How do you solve a problem like jihadis? I have an idea...
When Max Hill QC, the independent reviewer of our terrorism laws, said that young jihadists returning to this country should be welcomed back and integrated, the first thing I thought of was Joyce Grenfell and her blissful “Nursery School” sketch. Just imagine Grenfell doing her bright and breezy best to de-radicalise a class of repatriated Islamic State fanatics.
“Now, Mohammed, please put that down. Yes, dear, I know, but I’ve explained that knife is for cutting tomatoes. Good, that’s better. Today, we’re doing non-violent use of knives. What’s that, Shamina? Junaid wants to lock you in the cupboard because he saw your arms? Junaid, we never shut people in cupboards. I don’t care what your Uncle Reyaad used to do to girls who didn’t dress modestly in Raqqa. This is England, dear. No, Shamina is not a Western whore, she’s a very pretty young lady. Kadiza, please let me see your face. I’m sure it’s a very nice burka, but remember our no-covered-faces rule? What do you mean it’s not Kadiza? Abdul, why are you wearing Kadiza’s burka? Take it off at once…”
I mean, what could possibly go wrong with integrating a few hundred extremists returning from a war zone? Jihadists who, according to Max Hill’s generous interpretation, “have travelled out of a sense of naivety, possibly with some brainwashing”? After all, we have so much money to spend on counselling wannabe suicide bombers after paying for the monitoring of 3,000 extremists already in the UK who are considered a direct threat by MI5, with 500 under constant costly surveillance.
Mr Hill’s suggestion would be alarming at any time, but it came in the same week that Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, warned that Britain was facing the worst terrorist threat he had seen in his 34-year career. There had been a “dramatic upshift” in attacks this year, he admitted, resulting in the murder of 36 men, women and children in London and Manchester. Some 20 plots in the UK have been foiled over the past four years, with a record number of terrorism-related arrests: 379 in the year to June.
These are truly deafening figures. Yet, so often, the reaction of the authorities is to stick their fingers in their ears and act as if this dire threat from an enemy living among us were somehow normal – like when London Mayor Sadiq Khan said that terror attacks are “part and parcel of living in a big city”. As if bombing young girls at a pop concert were just a bad traffic jam.
It’s not jihadists who are guilty of naivety, possibly with some brainwashing. Increasingly, it’s the governing class of this country that prioritises the human rights of the few over the safety and values of the many. Moral contortionists like those fools at the Foreign Office, who said that the term “pregnant women” in a draft UN human rights paper should be changed to “pregnant people” because the former could “exclude transgender people who have given birth”. In other words, British civil servants think it’s OK to promote a policy that is grossly offensive to half the population who, for very good reason, have the monopoly on getting up the duff. This, in order to spare the feelings of trans people who have got pregnant. All two of them. Yes, two.
The gulf between what the man on the street thinks and those in authority believe has never been wider. So, it was with a mixture of astonishment and gratitude that I heard Rory Stewart, the international development minister say that British Isil fighters should be killed in Syria, rather than be allowed to return to the UK.
“These are people who have essentially moved away from any kind of allegiance towards the British government,” Mr Stewart told BBC Radio 5 Live. “They are absolutely dedicated towards the creation of a caliphate, they believe in an extremely hateful doctrine that involves killing themselves, killing others and trying to use violence and brutality to create an 8th-century state. These people have held women and children hostage, are torturing and murdering, trying by violence to impose their will. They are a serious danger to us, and unfortunately the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them.”
And so say all of us. Well, all of us who haven’t had our common sense abducted, or our sense of national pride and self-preservation trampled into the dust. Bravo, Mr Stewart!
When François Hollande, the former French president, told his security services that he didn’t want a single jihadist returning to the country, it was perfectly clear what he meant, and the French people were right behind him. Only a populace that has been enfeebled by the drip-drip of warped, self-hating Leftist propaganda would not wish to see British Forces take the same decisive action.
Unlike Max Hill, I could not care less about “losing a generation of young people who went [to join Isil] before attempting to come back to the UK”. The aims and methods of the organisation they chose were horribly clear. By contrast, I mind very much about one friend-of-a-friend. Lisa Roussos was seriously injured in the blast at Manchester Arena that killed her eight-year-old daughter, Saffie Rose. So far, Lisa has had nine operations to remove the bolts that were embedded in every part of her body. Her hand had to be reconstructed. Not only has she lost her little girl, the family have lost their fish and chip shop, and the flat above it that they called home. They are destroyed, emotionally and financially.
If there is any money for rehabilitation, it should go to innocent victims like Lisa Roussos and her family, not to returning jihadists who sympathise with the killer of Saffie Rose. And while we’re about it, Rory Stewart should be put in charge of counter-terrorism. Amazingly, this is a politician who understands that the human rights of the British people matter more than those of our enemies.