Spending £90 Million To Make Things Worse…

That’s the verdict of a damning report on the government’s efforts to tackle Muslim extremism by…employing known extremists:

A new generation of Muslims is being radicalised using the very Government funds that are supposed to be fighting the problem, a new report by the Policy Exchange think-tank says.

There’s a surprise…

An obsession with talking to extremists means that moderates are being ignored, leaving the stage clear for radicalisation, according to the report.

The Government is "underwriting the very Islamist ideology which spawns an illiberal, intolerant and anti-western world view" the report says.

"Political and theological extremists, acting with the authority conferred by official recognition, are indoctrinating young people with an ideology of hostility to western values."

Epic Fail, Gordon…

The Policy Exchange says the Government has made a "strategic error" that is "born of a poverty of aspiration," and the result has been to "empower reactionaries within Muslim communities and to marginalise genuine moderates."

This all stems from the poisoned chalice of ‘multiculturalism’ – the idea certain sections of society can divorce themselves from the main body and have their own culture, their own laws, and their own customs, and the state will bend over backwards to see that they are accommodated.

Thus, when it transpires that the ‘community’ is full of angry young men resenting Western society, instead of ensuring that they face the full weight of the law, it’s ‘softly, softly’ policies and negotiating with ‘community leaders’.

The Government has ploughed at least £90 million over three years into community groups as part of a project called "Prevent" aimed at diverting Muslims away from violent extremism.

But the project is not working, according to the report's authors Shiraz Maher, himself a former radical who knew the Glasgow bombers, and Martyn Frampton.

And who better to know…?

The authors say there is a "central theoretical flaw" in the project which means that "some within government and the police service believe that only nonviolent radicals, otherwise known as 'political Islamists,' possess the necessary 'street cred' to control angry young Muslims."

The problem has been caused by the link between violent and non-violent extremism being "habitually underplayed in official documents produced by central government, local government and the police."

And paid for by you and me…

Part of the problem is that the police and local authorities are ill-equipped to assess the groups they are funding, according to the report and funds have been granted on an "almost indiscriminate basis."

The criteria for appointing groups is "so vague and open-ended as to be almost meaningless" and bare (sic) no relation to any idea of "Britishness."

Hardly surprising, when no-one in government seems to have much of a clue as to what ‘Britishness’ actually means, and in particular, when they are reluctant to challenge any behaviour that doesn’t meet that test as somehow ‘unfair’ to minorities…

"Exotically-clad Abu Hamza-style ranters are unlikely to be favoured," the report says, "but plausible and well-mannered radicals, often representing themselves as moderate, are welcomed with open arms, however hardline their underlying philosophy."

The report draws particular attention to groups influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East and by Jamaat e-Islami in Pakistan and Bangladesh and suggests funding them would be similar to providing government funds to the BNP to fight fascism.

Ahhh, all the old favourites…

It says West Midlands Police tolerated an extremist preacher in the hope that the promotion of his fundamentalist version of Islam might act as a safety valve for young men who might otherwise be attracted to terrorism while he was preaching an incendiary message against the West, women and homosexuals.
Tower Hamlets Council awarded a substantial grant to the Cordoba Foundation, an Islamist pressure group, which in turn offered a platform to the radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir which promotes the message that democracy is forbidden in Islam.

Other councils criticised include Bradford, who have worked with the Islamic Society of Britain, Lambeth who have worked with a hard-line Salafists from Brixton Mosque, and Redbridge who worked with a former official from the Muslim Council of Britain.

Nice to see the WMP in that list. Their disgraceful, politically motivated behaviour over Channel Four’s ‘Undercover Mosque’ programme has underlined this report’s findings perfectly, hasn’t it?