Commentators who rail against Islam risk producing terrorists of their own. The right must speak out against its own extremists, argues James Brandon.
And who might these extremists be? Brandon names Mark Steyn, Melanie Phillips, Rod Liddle and Douglas Murray.
Brandon recounts: “until recently I worked with Murray at his Centre for Social Cohesion, which I joined because, in mid-2007, few other thinktanks were willing to seriously address the problem of Islamism at all. My time there was a constant struggle to ‘de-radicalise’ Murray and to ensure that the centre’s output targeted only Islamists – and not Muslims as a whole. This October, however, I had finally had enough of this constant battle and resigned.”