Take a tour of any of inner London borough and see how many women are sporting hijabs, jilbabs or niqabs, loan words that have entered the English language since 1997. In many cases these are not women who were brought up in “that culture”, but British people who, in their teens and twenties, have chosen to adopt dress that would be considered reactionary in most of the Islamic world, let alone London.

We saw a gaggle (although that collective noun seems slightly inappropriate) of niqab-clad women last week in Luton, screaming abuse at British soldiers who had been fighting for the rights of Iraqis and Afghans to be able to protest freely.

In the same week that those “bunch of nutters”, as Baroness Warsi rightly called them, caused a scene in Luton, the Policy Exchange claimed that £90 million spent on fighting Islamic extremism had had the same effect of opening a window in a burning room. Money had gone to groups influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jamaat e-Islami in Pakistan, a scheme which Policy Exchange compared to giving money to the BNP to fight fascism.

This is not entirely fair on the BNP – they only want to return this country to either the 1950s or 1930s, depending on how sinister one believes them to be. Most Islamists would feel more at home in Viking-ruled East Anglia, where the “blood eagle” method of crucifixtion and disembowelment was the punishment for wrongdoers.

“Exotically clad Abu Hamza-style ranters are unlikely to be favoured,” the report said, “but plausible and well-mannered radicals, often representing themselves as moderate, are welcomed with open arms, however hardline their underlying philosophy.” Among the examples of radical bodies are the Muslim Council of Britain, the United Kingdom Islamic Mission, and the Islamic Society of Britain.

In Luton the taxpayer has funded seven Muslim centres under a Home Office project called “Preventing Violent Extremism”. The council has handed out £200,000, and another £400,000 has been set aside to capture the “hearts and minds” of young Muslims. Hearts and minds, or votes? Because that is what “fighting extremism” really is – paying Muslims to vote Labour.

Labour’s policy of buying Muslim votes has not benefited Muslims at all, but has given taxpayers’ money and power to some very dangerous people, who have turned the mental gulf between Muslims and the rest of the society into a chasm.

Ed West’s Blog, 17 March 2009