Police may drop term ‘Islamist’ when describing terror attacks

From the Times, and the Daily Mail.  More taqiyya from a Muslim organisation. 

The police are looking at dropping the terms “Islamist terrorism” and “jihadis” when describing attacks by those who claim Islam as their motive. The police emphasised to The Times that the reform was not certain to go ahead. 

Proposed alternatives include “faith-claimed terrorism”, “terrorists abusing religious motivations” and “adherents of Osama bin Laden’s ideology”.

The reform was requested by a Muslim police organisation that blamed the official use of “Islamist” and “jihadi” for negative perceptions and stereotypes, discrimination and Islamophobia.

The problem was discussed at an online event last month addressed by Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, the national head of counterterrorism policing, and attended by more than 70 attack survivors, victims’ relatives, academics, experts and advocacy groups.

“Islamist extremism” is one of the terms alongside “extreme right-wing” and “Northern Ireland-related” used by counterterrorism experts to label attackers according to their ideology,

The 3,000-strong National Association of Muslim Police, whose representative Alexander Gent addressed the meeting, has proposed “a change in culture by moving away from using terms which have a direct link to Islam and jihad. These . . . do not help community relations and public confidence.”

It suggested an Arabic word unrelated to religion: “Irhabi is commonly recognised to mean terrorist within the Middle East and could be used to describe people that hold extremist ideologies.” It said “jihad” should be dropped because the Arabic for “struggle” may refer in Islam to practising faith and good deeds as well as physical struggle “for the purpose of self-defence only”.

Rizwan Mustafa, a former West Midlands police officer turned lecturer at Huddersfield University, wrote in a briefing paper that Muslims in counter-terrorism were uncomfortable about “Islamism” and “jihadi” as “pejorative and depicting the religion of Islam (their belief) as violent and belligerent”.

A Muslim faith leader said after the meeting: “We are asking others to be responsible with how the word Islamism is utilised.”

But David Toube, of Quilliam, a counter-extremism think tank, told The Times: “People do not like to feel that they are being told only the partial truth . . . there is a serious problem with Islamist terrorism. The use of any term that obscures that fact risks damaging public trust in the police.”

A counterterrorism expert said afterwards that the far right already exploited allegations that police officers pandered to political correctness by ignoring gangs of Pakistani-background men using children for sex in Britain. “It creates ambiguity, that you can’t say this because it’s Muslim,” the expert said. “There will be a lack of trust and confidence in public discourse. You are trying to avoid saying it because it is true.”

The Times analysis

When Muslims commit suicide bombings on public transport and leave behind video messages brimming with religiosity or massacre cartoonists for drawing the Prophet or behead non-believers, what credibility will the police have if they shrink from any reference to Islam?