Ed Husain’s Quilliam Foundation has issued a statement criticising the government’s failure to take a stand against Israel’s bloody onslaught on the population of Gaza. Ed himself is quoted as saying:

“Perceived double standards from our Government and the current green light (from Washington and London) to Israel’s killing machine will strengthen Al Qaeda’s metanarrative and radicalize yet another generation of young Muslims.”

This from an organisation that has spent its entire existence ingratiating itself with the government by claiming that Islamist ideology not foreign policy is the root cause of “radicalisation” (a term which of course obliterates the distinction between the general politicisation of Muslim youth in response to imperialism and the influence of terrorist groupuscules).

Perhaps Ed and his friends have calculated that failure to take a public stand against the government’s complicity with Israeli state terrorism would deprive the Quilliam Foundation of whatever shreds of credibility it may have left. We can’t see the Foundation’s neocon “adviser” Michael Gove (“Michael is author of Celsius 7/7, a courageous indictment of Islamism in Britain”, the QF website informs us) taking too kindly to this, though.

Certainly Melanie Phillips, formerly one of Ed’s greatest admirers (“Accounts such as Ed Husain’s book The Islamist have blown apart all the usual excuses for Islamist terror. Husain said the cause was nothing other than religious fanaticism”) has now turned on him because he balks at supporting Israel’s slaughter of civilians in Gaza:

“Ed Husain has shown that in the great battle to defend civilisation against barbarism he is on the wrong side…. If Ed Husain were really interested in de-radicalising Britain’s Muslims, he would tell them that they have been fed a diet of incendiary lies and blood libels about Israel and the Jews, and that justice demands they are taught instead the truth. But instead, he has now adopted the very narrative and rhetoric that are driving Muslims to mass murder.”