The BBC wins a landmark victory in the fight against Islamic extremism

Shakeel Begg is an influential extremist who is also chief Imam of the Lewisham Islamic Centre.  His radical views are readily available and well-known.  But despite these downsides a chap like him also possesses certain considerable advantages.  Not least is the fact that he lives in a society which is only very slowly waking up to the threat that people like him pose.

If Begg were a Protestant preacher from Northern Ireland then he would not have been able to make any public appearance for years without being forced to bake the biggest, gayest cake possible right there and then.  If he refused, the whole of civilised society would round on him to explain what a great big ‘phobe’ he was.  But Shakeel Begg is not a Protestant preacher and nor would he draw the line in his perfect society at merely not baking the cake for one’s gay nuptials.

As such, he is also lucky enough to live in a country where many people who should be in the business of investigation and inquiry fail in their obligations.  Many of them do so because they are understandably put off by being called names such as ‘racist’.  In these cases, such names are insincerely but deliberately used as a smokescreen to allow extremist behaviour to continue.

Another advantage for the Beggs of this world is living in a country where useful idiots from the other monotheisms are always on hand to play ‘interfaith’ games and in the process either wittingly or unwittingly provide further cover for some seriously bad people.

However, despite all of this, the Beggs do have a problem.  Like a bigamist dashing between their wives, he must perforce to keep two sets of books.  For although most of his interlocutors – like his beards at the interfaith councils – don’t know what they are doing or what questions to ask, he knows that were they to find out, even they may look askance at one of their peaceful members telling his audiences, for instance, to go abroad and fight Jihad.  They