I am writing this article from abroad because I do not currently feel safe in Britain, the country of my birth and where I grew up. Why? Because I have written books and articles exposing and warning about the danger of Islamism in the UK.
I am not alone in feeling threatened. Many of our media organisations, universities, charities, government departments and judges live in fear of offending an extremist underworld, which has been strengthened by the disaster of the Israel-Gaza war. The Bondi beach attack is only its latest manifestation.
Ten years ago, the Conservative government was willing to confront Islamist extremism when it commissioned a review into the Muslim Brotherhood. But now the Tory party is weak, anti-immigration politics are on the rise and the government party is split.
Extremist actors are stepping into the void. In America, Nick Fuentes has been open in his pronouncements of hate against immigrants, Jews, women and gays. Meanwhile in the UK, Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk regularly attack Britain’s ‘two-tier’ judicial system, rape gangs and illegal immigration.
We must call out Islamists for what they truly are: seditionists committed to treason
The Muslim world, meanwhile, has its own far-right: the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt and the Jamaat-e-Islami from Pakistan. They too hate Jews, gays, women, non-Muslims – and especially normal Muslims such as me who disagree with their extremist interpretation of Islam.
In Britain, this far-right Islamist movement has had a growing presence since the 1950s. They have targeted second- and third-generation British Muslims and left-leaning white students, with a popular narrative against capitalism, colonialism, and freeing Palestine. The success of this narrative was demonstrated last year, when four ‘Gaza independents’ were elected as members of parliament. Their partial union with Corbyn’s Your Party this year shows how the horse-shoe theory of politics works, with Islamists aligning with the British far left.
When the British government examined the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2015, Sir John Jenkins, Britain’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, found that this shadowy organisation appeared to have ‘deliberately incited violence’ in Egypt and its ideology and tactics were ‘contrary to our values and have been contrary to our national interests and national security.’ He tracked how the Brotherhood incubated violence, killed other Muslims, conducted assassinations against British and Jewish interests, and refused to officially disavow the writings of Sayyid Qutb, an early Muslim Brother leader who called for the killing of Muslims and non-Muslims. Qutb’s books are translated and disseminated in Britain to this day.
A decade ago, the UK government was worried about the rise of the Brotherhood in Egypt. Now, we see the Brotherhood rising to prominence in Sudan, parts of Yemen, Libya, Syria and most consequentially, Gaza. Hamas is the Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and it has used the terrorist attack of 7 October and Israel’s war in Gaza as a mobilising tool on Britain’s campuses and in its communities.
What does the Brotherhood’s growing influence mean for Britain’s Muslims? It results in women facing sharia court trials for divorce proceedings. Mosques must send coaches to marches in London or risk becoming outcasts. For the rest of the country it has meant greater communal separatism and multiple terror attacks. Britain’s Jews are afraid to walk the streets of their country, and MPs have been attacked by Islamist extremists.
The resulting terror threat has been classed by the government as ‘substantial’, with 43,000 individuals on an MI5 watch list just five years ago. The Jenkins report warned a decade ago about the threat from the Brotherhood to Britain’s national security. That menace has now metastasised.
Both the Labour and Conservative parties need to face down this threat. They should follow President Trump’s lead in outlawing Muslim Brotherhood chapters. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Kemi Badenoch and MPs Tom Tugendhat and Nick Timothy are all alert to this rising peril. Working together, parliamentarians can help save Britain, its laws and institutions, its diverse lands and populations, and pass on its truly great inheritance to the next generation. To do so, we must call out Islamists for what they truly are: seditionists committed to treason.
There are already laws on the books to counter this threat. We are able to charge Britain’s enemies with treason. By using these powers we can show Trump and our Arab and Muslim allies that Britain is seriously dealing with the extremist threat.
The Brotherhood is an octopus with many arms. It has no official address in London for the police to raid and handcuff its members. To meet our enemy at its chosen battlefield, we must approach it with the following strategy.
First, we must grasp that we are dealing with a movement. It is a spectrum – with Al-Qaeda on one extreme and Islamist groups using democracy to gain power on the other. Once this is understood, we must map and fully chart its influence across campuses, charities, communities and media. To do this, the Jenkins report needs updating and publishing in full. Third, we must block the money being funnelled to support the movement – recent estimates suggest more than £700 million is being channelled to the Brotherhood worldwide. Fourth, many of our mosques have been captured by this seditionist movement and are now using imams and congregations to further their aims. We should deport, strike off and have more control over who preaches in British mosques. Finally, we desperately need more Muslim nations as allies in this effort.
Shabana Mahmood and her Labour colleagues must have the willpower and conviction to take on this threat. They are inheritors and trustees of a great nation – Britain should act against those plotting its demise.
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