The UK government has turned a blind eye to extremist groups on its home soil, allowing “hotbeds” of terror sympathizers to form and sow the seeds for terror attacks, a new documentary claims.
“The Making of Extremism,” broadcast by the Abu Dhabi-based Sky News Arabia, claims the British security services have historically viewed certain extremist groups as “weapons” in their pursuit of foreign-policy objectives.
Extremist groups’ domestic operations are seen by the UK government as “a tax they are willing to pay,” the documentary said.
The claims follow the recent lone-wolf terror attack in Westminster in London, which claimed the lives of five victims, and a string of more organized atrocities and attempted attacks in UK cities.
Arab News obtained exclusive footage of the Sky News Arabia documentary subtitled in English, which is available to view online at
http://www.arabnews.com.
Muslim Brotherhood ties
The Sky News Arabia film traces the UK’s current problem with extremist groups back to its stance on the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which was founded in 1928.
Some consider the group — which is now outlawed in Egypt and some other countries, but not in Britain — as forming the “roots of the modern-era extremist movements.”
The Sky News Arabia documentary tracked Britain’s relationship with the MB back to 1941. Colonial Britain then saw the Brotherhood as useful in quelling nationalism in Egypt, and later provided the Brotherhood with financial support, the documentary said.
The MB, known as the Ikhwan in Arabic, was banned by Egypt in 1954, with its members having been blamed for a failed attempt to assassinate President Gamal Abdul Nasser. Many of the group’s members fled to London, where they enjoyed the “protection of the British authorities who considered them political refugees,” the documentary claims.
Extremism in the UK
Decades later, the MB is still tolerated in Britain — and the documentary points to several examples of UK-based extremists that were apparently influenced by the group’s political ideology.
It cited the case of the Syrian-born Omar Bakri Mohammed, once one of London’s most notorious preachers, who in 2004 famously vowed that Muslims would give the West “a 9/11 day after day after day.”