ISIS in London: How Many More Times Can We Say ‘I Told You So’?

As you may be aware, I hold the august title of Islamophobe of the Year 2014, as dictated by a terrorist-friendly, Iranian-run think tank. I don’t know what happened to me over the 12 months afterwards, but apparently I wasn’t mean enough to the cyber-Islamists to warrant holding onto my crown. 

But perhaps that will change next year, because what Islamists and terror-sympathisers really hate is when you’re right. Following today’s news that young jihadi brides have been radicalised and recruited at an East London Mosque, allegedly at the hands of those linked to the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), Britain’s “Islamophobes” will once again be able to say with one voice, “We told you so.”

The Mail on Sunday reports:

Islamic leaders and some of their family members blamed the internet for grooming the four schoolgirls, who were all pupils at Bethnal Green Academy in Tower Hamlets, East London.

But now it is claimed that Sharmeena was first radicalised inside the East London Mosque, Whitechapel, allegedly by women from a group called Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE). She then allegedly groomed three friends to join her at the meetings. 

This is of course, the same IFE that so many of us hard warned about, specifically with regards East London, radicalisation, and the now terminated mayoralty in Tower Hamlets of Lutfur Rahman. Hats off particularly to Andrew Gilligan and Ted Jeory, who have been banging on about this for longer than most.

Channel 4’s Dispatches programme, led by Gilligan, even uncovered a transcript of a 2009 IFE recruitment course, which admitted: “Our goal is not simply to invite people and give da’wah [call to the faith]. Our goal is to create the True Believer, to then mobilise those believers into an organised force for change who will carry out da’wah, hisbah [enforcement of Islamic law] and jihad [struggle]. This will lead to social change and iqamatud-Deen [an Islamic social, economic and political order].”

It’s really very little surprise to some of us that IFE are therefore being implicated in the latest radicalisation revelations. This is a group that has prided itself on its takeover of swathes of East London, and that counts amongst its political successes, not just the election of Mr Rahman, but also that of George Galloway to Parliament in 2005.

The group’s spokesman, Azad Ali, is known for opposing democracy in favour of Sharia law, has praised the now deceased Al Qaeda preacher Anwar Al Awlaki, and endorsed the killing of British and American soldiers. Curiously, he worked at the heart of the civil service during the last Labour government.

But the rabbit hole goes deeper than that, and starts to incorporate some of our friends on the hard left. Because Ali is also the Vice Chairman of Unite Against Fascism, a group that masquerades as being pro free-speech, and human rights, but has one of the most blunt, ugly, and fascistic approaches to political campaigning of all the campaign groups in Britain today.

Its sister organisation, Hope not Hate, chases around right wing politicians, acting as a political party, and publishes spurious reports and demands for the British government to curtail freedom of speech.

But Unite Against Fascism’s allegiance with an Islamist sympathiser may help to explain how the terrorist murderer of a British soldier came to speak at one of their rallies in 2009.

And Ali, despite all this, still enjoys the support of numerous Labour MPs, as well as Conservative Party peer Baroness Warsi, who Prime Minister David Cameron put at the heart of government during the last government. Indeed the Prime Minister himself is a signatory to Unite Against Fascism’s founding documents.

So now what?

Well if the allegations, that IFE is an ‘ISIS in London’ recruiter, and against the East London Mosque hold up, there surely has to be cause to proscribe the group, disrupt its recruitment, and even demand full structural change of the mosque’s management and transparency. Either that, or given its history, shut it down altogether.