How Britain became the Yemen of the West

The Japanese hostage thrashes desperately against his captors as his throat is cut — an 18-minute snuff movie, complete with sound, of unwatchable horror, linked to a Twitter account apparently belonging to British extremist Anjem Choudary.

Dreadful as the murder video of American journalist James Foley was, it is by no means the worst thing posted online by, or involving, British and Western jihadists last week. Its real significance, perhaps not fully understood in the general shock, is different.

Until now, the Islamic State (IS) has shown little interest in threatening the West. In that video, however, this started to change, with “John the Beatle” (the masked man with a British accent who killed Mr Foley) promising the “bloodshed of your people”. The ransom demand sent to Mr Foley’s family, published on Thursday, was even more explicit: “Today, our swords are unsheathed towards you, government and citizens alike,” it said.

The Afghan war, which has cost so many lives, was supposed to deny Islamist terrorism an operational base. Now, the jihadists have a much better one — in Iraq and Syria, separated from the United Kingdom by a road journey and a short easyJet flight. Up to 2,800 Western fighters have visited the countries since February 2011 — more than in all previous combat zones combined, said the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College London.

About 500 of these, a disproportionate number, are British (and a further 1,500 are European Union citizens with travel rights to the UK). Just fewer than 4,000 Britons — including 1,450 children — have been referred to the government’s Channel programme, designed to divert those at risk of radicalisation, though only about 20 per cent (777) are assessed to be actually at risk of becoming involved in terrorism. The numbers have roughly doubled in the past two years.

How did Britain become such a wellspring of extremism, a Yemen of the West? And what can we do about the hundreds of radicalised, brutalised and combat-trained fellow citizens heading back to British shores?

WHAT WENT WRONG IN THE UK?

Britain’s key failing is that it was tough where it should have been liberal and liberal where it should have been tough. It extended detention without trial and stop-and-search — sweeping measures that affected everyone and left Muslims, most of whom were completely blameless, feeling under attack. At the same time, it was ridiculously tolerant and indulgent towards a small minority of Muslim radicals.

The vast majority of ordinary British Muslims are not extremists, as every poll has shown. But extremists do control, or heavily influence, many of the most important institutions of Muslim Britain: Key mosques, large Muslim charities, influential television stations, university Islamic societies and schools. Until recently, this was done with, at best, the acquiescence, or at worst, the support, of the British state. It was acting partly in the naive (and surely now disproved) belief that it could anoint “good” radicals and use them against the “bad” ones, and partly through the loss of moral perspective that seems to overtake some liberals whenever race is involved.

Mr Shiraz Maher from the ICSR believes that “in many respects, preachers and mosques no longer matter” because social media is seducing potential IS recruits far more effectively.

Yet, of course, personal factors are also vital. Many of those who have gone to the IS know one another — relatives, flatmates, a group of 10 from Portsmouth, for instance. The connections they can make online with others far away and the ease of travel in a globalised world complete the picture.

WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS

One person who works in the Channel programme: “A lot of the guys who go out to Syria and Iraq explicitly say they don’t have anti-Western sentiments before they go. They see themselves as going out to fight the Syrian regime, which the West hasn’t done anything about. Once there, they end up meeting different groups and can take on a much more radical belief system.”

This suggests that one of the things we should do is try to de-glamourise jihad. Perhaps some parts of the media could avoid treating IS fighters as triumphant lions of terror, which is exactly what their videos want us to do. This does not mean suppressing the truth — it means telling it.

On the battlefield — the thing that matters most — the IS appears to have suffered a major defeat last week, losing control of the Mosul Dam, thanks to air strikes by the United States. However, on the media battlefield, this was completely drowned out, no doubt as the IS had intended, by the release of the Foley tape.

A potential British IS recruit may not be too bothered that he could end up dead. But around half of the Britons who have died so far in Syria and Iraq were killed by their own side through infighting, and if that same potential recruit knew this, it might put a different complexion on it.

If young men in Bradford and east London heard stories from disillusioned British IS fighters who felt they were treated as cannon fodder, that would do 20 times more good than any number of heartfelt condemnations from middle-aged politicians or “community leaders”.

What that suggests, too, is that we should be smarter about how we deal with those who return and those at risk of going.

The understandable response so far has been a policing and criminal one, but criminalisation is not the whole answer. Where there is evidence of participation in atrocities, returnees can be prosecuted — one of the ways social media works in civilisation’s favour in this story. However, the vast majority of returnees to date have not been charged. Fewer than half have even been arrested. Often, there is not enough evidence to convict them of anything, or anything serious enough to put them in prison for long. Sending people to prison is about the best way to ensure they remain radicalised and perhaps infect other prisoners around them.

Channel, which works with potential and returned jihadists, has made what Home Secretary Theresa May called “a very significant contribution to our national security”. There are around 40 Channel workers, most of whom are British Muslims. They typically meet their clients one-on-one, trying to build up trust, address the arguments for violence and radicalism that they make — sometimes theologically, sometimes not — and steer them towards non-violent approaches.

It seems clear that this is a battle of ideas. More than ever in a social media world, you cannot lock up an idea in Belmarsh or turn it back at Heathrow. The only way to defeat a bad idea is with a better idea. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Andrew Gilligan is London editor for the Sunday Telegraph. This is an excerpt of a longer article.