‘Terrorists don’t represent faith’

BASU warned the Ramniklal Solanki Pioneers audience to be careful about labelling religious groups as terrorists.

“I didn’t see al-Qaeda and Islamic State (Daesh) as Muslim, although academics would say, obviously, they’re using the banner of the Muslim faith for what they do. But I didn’t see them as representative of that faith,” he said.

“They are not like any Muslims I know. Their behaviour is so extreme, it doesn’t represent that faith, any more than people who are killing in the name of Christianity, who are white supremacists, represent Christianity.”

He also stressed that a relatively small number of people in Britain were extremists and carried out terror-related offences.

“I don’t think it is huge radicalisation of the white communities,” he said.

“It will depend on what geography you’re in, and my chief constable colleagues who police small, de-industrialised and poverty-stricken towns in the north-east, for instance, would say it’s absolutely a problem, radicalising communities there.

“And those people trying to do community cohesion work in places like Bradford and some of the smaller towns will know that that is a definite problem. I still don’t think it’s the majority of the public.” The government’s figures bear him out. Since September 11, 2001, 4,869 people have been arrested for terror-related offences in the UK. Of these 1,928 were Asian, 1,553 white and 588 black.

In the past two years, more white people have been arrested than any other ethnic group.

The number of arrests has dropped during 2020. For Asian communities, it has decreased by 43 per cent, while it is down 24 per cent for white suspects.