Michael Gove has called for a “robust” defence of liberal values in the face of the challenge from Islamist extremists. The education secretary said it was essential that extremists were denied a platform in schools and other public institutions to push their agenda.

Speaking on BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show, Gove defended his decision to appoint the former Scotland Yard head of counter-terrorism to lead the investigation into the so-called “Trojan horse” plot by Islamists to take over schools in Birmingham.

“Islamism is a perversion of Islam in the same way that communism was a perversion of socialism and fascism is a perversion of nationalism,” he said. “If liberalism is to survive – and I believe liberalism is the way in which we approach these issues, liberal values are our best protector – we need to be robust.

“We need to challenge those views and we need to make sure that people who have views that are inimical to liberal values and wish to use institutions to push an agenda which is inimical to liberal values are not in a position where they can use public money or the public square in order to push their views.”

Gove acknowledged that his decision to appoint Peter Clarke, formerly the country’s top counter-terrorism officer, to head the Trojan horse inquiry had been controversial, but said he believed it was correct. “The view that I took was that if you have a police officer of unimpeachable integrity to do these investigations, if people at the end of this process are cleared, given a clean bill of health, that is the most effective way of ensuring that public confidence can be restored,” he said.

He said the inquiry had raised important questions – including for both the Department for Education and the local authority in Birmingham. “There are broader questions about the extent to which these activities were coordinated and the extent to which those responsible for those activities may have had a broader agenda,” he said.

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Two days ago BBC News reported an interview broadcast on Radio 5 Live with an individual who gave his name as Abu Osama and claimed to be a British Muslim fighting in Syria. Describing Britain as “pure evil”, Abu Osama said:

“If and when I come back to Britain it will be when this Khilafah, the Islamic state, comes to conquer Britain, and I come to raise the black flag of Islam over Downing Street, over Buckingham Palace, over Tower Bridge and over Big Ben.”

The claim was widely publicised in the British media, not least by the Daily Mail.

Yesterday a new thread was opened at the Ummah.com discussion forum under the heading “i am pledging allegiance to the caliphate”, with the following comment:

“salam my sisters and brothers we should get out of this evil country and pledge our allegiance to the muslim sharia law and get out of evil west. who wants to join me so we can wage war and jihad against the corrupt west.”

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That the headline to an article in today’s Times. It comes as no surprise that the “imam” in question is that pompous, self-promoting nonentity Taj Hargey, whose speciality is giving support to attacks on the rights of his fellow Muslims.

In a letter to the paper (see below) Hargey opines that “no one, including women, has an unqualified right to dress as one pleases in public” and declares that a “Saudi-financed campaign” is responsible for some Muslim women deciding to wear the niqab:

“This Saudi-financed campaign is just another salvo in the battle for the hearts and minds of British Muslims. If Britain’s liberal and human rights industry fail to recognise this, we will all live to regret it.”

In his letter Hargey calls on the British government to follow the example of France and “outlaw this Wahhabi-Salafi inspired trend”.

The report of Hargey’s intervention, by Dominic Kennedy, carries the following postscript: “This article has been chosen as today’s Talking Point by The Times community team for the quality of the comments left by readers.”

Again, it is hardly surprising that the majority of those comments are vehemently opposed to the right to wear the niqab. As one contributor pointed out:

“A pretty one-sided debate for ‘Talking Point’. Of nearly 200 posts so far only 3 individuals apparently arguing from a libertarian viewpoint seem to agree with Shami Chakrabarti that it should be acceptable for Islamic women to cover their faces in public.”

Sample comments: “Yes. Ban it. And hurrah for Dr Hargey.” “Ban it and dissolve the ideology underpinning it.” “This monstrous instrument of human, specifically female obviously, enslavement should be banned immediately.” “Ban it. It’s terrifying. It could be a man or a woman under the black garb packing explosives, knives, machetes or firearms.”

Another contributor calls for Muslim men to be banned from public pools because many Muslim women don’t participate in mixed-gender swimming sessions: “If your women aren’t allowed in, then you shouldn’t be either.”

This is what passes for “quality” debate at the Times.

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