TUESDAY, 2ND MARCH 2010

The fatwa issued today by the respected Islamic scholar Sheikh Dr Tahir ul-Qadri, ruling that terrorism against anyone is a violation of Islamic precepts, is of course welcome as far as it goes. Unfortunately, that’s not likely to be very far when other fatwas by differently respected scholars have validated such attacks as being justified and even mandated under Islamic law.

The real problem in the UK, moreover, lies not simply in the fact that jihad is being waged in and against Britain, but even more crucially in Britain’s spineless and indeed suicidal response to it. Consider, for example, the reaction to last night’s Channel Four Dispatches programme which exposed the infiltration of the Labour party in east London by militant Islamists of the Islamic Forum for Europe, and whose findings were extensively reported in the Sunday Telegraph. As the Labour MP for Poplar and Canning Town observes, the IFE has become, in effect, a secret party within Labour and other political parties:

‘They are acting almost as an entryist organisation, placing people within the political parties, recruiting members to those political parties, trying to get individuals selected and elected so they can exercise political influence and power, whether it’s at local government level or national level,’ he said. ‘They are completely at odds with Labour’s programme, with our support for secularism.’

Mr Fitzpatrick, the MP for Poplar and Canning Town, said the IFE had infiltrated and ‘corrupted’ his party in east London in the same way that the far-Left Militant Tendency did in the 1980s. Leaked Labour lists show a 110 per cent rise in party membership in one constituency in two years.

When Militant infiltrated Labour in the 1980s, the party effectively went to war against it. It took a heroic effort and iron determination to expel Militant from its ranks, and the media covered the battle extensively. Yet following the Sunday Telegraph story and the Dispatches programme, there has been virtual silence from the rest of the media and from the politicians. This time, as Britain’s governing party is once again suborned by forces determined to overturn British society, both the media and the Labour party appear to be looking the other way.

Sheikh ul-Qadri is therefore not just at odds with the fanatics in his own religion, but even worse is fatally undermined by the cowardice and paralysis of the British governing class.