“Isis recruitment moves on from online networks to British mosques.” Seriously, that’s the title of a report in the Guardian, of all newspapers.
We know that right-wing tabloids have a disgraceful record of publishing inflammatory headlines about British Muslims that lack any factual basis, but you might have thought a progressive broadsheet which claims to uphold journalistic standards would feel obliged to come up with some solid evidence to justify such a damaging accusation. The Guardian article provides none.
The springboard for the allegations that British mosques are being used to facilitate recruitment to a terrorist organisation is an interview with a 19-year-old ISIS supporter named Abdullah, who uses the Twitter handle JihadWitness. He is reported as saying that he “believed active recruitment was now taking place in mosques and other centres across Europe following Isis successes and their announcement that they had established a theological state, or caliphate (khilafah) spanning Syria and Iraq”. He asserts that ISIS is particularly interested in the UK where there is “a large minority of Salafis”.
Evidently the Guardian thinks it’s appropriate to give credence to unsubstantiated claims about links between British mosques and terrorism, made by some obscure jihadi sympathiser whose Twitter feed consists of a stream of admiring comments about extremists around the world, from al-Shabab in Somalia to Abdullah el-Faisal in Jamaica. Did the Guardian‘s journalists make any effort to establish that “Abdullah” is in a position to give an informed account of ISIS’s recruitment techniques in the UK, rather than being just some deluded teenage fantasist?
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