The Islamist threat is all too real – Gove understands it needs tackling

Muslim Brotherhood ideology is rife in Britain and globally. It cannot live alongside Western values

Responding to the Government’s new definition of extremism, the Muslim Association of Britain called the move “cynical… Orwellian” and an “erosion of civil liberties”.

The response was a case study in how Islamists use the language of liberalism to pursue illiberal objectives. For the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) is one of several organisations declared extremist by Michael Gove in Parliament last week. Previously, an expert government report called it “the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK”.

Its concern for civil liberties does not apply to those who criticise Islamism, comment on Islam in ways it dislikes, or depict Mohammed in ways it finds offensive. It demands “action” against those who blaspheme – even if the blasphemers are not Muslim. It is among the organisations pushing for an official definition of “Islamophobia”, a one-religion blasphemy law that would be used to limit scrutiny of Islamists.

British politicians and those with responsibility in wider society urgently need to understand who these extremists are, which organisations speak for them, and where their ideas come from. If they fail to do so, not only violence but political subjugation awaits us.

Extremists insist, and sincerely believe, that they act in the name of Islam. Sermons by some imams – held in British mosques, often broadcast online for all to see – quote the Koran and sayings of Mohammed recorded in hadiths to justify hatred and violence. One hadith claims Mohammed said, “The hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.’”

Many Muslims reject this, citing passages of the Koran that say, “let there be no compulsion in religion”, and, “O mankind! We created you from a single [pair] of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other.” There is, as many moderates and reformers like to argue, a scriptural justification for pluralism and tolerance within Islam.

Thinkers such as Ed Husain have long promoted medieval Islamic scholars including Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Rushd, known in the West as Averroes. Ibn Khaldun opposed the idea of a caliphate and incorporated the knowledge of the ancient Greeks – borrowed from the jahiliyyah, the period of supposed ignorance and barbarism before Mohammed – into his work. Ibn Rushd opposed literalist accounts of the Koran, arguing that reason improves the understanding of faith, and the pursuit of knowledge is a religious duty.

Yet the MAB – and other Islamist organisations operating in Britain today, such as Mend, Cage, 5Pillars and the Muslim Council of Britain – take their inspiration from elsewhere.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded by Hassan al-banna in Egypt in 1928, who demanded strict religiosity from Muslims, the moral purification of the Islamic world and the unification of Muslim countries through a new caliphate governed by Sharia law. From the start, the Brotherhood was anti-western, anti-nation and anti-secular.

The two thinkers who influenced Brotherhood ideology most were Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian executed in 1966 for plotting the assassination of President Nasser, and Abul al-a’la al-mawdudi, the Indian Muslim who in 1941 founded Jama’at-i Islami, the movement that was first to develop a revolutionary Islamist ideology.

The result was “takfirism” – the concept that allows hardliners to dismiss other Muslims as infidels and apostates, to reject existing governments as un-islamic, and to use extreme violence to achieve their objectives. Legions of extremists willingly placed themselves in the vanguard of supposedly true Muslims striving to build a supposedly true Islamic state. The terrorists among them – and their supporters – willingly accepted that jihad should be aggressive not just defensive, and violent not just spiritual.

There is a complex network of different strands of belief, sometimes overlapping and often reinforcing a core extremist ideology: Deobandis in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan; Salafists in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East; the Muslim Brotherhood – now headquartered in Qatar – operating around the world; radicalising organisations such as Hizb ut-tahrir; and terror groups such as Al Qaeda, Isis, Lashkar-e-taiba, Al-shabaab and Boko Haram.

This is the context in which some Muslims – not necessarily ideological followers of these movements – still absorb a generalised culture of intolerance: towards homosexuals, women, Jews, and apostates.

Through this complexity runs a starkly consistent takfirist ideology. While the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt formally renounced violence in return for the freedom to organise in the 1970s, its relationship with violence since has been ambiguous, with senior figures supporting and financing Hamas and justifying attacks on Western troops. Its takfirism survives through the dismissal of those who do not accept Islamism as unbelievers, and governments of Muslim countries as illegitimate. This is the intellectual justification for the murder of Arabs and Muslims alongside Jews in Israel on October 7.

The Brotherhood’s reach endures through a secretive and obfuscatory structure of individuals and organisations. According to the expert government review, the Brotherhood “shaped the Islamic Society of Britain, dominated the Muslim Association of Britain and played an important role in establishing and then running the Muslim Council of Britain”. Yet the public sector, including the NHS, police and military, partners with these organisations and others like them. The media allows news content to be policed by entities created by them. Many receive direct public funding, and the tax advantages of charitable status.

This is why it is vital that the Government defines extremism, identifies extremist organisations and shuns, punishes and proscribes them accordingly. Whatever the concerns about Gove’s definition – and complaints are mostly worries about its misuse by a civil service and public sector in dire need of reform – he is the one minister who has sought to understand the threat we face. Now, others must follow his lead.

British politicians urgently need to understand who these extremists are. If they fail to do so, not only violence but political subjugation awaits us