This is Britain: a crackdown on Islamic extremism will not cause attacks on Muslims

Hallelujah, vaguely. The Prime Minister’s extremism task force set up in the wake of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby has just reported and its findings, ‘Tackling Extremism in the UK’ include the following admission:

‘We have been too reticent about challenging extreme Islamist ideologies in the past, in part because of a misplaced concern that attacking Islamist extremism equates to an attack on Islam itself. This reticence, and the failure to confront extremists, has led to an environment conducive to radicalisation in some mosques and Islamic centres, universities and prisons.’

Who could possibly remain opposed to such prevailing common sense? Well here are the people who caused yesterday’s Independent to headline its piece on the report: ‘Government crackdown on radicals “will lead to attacks on Muslims”.’

‘Chris Allen, an expert on Islamophobia at Birmingham University, said: “The more the lens is turned on the Muslim community, the more society begins to think, ‘There’s no smoke without fire’.”

Chris is a nice guy, and has made a nice career out of ‘Islamophobia’. The problem he keeps coming up against is that the British public did not imagine the 7/7 attacks, nor the slaughter of Drummer Rigby. Nor did we conjure up from the depths of our imaginations the Haymarket car-bomb, Madrid, Bali 9/11 and so on.

Meanwhile Isabella Sankey, the director of policy at Liberty, said:

‘Driving those who despise diversity further underground does nothing to expose their beliefs and only acts as another recruitment tool. You cannot protect our democracy by shutting down the very freedoms that sustain it.’

‘Liberty’ once again suggesting that there’s nothing quite so British as a bit of jihadism.

But it is the response of Fiyaz Mughal – the centrepiece of the Independent story – that is most revealing:

‘Last night Fiyaz Mughal, the director of Tell Mama, which records anti-Muslim incidents, said he feared Mr Cameron’s announcements would reinforce negative perceptions of Muslims.