In the course of my time editing the JC, I came across a number of people who are, to my mind, not merely wrong-headed but dangerously so. Many of them are themselves Jewish, and their wrong-headedness is often focused on the threat posed by Islamist extremism. It takes the form of a variation on the idea that the best way for the community to deal with Islamists is, in effect, to pretend that it didn’t really exist.
Thus they befriend individuals who are either themselves on the extremist spectrum or who are allies or colleagues of such people; and they break bread with organisations which are extremist fronts or which gave a platform to extremists. Let’s call these people the naifs, although it’s charitable to view them as being primarily naïve.
One thing which these naifs have in common is an air of superiority – as if those of us who are realistic or blunt about the views and threat posed by the people these naifs seek to embrace are ourselves nasty, reprehensible and driven by a malign worldview, in contrast to their elevated outlook and approach.
I also, of course, came across many people who are the opposite of these naifs and who are anything but wrong-headed. One of the most clear-sighted of such people is the Muslim anti-extremist campaigner Fiyaz Mughal. Fiyaz is something of a heroic figure. A passionate campaigner against anti-Muslim bigotry and founder of Tell Mama, a Muslim version of CST, he is no less passionate in his determination to identify and root out Muslim extremism. As you can imagine, this has caused him many problems within his own community, given that one of the issues he has to tackle on a daily basis is the reluctance of many Muslims to deal with extremism, let alone those who are themselves extremists.
In a sane world, those of us who are threatened by Muslim extremism – in other words, everyone who is not a Muslim extremist – would do everything in our power to support the likes of Fiyaz Mughal who devote themselves to the defeat of extremism.
But we do not live in a sane world. It is bad enough that there are those within the Jewish community who pull the rug from under Fiyaz’s feet by embracing those individuals and organisations which ally with extremists. But it is not just these Jewish naifs who undermine Fiyaz and his ilk.
This weekend it was reported that the Home Office has attempted to silence Fiyaz from speaking out about the extremist threat. Until last year, he was working on a contract from the Home Office’s Channel programme, part of the Government’s counter-extremism strategy. Fiyaz is a regular columnist in the media; he was written many times for the JC. His voice is important as a Muslim commentator on extremism. In a column last February, he wrote about how “astonishing” it was that not once in the first 90 minutes of a Home Office summit on extremism that he was at was the Islamist threat mentioned, despite it having been identified by the intelligence agencies as the biggest security threat to the UK. Instead, the summit considered extremism that was of “mixed” or “no clear ideology”, along with misogyny, the far-Right and incel culture.
The day after the column was published Fiyaz was contacted by a senior Home Office official who said, in classic civil service-speak, that he wanted to discuss Fiyaz’s “engagement with the media” and his future government work. As Fiyaz says it in the report this weekend: “He clearly saw the piece and was trying to pressure me not to speak about Islamism in the public domain – that’s what this was. It was done so insidiously. He’s basically saying ‘if you come in line, I can help you a bit’. This was for me a clear attempt to get me to shut up about the lack of discussion, activity, and focus on Islamist extremism as the primary threat to the country.”
Fiyaz has worked on extremism for over 20 years - longer than some civil servants have been out of school – since he joined a working group after the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005. Last year, however, he left his Home Office work because of what he calls the “insidious pressure” not to confront the dangers of Islamism: “As soon as Labour came in, I recognised a shift. Why has suddenly the focus on Islamism dropped off? There is a political perspective within this Government which has bought into advice that actually talking about Islamism is not a beneficial thing to do.
“My perspective is they feel it will cost them politically if they speak about it – they have bought into the ruse that it will cause community divisions. They desperately don’t want to lose the Muslim vote and support.”
It’s certainly correct that there have long been problems with the governmental approach to Islamist extremism. It was bad enough under the Conservatives, who were ostensibly committed to tackling it. Sir William Shawcross’s 2023 review of Prevent found that there was a paralysis as a result of fear of being labelled as Islamophobic, which was exploited by organisations which are themselves part of the problem, to silence criticism. Sir William reported how officials excused support “by those in senior political or community roles” for terrorist groups which are dedicated to the murder of Jews, with some organisations funded by the taxpayer supposedly to fight extremism themselves promoting antisemitism. While Islamist plots constituted 75 per cent of serious counter-terrorism cases, they formed just 16 per cent of Prevent referrals. Sir William exposed how the threshold for triggering the Prevent mechanism was far higher for Islamists than for Extreme Right Wing (XRW in the jargon).
But at least the Tories had in mind that this was problematic, even if they failed to correct it. Under this government, the approach has shifted to the extent that it is seen as problematic if Muslim groups are “targeted”. I have written before for the JC about the fear that drives so much of Labour’s approach: there are 37 constituencies which have a Muslim population over 20 per cent, and in another 73 seats the Muslim population is between 10 and 20 per cent. This simple fact, and Labour’s fear of the sectarian Muslim vote, explains its attitude not just to Middle East policy but to tackling extremism.
Hear no evil, see no evil and, as Fiyaz Mughal was told, speak no evil. The prerogative is not to do anything which might be perceived as upsetting Muslims. And if that means further undermining our already faltering counter-terror programmes, so be it.
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