There is one simple reason for cautious confidence in the future of British Islam, and the ultimate unlikelihood of Islamist politics taking deep, widespread roots in our pluralistic parliamentary democracy. Whenever you hear of some depressing new gambit to rally British Muslims to an absurd sectarian agenda, its origins and organisation can invariably be traced to the same coterie of individuals. For this band of Brothers, such activism is a labour of love, the fruit of sleepless nights and schoolboy daydreams. But there are only about fifteen of them.
And so it is with the Hamas-inspired bid to have Tzipi Livni arrested on British soil and the side-car campaign to have the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund revoked. On the 13th December the Islamic Human Rights Commission and the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign cobbled together a demonstration outside the Hendon Hall hotel to coincide with a JNF conference which Livni was due to attend. The IHRC called on the likeminded to register their discontent at JNF “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians” and Tzipi Livni’s “responsibility for the Israeli onslought [sic] on Gaza”.
