Anglican Mainstream

ByMelanie Phillips, The Spectator

The public apology and libel damages awarded to Channel Four’s Dispatches programme over Undercover Mosque, its investigation showing Islamic preachers in UK mosques preaching jihad and calling for the murder of non-believers, amount to much more than merely a victory for the programme and a complete vindication of its integrity. For the people who are having to pay the six-figure damages and costs are the West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service. This was a programme which uncovered disturbing evidence of incitement to murder of homosexuals, the killing of British soldiers and hatred of ‘unbelievers’ going on below the official radar in ostensibly respectable British mosques. But instead of prosecuting such fanatics, the WM police and the CPS turned on the Dispatches producers, accusing them of selective editing and distortion and undermining community cohesion. The police then referred the programme to the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, who threw out the complaint. Today, as the Times reported, the West Midlands Police and CPS were due to

apologise unreservedly for comments that they accept were incorrect and unjustified. They said that there was ‘no evidence that the broadcaster or programme-makers had misled the audience or that the programme was likely to encourage or incite criminal activity’.

This matter should not end here. The reason the police and CPS failed to investigate people accused of inciting murder and mayhem and turned instead on the broadcasters who exposed them was almost certainly due to the official police and establishment policy of turning a blind eye to Islamic extremism — as long as there is no evidence of an actual plot to kill people. This disastrous strategy arises from the refusal of the British authorities to acknowledge that Islamist terrorism is a religious war being waged against this country. The outcome is that, while the police are intercepting or monitoring actual terrorist plots and terrorist suspects, they refuse to take action against the radicalisation that creates the poisoned sea in which those suspects and plots can swim.

Worse than that, there is evidence of collusion with the Islamists within the police. As a recent report by the Centre for Social Cohesion on honour violence revealed:

Several women’s groups, particularly in the Midlands and northern England, say they are often reluctant to go to the police with women who have ran away to escape violence because they cannot trust Asian police officers. Zalikha Ahmed, director of the Apna Haq refuge, says: “We have to be careful with them especially the Asian ones. We don’t visit the station when certain Asian officers are on because some of them are perpetrators, and one of them on record said that he would not arrest someone who used force on his wife. Some of them would just expose us for what we do.” Another worker in a women’s group in the North, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, said: “We had instances when a [Asian] chief inspector offered his help to a family by tracking a girl down – we were appalled.” According to some women’s groups such problems appear to be practically common in the West Midlands police force…

And as the Daily Mail revealed last year:

Up to eight police officers and civilian staff are suspected of links to extremist groups including Al Qaeda. Some are even believed to have attended terror training camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Their names feature on a secret list of alleged radicals said to be working in the Metropolitan and other forces. The dossier was drawn up with the help of MI5 amid fears that individuals linked to Islamic extremism are taking advantage of police attempts to increase the proportion of ethnic staff. Astonishingly, many of the alleged jihadists have not been sacked because — it is claimed — police do not have the ‘legal power’ to dismiss them. We can also reveal that one suspected jihadist officer working in the South East has been allowed to keep his job despite being caught circulating Internet images of beheadings and roadside bombings in Iraq. He is said to have argued that he was trying to ‘enhance’ debate about the war.

The pubic admission by the West Midlands police and CPS that they made false allegations against Dispatches, and the implications that flow from this, should be discussed in Parliament as a matter of urgency.

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