Category Archives: UK Politics

This is a cross-post by Edmund Standing

Pauline Neville-Jones, 2008 Conservative Party Conference Speech:

We will ban Hizb-ut-Tahrir – which has just called for American soldiers in the Gulf to be killed.

[...]

We all – Muslims and non-Muslims – must actively face down extremists.

Because the security of our society rests ultimately on the hard-nosed defence of our values and a shared loyalty to them.

Under the next Conservative Government, led by David Cameron, that’s what we will be doing.

Chris Grayling, December 2009 Speech:

We must also be willing to challenge and where necessary to ban groups that mask an ideology of hate behind a public veil of moderation. We have just such an issue with the radical group Hizb’ut Tahrir. Within the UK it takes extreme care about how it words its propaganda. And claims that those who want it banned are completely misplaced.

Martin Bright brings news that the All Party Parliamentary Group have decided that iEngage are unsuited to the role of secretariat.

This encouraging development was initiated by a scathing and forensic critique of the iEngage agenda by Paul Goodman MP, on ConservativeHome. Goodman clearly has a solid grasp of  the agents of Islamic extremism, their politics and their rhetoric. He writes, with precision, how the Jamaat and Muslim Brotherhood brands of Islamism have been rigorously cultivated, sometimes with the tacit cooperation of officials of the previous Labour government.

Goodman is one of those rare politicians who understands very clearly that Islamist groups are motivated by the need to advance the exclusivist cause of a clique of Islamic extremist groups and organisations whose interests are distinctly detached from the interests of the majority of Muslims. Most British Muslims are not extremist, yet Islamists pretend to represent them without mandate. The majority of British Muslims take a dim view of Islamic fundamentalists and the messianical ideology which underpins it. But Goodman has the wherewithal to see past this façade and understands how to differentiate between genuine bigotry against Muslims and the term “Islamophobia” when it is used by groups like iEngage to silence criticism of religious extremism.