In the latest disturbing sign of Islamist infiltration of the British public sector, a serving police officer in the UK has just been arrested on suspicion of supporting Hamas.
The Gloucestershire Police officer, who is in his 30s, was detained on November 12 at a property in Gloucester on suspicion of a terrorism offence.
More precisely, he was apprehended on suspicion of providing support for a proscribed organization contrary to Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
Gloucestershire police assistant chief constable Arman Mathieson said that “the suspected support relates to activity online and the searches taking place are predominately to locate digital devices for analysis.”
Both the political and military wings of Hamas have been proscribed as a terrorist organization by the British government. This means it is a criminal offence to belong to, invite support for, or wear clothing which could be seen to support the group.
This is the most striking example so far of support for banned Islamist terror groups being expressed in British public institutions, but it is not the only one.
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A review of British prisons published in 2022 found that Muslim terrorists have been able to seize control of entire wings and set up sharia courts behind bars.
The report by Jonathan Hall QC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, was launched after a spate of terrorist attacks carried out by ex-prisoners radicalized behind bars.
It found that Islamic extremists had gone unchallenged when insisting that prison staff be barred from attending Friday prayers on account of not being Muslim, or imposing conditions on entry, such as removing their shoes.
The report also found that prison officers sometimes appealed to the wing “emir” to help maintain order among inmates. This had weakened the ability of staff to stop the expanding control of terrorists over prison activities because staff fear “insincere allegations of racism and Islamophobia”.
The report warned that the failure of the prison service to prevent Islamist gang control is leaving extremists free to recruit terrorists in custody and to plan further attacks. This means that many inmates end up more dangerous to the public when they leave His Majesty’s Custody than when they enter it.
In the civil service, meanwhile, a group for Muslim public officials was suspended earlier this year after it was found to have held a series of meetings discussing how to force the last Tory government to change its policy on the Israel-Gaza war.
One official involved in the webinars allegedly told staff that the “Israel lobby” had an “insidious influence” on British politics. Citing claims from anti-Zionist rappers that Western media cover up US and UK involvement in the war against Hamas, the civil servant also told fellow officials: “So we are in the belly of the beast in that respect.”
These remarks were made during meetings of the Civil Service Muslim Network (CSMN), a cross-government umbrella network that represents Muslim civil servants.
The official concerned, who could not be named for legal reasons, described the war in Gaza as a “fight between good and evil” in a meeting held last December, implying Hamas on the side of good.
They also read out a letter from another anonymous UK civil servant urging officials to take up “resistance” against the government’s pro-Israel stance. The letter ended “Resilience, resistance, protest, rights and return”, the last of which refers to the professed right of return of millions of Palestinians to the territory of pre-1967 Israel, ending its existence as a Jewish state.
Although the group was suspended pending an investigation, and the official subject to disciplinary proceedings, it is concerning that UK civil servants should essentially be supporting a demand to extend Palestine “from the river to the sea” in this manner.
We should all be disturbed that the hydra of Islamist sympathies has now reared its heads in the British police, prisons, and civil service. It remains to be seen how aggressively Keir Starmer’s Labour government will tackle the problem, especially in the prison system – about which, more soon.
