Mick Hartley

In the wake of Sudesh Amman's "martyrdom-by-cop" in Streatham, Melanie Phillips, in the Times today (£), voices an unwelcome truth about the threat from our home-grown Islamists and our failure to deal with it:

In a BBC radio programme a few days ago Ian Acheson, who conducted a review of extremism in prisons, explored why deradicalisation was proving such a failure. Prisoners were manipulating such programmes by parroting the jargon of moderation and “healthy identity” that they knew officials were desperate to hear.

Most tellingly, according to Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of the counterextremist group Faith Matters, prison imams were frightened of charismatic and aggressive prisoners who sometimes seemed to know more than they did about Islamic concepts.

That last point should surely give us pause. Islam’s history features holy war and conquest, punctuated over the centuries by attempts at enlightenment and reformation that were suppressed. So could it be that these charismatic prisoners, who further radicalise other Muslim inmates, are more faithful to Islam than the hapless imams sent in to persuade them of the error of their ways?

Within the Muslim world there are different interpretations of Islam, some of which are peaceful and apolitical. And it should never be forgotten that Muslims are the most numerous victims of Islamist extremism. In Britain, many are cultural Muslims with scant interest in religion at all.

Nevertheless, Islamist extremism is an interpretation based on the literal reading of religious texts and propagated by the most powerful religious authorities in the Islamic world.

Yet in Britain and much of the West, we persist in claiming that such extremism is a perversion of Islam, whereas to its followers it is a holy duty that trumps all secular values.