Recently the case of Shamima Begum—one of a group of London schoolgirls that raveled to Syria to join Islamic State, and who now hopes to return to the UK—has consumed British public attention. Following an interview in which Begum, now in a Syrian refugee camp, expressed no remorse for her actions, Home Secretary Sajid Javid stripped her of her citizenship. Douglas Murray notes a troubling argument against doing so, made by Britain’s extremism commissioner Sara Khan, whom he otherwise finds “hugely admirable”:
In a piece in the Sunday Times as well as a subsequent comment, . . . Khan has insisted that Begum must be allowed to come back to the UK. Not only, Khan has argued, does Begum have this right, but Britain would be “abandoning our values” if we did not allow her back. . . . There is one element, though, of Khan’s argument that has gone particularly unnoticed and is particularly disturbing. In her Sunday Times piece Khan argued that, “Far-right and Islamist agitators alike will use the case of Shamima to create a wedge between and within communities.” And well they might. In making this argument, however, the UK government’s extremism commissioner perhaps unwittingly demonstrates a slippage that has occurred in Britain in just over a decade.
In 2006, a small group of peers, members of parliament, and Islamist groups sent an open letter to the then-Labor government. . . . This letter suggested to the UK government of the day that British foreign policy “risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad.” This is a commonly heard argument, of course, and is especially commonly heard from various Islamist groups. What is noteworthy about this, and what makes it worth dredging up, is not the argument but rather the response to the argument. . . .
[At the time], there was agreement from across the Conservative and Labor benches that such arguments should not merely be rejected but should be ignored. Sara Khan is certainly no Islamist, or any type of sympathizer with extremism. Far from it. In recent days, nonetheless, she has shown herself willing to deploy the argument that we must be careful what we do lest we offend extremists. Thirteen years ago, this argument was dismissed by Labor and Conservative MPs alike. Today, it would most certainly be deployed by the leadership of the present Labor party. . . .
[I]t is a sign of a wider slippage that, in 2019, such an argument would be deployed not by an Islamist, but by the government-appointed figure whose task is to tackle extremist Islam. It is in small slips such as this that a wider societal backsliding can be discerned.
Read more on Gatestone: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13803/offend-extremists