about joining forces to ensure that radical sentiment cannot take root.
“The nature of the [extremist] threat presents itself in a highly camouflaged way. It is like a silent killer that gets to people — often without them knowing. This is the reality of reports I receive every day.
“It’s highly persuasive and being deliberately wrapped around a distortion of Islamic scripture and text, making it compulsive, and bringing people into it. So people get duped into it believing it’s a religious duty.”
Chishty’s comments follow the terrorist attack by Khalid Masood, 52, a convert to Islam, who drove into crowds of tourists and passersby on Westminster Bridge in central London on March 22, killing three, before stabbing a police officer to death. Masood, who also injured some 50 people, was shot dead by an armed officer.
All 12 people arrested since the attack have been released without charge.
Chishty said converts to Islam were particularly vulnerable to recruitment by extremists.
“We recognise that there is a vulnerability in the convert community,” he said. “This does not mean all converts to Islam are amenable to radicalisation — simply that new Muslims should be given more support to learn the faith from established authorities, and not rogue interpretations.”
Chishty added that he was not questioning Muslims’ loyalty to Britain, merely asking them to report concerns early to help authorities stop attack: “In addressing these threats and risks . . . it cannot be left to the state and its agencies alone.
“We need the community to report anything that causes concern early so that we can intervene as quickly as possible. This does not mean arresting, searching and charging. It means supporting, diverting and educating. The mission is to safeguard all people at all times.”
He said while the government’s counter-extremism programme Prevent was not “perfect”, more work was required to change people’s attitudes towards the police.
“The majority of the Muslim communities speak to the police,” he said. “But there’s a minority who . . . deter people in the communities wanting to talk to the police because of issues relating to alleged spying.
“But I just want to say that, as a seasoned cop of 30 years, such allegations are completely false.”
A specialist team of anti-terrorism experts will be announced this week as the government steps up efforts to tackle “poisonous” extremism in prisons.