Jailhouse Jihadists - recruiting for terror at Her Majesty's Pleasure

"Detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure” is, in case you’ve never met it, a British euphemism for “locked in the slammer”, and a new report warns that about 800 of the 8000 Muslim inmates in high-security prisons in England and Wales are being turned into radical Islamists while inside. These people aren’t necessarily doing time for terror-related offences, but are being successfully indoctrinated by extremists known for or suspected of being sympathetic to terror. Worryingly, less than 20 per cent of people convicted of terrorism offences in Britain have been given life or indeterminate sentences. Over the next five to ten years the 800 potential mass murderers will be released into British society. It’s feared that rather than aiming at spectacular atrocities of the al-Quaeda type, which are proving more difficult to carry out, they are being groomed to concentrate not on blowing aircraft out of the skies but on detonating explosives on trains, hotels, and sporting fixtures – any target where crowds are gathered.

This grim news comes on top of earlier warnings that in some British prisons Islamic gangs, using threats of violence that include a persuasive gesture which indicates a cut throat, are proselytising among non-Muslim prisoners. As well, some Afro-Caribbean prisoners have been won over with the message that there will be little hope for them on the outside once they’ve served their sentences since white society is inexorably racist and discriminatory against them, whereas Islam offers acceptance and equality.

2000 radicalised individuals are already being monitored by MI5, and the new crop of 800 is set to make the task of police and security forces all the harder, particularly in view of government plans to reduce funding for counter-terrorism. Former Home Secretary John Reid, who was one of the most realistic and shrewd members of the Blair government, has said that if these cuts are over 10 per cent danger will follow. It’s also predicted that sooner or later a “lone wolf” terrorist will inevitably succeed in producing carnage, since resources are so stretched.

Quite apart from the terror issue, the cohesiveness of British society is being threatened with erosion by radical hotheads. Three years ago, Sir Winston Churchills’s namesake and grandson, a Conservative MP who died earlier this year, wrote as follows to the London Daily Telegraph:

“Britain sends some of the finest and most courageous of their generation to risk their lives and spill their blood chasing the Taliban out of Afghanistan. But who, meanwhile, is guarding our homeland? A recent police report makes clear that, back here in Britain the Deobandi – the very same Islamist sect responsible for spawning the Taliban in Afghanistan – has succeeded in taking over more than 600 of Britain's 1,350 mosques. In addition, it controls 17 of Britain's 26 Islamic seminaries and produces 80 per cent of Britain's home-trained Islamic clerics. It's a funny old world, as Margaret Thatcher once famously remarked. Except that this is no laughing matter. Not for 70 years has there been a more clear or present danger to our internal security, to our free society and to our democracy, than that posed by this vipers' nest in our midst. The Deobandi, an ultra-conservative sect, outlaws music, art, television and football, and also demands the entire concealment of women. According to the Lancashire Council of Mosques, the Deobandi has now taken control of 59 out of 75 mosques in the old Lancashire mill towns of Oldham, Preston, Bury, Blackburn and Burnley. While not all Deobandis are extremist, leading preachers of this sect aim to radicalise the Islamic youth of Britain, and to mobilise them against our society and the freedoms we hold so dear. When will the Government wake up to this mortal threat which – if not swiftly dealt with – threatens to bring strife and bloodshed to the streets of Britain on a scale far exceeding anything seen in the bombings of recent years? Why are Gordon Brown and David Cameron, indeed our entire political class, so deafeningly silent on this, the most pressing matter confronting Britain today? Who will help the moderate majority of Muslims maintain control of their mosques? Who will safeguard the homeland?”

It seems he embarrassed his party by raising such matters, lest it be accused of “Islamophobia”, and the issue was not given the attention it deserved.

 Let’s hope that the Cameron-Clegg Coalition government will not attempt to buy off such the terrorist threat at home – which now officially stands at “severe” – by being soft on the fight against it abroad or by being seen further to undermine Israel.