We need a compact with Muslim Middle England

Andrew Gilligan says the new coalition must reformulate our relationship with moderate Muslims — and marginalise the extremists for good

One of the unsung heroes of this year’s election campaign was the Labour MP for Poplar and Limehouse, Jim Fitzpatrick. Alone in his party, Mr Fitzpatrick stood up before the election and said something that everyone in east London Labour knew, but no one else had the guts to put on record. To my newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph, and Channel 4’s Dispatches, he blew the whistle on the way that, in his words, the Tower Hamlets Labour party had been infiltrated and ‘corrupted’ by a radical Islamist group, the Islamic Forum of Europe, rather as the Militant Tendency operated in the 1980s.

The IFE, based at the hard-line East London Mosque and highly influential inside the Muslim Council of Britain, seeks, in its own words, to change the ‘very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed… from ignorance to Islam.’ It ‘strives for the establishment of a global [my italics] society, the Khilafah [caliphate]… comprised of individuals who live by the principles of… the Shari’ah.’ It says its ‘primary work’ to create this state ‘is in Europe [my italics] because it is this continent, despite all the furore about its achievements, which has a moral and spiritual vacuum.’

Mr Fitzpatrick described how dozens of new people suddenly started turning up to Labour party meetings. Membership of one Tower Hamlets constituency more than doubled in a few months, at a time when Labour membership nationally was in steep decline. We also spoke, off the record, to many serving or former Labour councillors who told us that the IFE exercised significant influence over the local council and played a part in the election of its then leader, Lutfur Rahman — something Mr Rahman has refused to deny.