David Cameron’s bold speech in Munich last Saturday has been somewhat misrepresented as a call to British Muslims to drive out their own extremists.
David Cameron’s bold speech in Munich last Saturday has been somewhat misrepresented as a call to British Muslims to drive out their own extremists. It was really directed at his own bureaucracy and even (though he did not say this) at some in his own party. He is exasperated that administrative efforts to isolate violent Islamist extremists so often end up empowering non-violent ones, thus creating the mental conditions for the very horrors which they are trying to avert. His speech will need a huge amount of follow-up. An early test emerges in parliament, rather than Whitehall. The new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia took on a body called IEngage as its secretariat. IEngage is led by people who consistently offer support to Hamas and protest at criticisms of extremists. One of its trustees, Mohammed Ali Harrath, is the CEO of the Islam Channel which was rebuked by Ofcom last year for advocating marital rape and justifying violence against women. Islamists of the sort Mr Cameron attacked were being tasked to define Islamophobia. Realising what they had got into, the chairman and vice-chairman of the group resigned, thus effectively ending the group’s existence. Now attempts are being made to revive it, with IEngage in the same role. If the government whips permit this to go forward, it will be clear that the Munich speech is already being ignored.
Supporting Mr Cameron’s argument, I named and criticised Charles Farr, the Director-General of the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism at the Home Office, as the boss of the policy which the Prime Minister does not like.
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