David Cameron’s religious adviser is descended from founders of the ‘terrorist’ Muslim Brotherhood

That’s the headline to a report in the Daily Mail. The adviser with the supposed terrorist links is none other than Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, who the Mail’s reporter Martin Beckford indignantly informs his readers “is one of 14 members of the Foreign Office’s Advisory Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief, chaired by Tory peer Baroness Warsi”.

Any informed commentator would have told the Mail that Professor Ramadan is the epitome of a liberal and progressive interpretation of Islam, and has no organisational or even ideological links to the Muslim Brotherhood, never mind to terrorism. So, instead, Beckford turned to Douglas Murray, associate director of the Henry Jackson Society, who provided him with a predictably ignorant and scaremongering quote: “David Cameron should be deeply embarrassed by this. Tariq Ramadan is extremely loyal to his father and grandfather and he does not, by any means, speak out against the Muslim Brotherhood.”