“Islamophobia”

A Tory former government minister has claimed there are religious “no-go areas” in Birmingham and a part of east London, sparking a fresh row over Islamophobia.

Paul Scully, a Conservative MP who ran to be the Conservatives’ mayoral candidate in London, made the remarks during a discussion about allegations of anti-Muslim sentiments within the party.

It comes as Rishi Sunak is under pressure over his handling of the case of Lee Anderson, who was stripped of the Tory whip after claiming “Islamists” have “got control” of Sadiq Khan.

In 2021, Sir David Amess was stabbed to death by an Islamist extremist who targeted him because of the way he’d voted in the Commons on the war in Syria. I was elected as Sir David’s successor two years ago this month, and not a day goes by when I don’t think of how he was brutally murdered simply for doing his job.

Mike Freer, MP for Finchley and Golders Green, recently announced that he was stepping down, fed up and frightened due to Islamist extremists regularly targeting him and his loved ones. His office was firebombed. Chillingly, Mike narrowly missed falling victim to Sir David’s killer, who went looking for him first.

LONDON — Since October 7, there have been many dark days here in London. Every Saturday the streets are filled with demonstrators calling for the end of the state of Israel, several Jewish schools have had to close due to safety concerns, and the number of antisemitic incidents has gone through the roof. I have attended and documented a number of these protests, which on occasion have descended into violence, confrontations with police, antisemitic chanting, and even calls for jihad.

All bad, you might be thinking. And you’d be right. But they pale in comparison to what happened this past Wednesday, when the British Parliament, which has been around for 800 years, capitulated to fear of Islamist violence. 

"Islamic extremism has taken over UK. Mass immigration and multiculturalism has been imposed on British people without our consent!" The truth explained in 37 seconds. pic.twitter.com/Uf1DQD5wMW

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) February 24, 2024

Why can’t they just say it? There’s been exhaustive coverage of the threat posed to MPs in recent days, after House of Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle ripped up parliamentary convention to allow a Labour amendment on Gaza to be debated on the Scottish National Party’s ‘opposition day’. Yesterday, Hoyle rebuffed accusations he had done so after being lent on by the Labour Party, his party, which would have been badly bruised if Labourites had broken ranks and backed the SNP’s own, more ostentatiously anti-Israel, motion. He did so, he said, because of credible threats made to MPs and on the house itself. The logic was that allowing Labour MPs to endorse their party’s own fudgy ceasefire position, rather than just abstain on the SNP’s motion, would have spared them yet more death threats. ‘I never, ever want to go through a situation where I pick up a phone to find a friend, whatever side, has been murdered by terrorists. I also don’t want an attack on this house’, Hoyle said. But at no point did he, or most of the media write-ups, name where that threat is so obviously coming from. Namely, Islamist extremists.

Islamist extremism is not being effectively tackled by the Government, the independent reviewer of Prevent has said, as he warned it was fuelling a “dangerous” surge in anti-Semitism.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, William Shawcross said the Government had failed to fully implement his proposals to overhaul Prevent, its counter terror programme, which meant the public faced an increased threat from extremists and terrorists.

He said the failure to take tougher action stemmed from a continuing bias within Prevent towards tackling the rise in Right-wing terrorism rather than the main threat of Islamist terrorism.