‘No safe spaces for Islamic terrorists’
British home secretary Sajid Javid on Monday said Islamist terrorists are the “biggest” threat, and promised they will have “no safe spaces” under his watch, whether online or offline.
Javid said security agencies had foiled 25 Islamist plots since June 2013, 12 of them since March 2017. He also said Muslims were the biggest victims of Islamist terrorism.
Recalling a conversation he had with his daughter after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack, Javid said: “I know they are not true Muslims. But there’s no avoiding the fact that these people they self-identify as Muslims.
“Let me be very clear. Muslims are in no way responsible for the acts of a tiny minority who twist their faith. And I know that there is no such thing as a single, homogenous Muslim community. Muslims live and thrive in all walks of British life and society.”
Setting out new counter-terrorism measures, Javid said security agencies were handling over 500 live operations involving roughly 3,000 individuals.
The biggest threat, he said, emanated “from Islamist terrorism – including al-Qaeda, but particularly from Daesh (Islamic State)”, but added that extreme right-wing terrorism was also an increasing threat.
“(There’s) one other thing that Islamists and the far right have in common… As a home secretary with a name like Sajid Javid — I’m everything that they despise. So the way I see it, I must be doing something right,” he said.
Setting out his no-safe-spaces approach, he said: “Ultimately, our approach is about ensuring that there are no safe spaces for terrorists. No safe spaces internationally in which terrorist ideology can develop and from where complex attacks can be launched.”