Must We Really Be Careful What We Do Lest We Offend Extremists?
by Douglas Murray, Gatestone Institute:
[…] In a piece in the Sunday Times as well as a subsequent comment to The Times and other media, [Sara] Khan has insisted that [Shamima] Begum must be allowed to come back to the UK. Not only, Khan has argued, does Begum have this right, but Britain would be ‘abandoning our values’ if we did not allow her back.
This is, it must be said, an exceptionally complex and fine legal — as well as moral — issue. Decent people from all sides can disagree over what to do with someone in Begum’s case. There is one element, though, of Khan’s argument that has gone particularly unnoticed and is particularly disturbing. In her Sunday Times piece Khan argued that, “Far-right and Islamist agitators alike will use the case of Shamima to create a wedge between and within communities.” And well they might. In making this argument, however, the UK government’s extremism commissioner perhaps unwittingly demonstrates a slippage that has occurred in Britain in just over a decade.
In 2006, a small group of peers, MPs and Islamist groups sent an open letter to the then-Labour government. The signatories included the subsequently jailed Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, the subsequently disgraced (over expenses fraud) Baroness Uddin and the then-MP, now Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. This letter suggested to the UK government of the day that British foreign policy “risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad.” This is a commonly heard argument of course, and is especially commonly heard from various Islamist groups. What is noteworthy about this, and what makes it worth dredging up, is not the argument but rather the response to the argument.
Back in 2006, then-Home Secretary John Reid was having none of this. He described the letter as a “dreadful misjudgement.” No competent government would remain in power, he said, if its policies were “dictated by terrorists.” The former Conservative party leader, Michael Howard, backed John Reid, saying at the time that the letter had given “ammunition” to extremists. Howard went on:
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