"I feel absolutely nothing for this country. I have no problem with the British people . . . but if someone attacks them, I have no problem with that either.”
Hassan Butt, 2004
“We are allowed are own mosques, our own schools, our own slaughterhouses, our own graveyards, we are citizens of this country . . . how could this country be the Land of War?”
Hassan Butt, 2008
He claims that he helped to smuggle seven hundred British Muslims, including Mohammed Siddique Kahn, into terrorist training camps in Pakistan, he states that he raised tens of thousands of pounds for Islamist terrorist groups and radicalised dozens of British Muslims; but could Hassan Butt be the spearhead in the fight against Islamism in the U.K.?
Butt is one of several former hard core radical Islamists with enough intelligence to realise that he had been brainwashed by a murderous and thoroughly un-Islamic philosophy. Together with men such as Shiraz Maher and Ed Hussain, Butt has left the world of terrorism and has since campaigned tirelessly to help de-radicalise dozens of British Muslims. These former Jihadis have looked at their own experiences and surroundings and rejected the idea that Britain is an enemy of Islam.
They understand that the British state has looked after them and their families, that it has provided them with health care, education and security and allowed them to assert their religious identity in a way that is prevented in much of the Muslim World. Sadly their view is seldom seen in modern British Islam. The British state has managed to prevent dozens of terrorist attacks, it has prosecuted and jailed hundreds of Islamic terrorists and it has infiltrated several terrorist cells. However MI5 has stated that it is monitoring 30 terrorist groups, almost two thousand individuals and that around 20% of British Muslims are sympathetic to Islamist terrorism in the U.K. With statistics like that future terrorist attacks in the U.K. are almost inevitable, despite the best efforts of the security services.
We are playing a numbers game; unless we manage to minimise Islamism in the UK then the terrorist threat will remain severe for decades to come. Mainstream British Islam is in a state of paralysis and denial. First generation immigrants do not understand what has happened to the second generation and Muslim pressure groups prefer to blame British foreign policy rather than admit to the massive problem within British Islam. The Muslim Council of Britain’s spokesman Inayat Bunglawala states that Butt is “Wrong to argue that we do not need to revisit some of our own murderous actions overseas and examine whether they have contributed to the spread of violent extremism” That’s the same Inayat Bunglawala who once praised Osama Bin Laden as a “Freedom fighter”. Other mainstream Muslim groups have also chosen to bury their head in their sand, or worse support, condone and excuse terrorism.
Butt, Maher, Hussain and others understand the huge extent of radicalisation amongst British Muslims because they lived in that world for years, indeed they personally radicalised hundreds of their peers. They can do what no non-Muslim could ever do; they can go into our mosques and youth clubs and defeat the preachers of hate on their own terms, they can use the holy book against them. Ed Hussain has helped to set up the Quilliam Foundation which aims to revive a pluralistic Western Islam, divorced from the hatred of Wahabism. For his part the less articulate, but more down to earth, Butt has been de-radicalising the same working class Muslims that he encouraged to become suicide bombers. He has been beaten up and stabbed for his efforts.
However while MI5 and the Home Office are trying to encourage men like Butt, Greater Manchester Police seem determined to arrest him. Butt, who is certainly not publicity shy, is writing a book about his time as an Islamist and Greater Manchester Police recently seized the unfinished manuscripts as part of an investigation into his alleged terrorist activities. I understand that the law is independent from the Government, but surely it is not above the wit of the police to liaise with their colleagues at MI5. Butt may have committed crimes in the past but incarcerating him in Belmarsh now would be counterproductive in the extreme. I have already written in this blog that we are fighting a counter insurgency against Islamic terrorism which we cannot win by military or legal means alone. We need to win the battle, not so much for hearts, but certainly for minds, and men like Hassan Butt represent the best weapon in our arsenal. If we imprison Butt then not only will we loose our most effective weapon but we will also discourage others from following in his footsteps.
Even if Butt only de-radicalises one British Islamist, that may be one atrocity prevented on Britain’s streets.
