“We can expect Luton-style protests and worse in the years to come unless the Government gets a grip on Islamism, says Ed Husain.”

Sunday Telegraph, 15 March 2009

What Ed really means, of course, is that the government should stop working with organisations that represent real forces in the Muslim communities, and instead restrict their links to stooge groups like Ed’s own Quilliam Foundation, which represents virtually nothing and is regarded with general contempt.

Meanwhile, over at the Observer, Ed and his self-serving prescriptions for combating extremism are treated to a puff piece by liberal warmonger Nick Cohen, who has never forgiven mainstream Muslim organisations for mobilising opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

Cohen directs his attack on the East London Mosque. This has a mass base in the local Muslim community, for whom it provides a vital resource, with a library, conference rooms, classrooms, a gym and space for 10,000 worshippers, but Cohen says the governent should have nothing to do with anyone associated with it.

He claims this is because of the mosque’s links to the Bangladeshi political party Jamaat-e-Islami, though some of us might suspect that Cohen’s hostility is not unconnected with the fact that the East London Mosque played a crucial role in organising support for the mass demonstration against the Iraq war in February 2003.