16 August 2016

Cancer of Islamic extremism was tolerated for 20 years

.... Mass calls for a caliphate followed by a jihadist murder on London’s streets in 1995 should have acted as a clear warning of the Isis brutality that was set to befall us all. If only there had been civil society resistance against Islamism back when I was 17. Perhaps we would not have lost an entire generation to those who laid the groundwork for Isis to reach our continent.

Just as one of my former British-Pakistani solicitors went on to become the mayor of London, perhaps the other could also have gone on to do great things, on the right side of English law. A sudden mass-migration of European Muslims on the scale that went to join the caliphate did not emerge from a vacuum.

Why would it surprise us then that more Muslims left the UK to join Isis than joined our armed forces? They were simply responding to 20 years of unchecked radicalisation within our communities. Two decades earlier, they had been promised at Wembley arena: Khilafah — coming soon to a country near you. [The Times (£)] Read more