The Conservative party chair, Baroness Warsi, has been banned by David Cameron from attending a major Islamic conference today, igniting a bitter internal row over how the government tackles Islamist extremism.

Warsi, Britain’s first female Muslim cabinet minister, was told by the prime minister to cancel her appearance at the Global Peace and Unity Event, which is being billed as the largest multicultural gathering in Europe.

A Whitehall source said: “She had hoped to attend, but there is a conflict of opinion on how extremists should be dealt with and the prime minister, supported by Theresa May [the home secretary], were adamant no Tories should attend.”

Paul Goodman, the former Tory communities minister, said: “The aim of the organisers is to exploit politicians by using their presence to gain muscle, influence and credibility among British Muslims. Politicians shouldn’t play their game.”

Argument over the most effective strategy to challenge extremism has also led to a schism between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives in the coalition government. While Cameron has prohibited Tories from attending the event at the Excel Centre in Docklands, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, has firmly opposed a boycott by politicians.

Observer, 24 October 2010

If this report presents an accurate picture of divisions within the Tory party over the GPU, as seems likely, then the leadership enforced a boycott while their critics called for participation at the event in order to use it as a platform to denounce “extremism”.

The latter tactic was employed in 2008 by the then shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve, who made an idiot of himself during his speech by condemning the GPU organisers for inviting a “Holocaust-denying anti-Semite” to speak at the event. This was a reference to Yasir Qadhi, who had been the subject of a witch-hunt by the likes of Harry’s Place and Frontpage Magazine.

Instead of checking out the accuracy of the allegations against Qadhi, Grieve swallowed them whole, just as Theresa May did more recently with Zakir Naik. If one section of the Tories has has a better position on the GPU than the other, the differences are clearly marginal.

You’ll note that the Observer still thinks that Yasir Qadhi qualifies as an extremist on the grounds that he believes homosexuality is a sin. If that’s the definition of extremism, then in all consistency Paul Goodman et al should have been calling for a Tory boycott of the Pope’s visit.

According to the Observer, the GPU “is likely to witness clashes between moderate Muslims and extremists. One influential Muslim scholar, Tahir ul-Qadri from Pakistan, will denounce those in the audience who subscribe to terrorism as ‘disbelievers’.”

So, while Qadhi is an extremist, Qadri is a moderate. The Observer omits to mention that if there is hostility shown towards Qadri at the GPU, it will largely be because of the sectarian attacks he has made on rival tendencies within Islam. During a visit to London earlier this year he was treated to a double-page spread by the Evening Standard in which he stated that “every Salafi and Deobandi is not a terrorist but I have no hesitation in saying that every one is a well-wisher of terrorists”.

As for Qadri’s proposal that terrorists and their supporters should be treated as apostates, most Islamic scholars would regard this as entirely counterproductive, as it is the mirror image of the takfiri ideology adopted by the terrorists themselves. Qadri’s aim, however, is not to combat terrorism but rather to promote his own tiny organisation, Minhaj ul-Quran, by portraying himself as the unique voice of moderation and mainstream Muslims as supporters of violent extremism.

“People like myself who have warned for some years now about the steady Islamisation of Britain receive a torrent of scorn and abuse from the so-called custodians of our culture. Terms such as ‘scare-mongering’, ‘exaggeration’ or ‘alarmism’ tumble out alongside the inevitable ‘Islamophobia’.

“Now we can see what these cultural kamikazes are helping bring about. In the east London borough of Tower Hamlets, a man with links to radical Islamism, Lutfur Rahman, has been elected Mayor of the borough, giving him control of a million-pound budget and a platform for the progressive intimidation and silencing of British Muslims who do not want to live under sharia law, let alone the non-Muslim majority in the area.

“In order to know anything about this crucial development, you have to read the Telegraph‘s Andrew Gilligan who has been closely following what’s been going on in Tower Hamlets during the past year.”

Melanie Phillips’s Spectator blog, 24 October 2010

Phillips goes on to cite an article in today’s Mail on Sunday, which reports on a proposal to merge the Anglican diocese of Bradford with Ripon and Leeds due to financial problems caused primarily by a decline in church attendance. For Phillips, this demonstrates that “the indigenous culture of this country is under siege” from Muslims. According to her:

“The crumbling of church membership is due overwhelmingly to a profound loss of spiritual purpose and moral nerve within the Church of England – and the vacuum is being filled by Islam. Instead of defending its own territory, and with it the religious and moral underpinning of British society, the CofE has decided to stamp upon its Jewish theological roots and instead appease – through its strategy of Christian-Muslim dialogue – the creed that seeks to supersede Judeo-Christian culture.

“The outcome is that Britain’s establishment is actively assisting the progressive Balkanisation of Britain, in accordance with the global strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies to take over the west.”

Phillips’s spelling and grammar may be better, but in other respects it is difficult to distinguish the views expressed here from the hate-filled comments posted by BNP supporters and other racists on the Mail‘s website. No doubt Gilligan is well pleased to receive the endorsement of such a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Muslim bigot. Phillips’s article certainly provides a useful illustration of the narrative that Gilligan’s malicious witch-hunting of the IFE and Lutfur Rahman has played to.

Writing on his Telegraph blog Andrew Gilligan reports, under the headline “Labour-linked extremist ‘banned from UK'”, that Qazi Hussain Ahmad the former president of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan has had his visa revoked.

You don’t have to be an admirer of Jamaat-e-Islami to recognise that Ahmad is a mainstream political figure in Pakistan. He was the parliamentary leader of the MMA alliance that won 11% of the vote in the 2002 elections to the National Assembly.

Given Gilligan’s notoriously light-minded attitude to factual evidence, anything he writes has to be taken with a pinch of salt. However, after the exclusion of Zakir Naik, I wouldn’t put anything past the present government.

Inayat Bunglawala has rightly criticised the head of the UK Islamic Shariah Council, Shaykh Abu Sayeed, who in an interview on The Somosa website has stated that it is “not Islamic” to classify non-consensual marital sex as rape and prosecute offenders.

Inayat wrote: “Shaykh Abu Sayeed’s comments are woefully misguided and will also be a gift to the likes of the Daily Mail and others who love to incite mischief by portraying the Islamic Shariah Council as being in the vanguard of slyly ‘Islamising’ the UK.”

And, sure enough, we find an editorial in the Daily Express which does just that: