WHY DO WE HAVE TO KEEP PANDERING TO EXTREMISTS?

The same goes for the rest of them. Omar Deghayes is a Libyan who was granted ref­ugee status in Britain but was arrested by the US military in Pakistan. There is evidence cited by America that he has been involved in jihadist activities in Bosnia and Chechnya.

Similarly, Jamil el-Banna, from Jordan, is said to have had “a long-term association” with Al Qaeda in Iraq, while Binyam Mohamed, an Ethio­pian refugee, was apprehended in Pakistan on explosives charges. Given this record, it
is perverse to argue that we should have any duty towards those who loathe our culture.  

The Government has tried to provide a degree of reassurance by claiming that these men will be subjected to control orders, allowing MI5 to keep them under surveillance. 

But if they are thought to be a danger to the public, why are Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband seeking to bring them here? Our police and intelligence services are overstretched as it is trying to cope with home grown fundamentalists. It is the height of folly to import even more hardliners from abroad. In any case, control orders have proved a useless weapon in the fight against terror, with large numbers of suspects disappearing.

The Guantanamo saga is only part of a wider pattern of reluctance by the Government to tackle Islamic extremism. Intelligence services and police may have done an excellent job in foiling a succession of plots but our society re­mains at serious risk because of the supine political establishment’s fear of taking on the jihadists.

There was an outrageous example only last week, following a Channel 4 investigation into Islamic preachers of hate in Birmingham mosques. An undercover operation showed Muslims denouncing Jews and non-believers and expressing hatred for democracy. Cleric Abu Usamah was recorded as saying: “We love the people of Islam and we hate the people of kuffaar. We hate the kuffaar!” – kuffaar being the derogatory Muslim term for any infidel. 

Another Birmingham Isla­m­ist trumpets his hope that, once Muslim rule is established within Europe, then any apostates will be executed, preferably by crucifixion. Elsewhere, there were de­mands for the beating of girls who do not wear the hijab and the beheading of British soldiers.

If any non-Muslims had used such vile, racially inflammatory language, they would surely have been quickly arrested. But it is a measure of the sick inversion of ethics in our state machine that the West Midlands police and the Crown Prosecution Service decided to take no action against the zealots. Instead, they considered prosecuting Channel4’s Dispatches team for stirring up “racial hatred” and complained to media regulator Ofcom.

It is no coincidence that the officer in charge of the case, Anil Patani, assistant chief constable of the West Mid­lands force, is a race obsessive with a track record of hypersensitivity to minority groups’ demands.

Fear of combating Islam­ism has also been highlighted in the refusal to outlaw the ultra-radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which seeks to establish totalitarian Islamic rule throughout the Middle East. So extreme is it that it is banned in parts of Europe and Asia, though not in Britain, despite a pledge from Tony Blair in the wake of 9/11 to crack down on the group.

This weekend, the group held a gathering at Lon­don’s Alex­andra Palace, att­ended by more than 2,000, spreading its gospel of vicious fundamen­talism. Former Hizb ut-Tahrir member Ed Hussain, now a writer who wants to open the eyes of the West to the dangers of Islam, has said that the outfit “should have been outlawed a decade ago and so spared us so much misery”.

Tragically, Mr Brown and his Govern­ment are still in app­easement mode – and we could all end up paying the price.