CRYPTONYM BLOG

The two most untrustworthy and odious men in British politics, Labour leader Keir Starmer and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, have been at it again. Eager to deflect from a historic breach of protocol in the House of Commons, they have thrown absurd and slanderous allegations of Islamophobia at Lee Anderson MP.

Anderson conceded his remarks about Khan’s submission to Islamist influence were clumsy. At the heart of Anderson’s commentary, however, lies a very real truth, namely the capitulation of our institutions to a vile ideology that not only threatens democracy but also poses a serious risk to the safety of our citizenry.

The slur of Islamophobia is lazy but also tactical. Starmer and Khan are not alone in falsely connecting concerns about open borders and anti-Jew hate marches to the far-Right; it’s a strategy used by the Left across Europe. Devoid of meaningful policies, they can only try to shame their opponents into silence.

So it is unsurprising that both these cowardly men attempt to turn attention away from their own failings by attacking an honourable Member of Parliament for raising genuine concerns about the shameful state of democracy and policing in Great Britain today. Islamophobia has become a convenient yet baseless retort.

I am at risk of giving Anderson’s opponents in this fight too much attention. Starmer is famous for reverse-ferreting on any topic if he spies an opportunity for political capital. He changes his mind so often that my name for him is Weasel Weathervane. (I certainly won’t acknowledge his undeserved knighthood.)

Khan is a virtue-signalling narcissist whose delusions of grandeur are matched only by his ineptitude. His shallow pandering to every ‘oppressed’ minority group makes me doubt he’s a puppet of Islamists, but harm can be committed by omission, and it is the lack of decisive action which Anderson refers to.

The question of whether Islamists are ‘in control’ is nothing more than a semantic point; we are not talking about direct infiltration into hierarchical positions but the degree of influence exerted upon those who hold them. Or, to put it simply: lobbying and intimidation. The weaker the system, the greater the acquiescence.

This weakness can be seen in the Labour Party’s desire to turn criticism of Islam into a hate crime via the inane and dangerous definition of Islamophobia (p. 11) promoted by the witless All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims. These MPs collude to deny a problem exists by censoring discussion about it.

Some MPs, however, are now starting to wake up to the fact that their policy of deflection and denial no longer appeases the mob. While they still attempt to distract us by talking about the far-Right, they have found themselves under verbal and physical attack. This intimidation is, of course, gross and unforgivable.

In truth, the far-Right in the UK is barely significant and has never gained traction in public opinion. My own great-grandfather, as a union rep in the newspaper industry, went to the High Court as a defendant for conspiring to refuse to distribute Oswald Mosley’s fascist propaganda. The case was swiftly dismissed.

And yet we now find ourselves in an era when Khan and his cronies on the Left are quite happy to accuse everyone from Brexit supporters to ULEZ opponents as being far-Right. Ignoring the fact that many Labour voters chose to leave the European Union, not a single word Khan says can be judged as credible.

No, the danger from Islamists, or Islamic extremism if you prefer, is the most significant threat to British society today, and it is irresponsible to pretend otherwise. More importantly, it is negligent for those in authority to fail to respond firmly to what has been obvious to ordinary people for a very long time.

The intimidation marches in London – every week since October 2023 – are instructive, simply by the fact that the extreme fringe of British Muslims and their useful idiots on the political Left have only taken to the streets because the targets of their ire are Israel and Jews. Theirs is an openly anti-Semitic movement.

This should be obvious to any neutral observer. The flags, slogans and genocidal chants are evidence of that. The plight of Muslims is never otherwise complained about by their UK co-religionists, often because deaths are the result of factional conflict. But they have also remained silent about the Uighurs in China.

It is clear that the lack of condemnation of Hamas, both for the terror attacks against Israel and the violent and oppressive rule over their own people in Gaza, is proof that this agitation is not about the welfare of Arabs. Egypt also kills Hamas terrorists and floods their tunnels but is never likewise condemned.

