UK

Ed Husain’s Among the Mosques explores our diverse and divided Muslim communities.

“… However, towards the end of Among the Mosques, Husain reaches a sober conclusion. He concludes that it is the literalists who have gained the upper hand:

‘After travelling the length and breadth of Great Britain, meeting Muslims from every denomination, it is clear to me that blind reliance on scripture and the clerics is overwhelmingly strong within British Islam. Adherence to the seventh-century Koran, ninth-century hadith and 10th- and 11th-century Islamic scholarship is deeply embedded.’

He feels that three distinct trends are at work among Britain’s Muslim communities. First, communalism, whereby what might have been a private, religious identity is becoming increasingly public and political. Second, clericalism, in which the power of clerics is subverting the authority of the state. And finally, caliphism, which encourages Muslims to believe that secular Britain is flawed and failing…”

A mosque leader accused of encouraging terrorism told a court ‘Jihad by sword’ was a fundamental obligation in the Quran.

Abubaker Deghayes, 53, allegedly made a ‘stabbing motion with his hands’ as he promoted Islamic extremist violence to his Brighton Mosque congregation on November 1, 2020.

Libyan-born Deghayes said: ‘Jihad is compulsory, upon you, you, you and you until the Day of Resurrection, whatever the British Government thinks, whatever Prevent thinks, whatever Israel thinks.

Grenfell Tower: Woman made ‘Jewish sacrifice’ Facebook posts

A woman who claimed Grenfell Tower fire victims were “burnt alive in a Jewish sacrifice” has been found guilty of two counts of stirring up racial hatred.

Tahra Ahmed, 51, posted her theory on Facebook, just days after the fire in west London that killed 72 people.

She also linked Grenfell to an anti-Semitic conspiracy surrounding the 9/11 terror attacks in New York.

She claimed her comments were political rather than anti-Semitic but was convicted by a jury at the Old Bailey.

British MP Stephen Timms open to meeting extremist who stabbed him

An Islamist extremist who stabbed a former UK government minister more than 11 years ago has written to him to apologise.

Roshonara Choudhry stabbed and wounded opposition Labour politician Stephen Timms during a meeting in 2010, saying it was in retaliation for him voting for war in Iraq. She is currently serving a life sentence in prison.

Police in Rotherham, where the authorities failed to tackle South Asian heritage “grooming” gangs due to political correctness for years, failed to record most abusers’ ethnicity in the year to December 2019.

A former pupil at an Islamic religious school in Leicester has told how he and hundreds of other pupils were subjected to Guantanamo Bay-inspired torture and described the school as a “petri dish” for terrorists.

Adam — who did not want his full name to be used — described having to squat for long periods with his hands looped under his knees and holding his ears. This, he said, was punishment for not having learnt verses of the Quran correctly.

David Amess and the deafening silence on Islamism

Conservative MP Sir David Amess was stabbed to death in October in a suspected Islamist terror attack. It shocked the nation.

But the political and media response to his killing revealed something else, too. Namely, that we live in a society that is increasingly indulging in terror denialism – especially when it comes to the threat posed by Islamist terrorism.

This was clear from the way politicians and pundits were quick to blame Amess’s killing on anything but Islamist terrorism.

The Manchester Arena bomber’s former head teacher has told an inquiry there was no sign of his extremism while he was at school.

Twenty-two people were killed when Salman Abedi detonated a bomb in the venue’s foyer on 22 May 2017.

Abedi studied at Burnage Academy for Boys in Manchester for about 18 months between 2009 and 2011.

The public inquiry into the attack heard he was “aggressive and rude” to teachers and was suspended from school.