by Tim Dieppe, spiked
There is little doubt that Islam poses a challenge to British society. It is growing in influence and has political as well as religious ambitions.
It is already affecting our democracy and changing our culture. Former home secretary Suella Braverman didn’t hold back in a Telegraph op-ed in February 2024:
‘The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now. They have bullied the Labour Party, they have bullied our institutions, and now they have bullied our country into submission. This is a crisis. And the fightback must start now, with urgency, if we are to preserve the liberties we cherish and the privileges this country affords us all. If we are to have any chance of saving our country from the mob.’
Braverman made these comments in response to the decision of Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker of the House of Commons, to break with parliamentary convention and allow a Labour amendment on Gaza to be debated on the Scottish National Party’s ‘opposition day’. Hoyle made this decision because of credible threats made to MPs and on parliament itself. By allowing Labour MPs to endorse their party’s own anti-Israel amendment on Gaza, rather than reject the SNP’s more stringently anti-Israel one, Hoyle felt that this would spare Labour MPs from more death threats. He didn’t need to say from whom.
This was not an overreaction. Islamists had struck before. In 2021, the Conservative MP for Southend West, Sir David Amess, was stabbed to death by Islamic State sympathiser Ali Harbi Ali. He told the court: ‘If you encourage someone to an act of jihad it is a good thing.’ Harbi Ali also stated plainly: ‘I killed him in the cause of Muslims and for the sake of Allah.’