What is really going on here? Is this about the control of which Anderson spoke? Is it hyperbole to talk of an Islamic fundamentalist fifth column and its desire to build a global caliphate? Is this a modern microcosm of an organised movement reflecting the spread of Islam since the Arab Conquests of the 7th century?

It is at this point that we might run into the inevitable accusations of Islamophobia, so it is necessary to draw the distinction between moderate, well integrated Muslims and the hardliners. But we must rebut claims that the extremists are few in number. There are well over 40,000 Islamists on MI5’s watch list.

My limited interactions with Muslims has been mostly favourable, from being invited to share a Ramadan breakfast on a Red Sea dive boat to a tour of England’s oldest mosque, but, as a police officer, I once had to disperse an agitated crowd from outside a mosque because of some petty internal disagreement.

So when Suella Braverman says there are people ‘in Britain but not of Britain’, she is correct. In Islam we sometimes see a lack of connection which is seldom apparent elsewhere with other integrated cultures. Islam is unique in that some of its adherents desire to usurp existing traditions, values and structures.

A timely example adds weight to this argument, namely the election of George Galloway in the Rochdale by-election. Standing before a Palestinian flag, he made the contest about religion. This led to hopefully misplaced concerns about sectarianism. He’s a powerful orator but has minimal national influence.

I am heartened that more and more people are talking and writing about the rise of Islamism in the UK, but the discussion is yet to offer practical solutions which address the growing extremism while maintaining respect for those moderate Muslims who are as troubled by the anti-Semitism as other decent citizens.

Rishi Sunak’s underwhelming speech failed to hit the mark because he avoided defining the problem and included the now mandatory and intellectually inert reference to the far-Right. As David Oldroyd-Bolt accurately pointed out, this is a false equivalence which gives cover to the Islamic fundamentalists.

It was not lost on the audience that Sunak’s speech came days after he removed the Conservative whip from Anderson for voicing the very same concerns, nor that Braverman had similarly discussed the issue and lost her job as Home Secretary for so doing. Sunak’s speech was feeble and lacked substance.

The first corrective step is to recognise the unique identitarian nature of the Islamist problem, not tinker haplessly with the definition of extremism. This is not good enough. Our parliamentarians must create a Protection from Islamism Act to clearly define this specific threat and impose appropriate safeguards.

A notable problem with the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy is that it has encouraged a disproportionate number of alarmist referrals for so-called far-Right activity while neglecting to properly address threats from Islamists. While other threats do exist, a programme solely focussed on Islamism needs to be established.

It is also time to shut down legal loopholes which offer human-rights protections to suspects while failing to protect the citizenry. There is no longer a case to maintain membership of the European Court of Human Rights, especially since it was discovered that many of its activist judges are not even legally qualified.

Our commitment to international asylum treaties is no longer justifiable, especially at a time when millions of people are moving around the world as economic migrants. It is time to withdraw and to encourage EU member states to do the same. The flood in the Mediterranean will not stop without push-back protocols.

As Robert Jenrick proposed, we also need strict expulsion rules for foreign nationals on visas who support Islamist ideology. We need new public disorder offences such as accosting, intimidating or threatening a person on religious or ideological grounds, plus offences for ideological conspiracy and assembly.

Such proposals often meet resistance from the freedom-of-speech absolutists but, as a strong proponent of this democratic right, I don’t think such objections are valid. The key condition with any freedom is that it does not interfere with the rights of others. The intimidation we have seen clearly crosses that line.

Nor would the right to freedom of religion be breached by banning the niqab and sharia law, because one’s personal right to hold a belief is not determined by the choice to wear clothing which is not required by that religion, and we cannot have a faith-based legal system which undermines the statutory law of the land.

Police tactics need to be reviewed too, and while I concur that there is a practical and tactical benefit to deploying water cannon against disruptive protesters, lesser measures such as banning the police from consulting so-called independent advisory groups and community leaders would be a welcome step.

There are many other areas to tackle, including radicalisation in prisons and mosques, voter intimidation, border defence, resourcing for the security services and preserving the right to criticise all religions equally. Words are not sufficient. All aspects of the Islamism problem must be defined and constrained by law.