03 February 2018

The opposition to Sara Khan as the Counter-Extremism commissioner from many special interest groups shows she is the right person for the role

.... Attempts to hinder the new commissioner have come from Islamist sympathizers and prominent Muslim politicians in the UK, two noteworthy names being Baroness Sayida Warsi and Labour MP Naz Shah. Both women have gone to great lengths to block Khan’s appointment or make it controversial.

Baroness Warsi and MP Shah are joining a barrage of trolling with the help of sympathetic media outlets as if the appointment of a Counter Extremism Commissioner was aimed at them. Interestingly, their attacks contain language that is itself very controversial and which has become very difficult to separate from dawa, the ideological infrastructure (organisation, rhetoric and non-violent methods) of the ultra-conservative Islamist religious movement.

Words like ‘Islamophobia’ are deployed endlessly to invert the direction of threat and victimisation, and to insinuate that any attempt to monitor or prevent extremist activity is itself a form of intolerant ideology. [Conatus News] Read more