England jails 12,000 people a year for social media posts, but welcomes dangerous Islamist 0 13

"When Keir Starmer bizarrely welcomed Egyptian radical Alaa Abd el-Fattah to the UK this week, he made the classic mistake of a naive and inexperienced person — thinking that the enemy of his enemy must be his friend," writes English Muslim figure Taj Hargey in the Daily Mail.

"For the Prime Minister and other members of the Labour Party, who are increasingly losing touch with reality, the arrival of a man who was imprisoned in Cairo for opposing Egypt's authoritarian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was a long-awaited opportunity to demonstrate their liberal stance to dissatisfied left-wing party members.

So they rolled out the red carpet for the writer and activist who became known during the 'Arab Spring' uprisings in 2011 and paid a high personal price for the subsequent military repression.

What they failed to do, to their eternal shame, was properly examine the abhorrent personal views of Mr. el-Fattah. Despite his hypocritical attempts since arriving on these shores to convince us that his words have been distorted or taken out of context, the public statements of the Egyptian, which have been widely reported, clearly show that he is no friend of the UK or of liberal, tolerant societies in general.

It turned out that just hours after his supposed 'apologies,' the contrite Mr. el-Fattah liked and endorsed a Facebook post claiming that the political scandal surrounding his arrival in the UK was a 'Zionist campaign.'

Why then should we believe that he regrets his 2010 tweet in which he wrote: 'I consider it heroic to kill any colonizers and especially Zionists, we need to kill them more,' and added: 'The Nazis did not commit genocide against the Jews — after all, many Jews survived.'

Not satisfied with that, he happily called himself 'a cruel man advocating the killing of all Zionists, including civilians,' and wrote: 'The police are not people, they have no rights, we should just kill them all.' He added that the British, who have since welcomed him so warmly, are 'dogs and monkeys.'

Of course, it should be emphasized that it was the Tories who are responsible for granting Mr. el-Fattah citizenship in 2021 while he was still in prison in Egypt.

Yet, strangely enough, given the scale of the problems currently facing the UK, Starmer's government has stated that securing Mr. el-Fattah's release from the Egyptian prison, where he declared a hunger strike, was one of its 'top priorities.'

Although Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper launched an investigation last night into 'serious information errors' related to this case, our Prime Minister's priorities are distorted and hypocritical. He praised Mr. el-Fattah just two weeks after 36-year-old British citizen Luke Yarwood was sentenced to 18 months in prison for 'inciting racial hatred' in two social media posts that were viewed only 33 times.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that the police make over 12,000 arrests a year for offensive posts on social media and other online platforms — more than in any other country, including Putin's Russia.

As a Muslim scholar, educator, and imam who has served for over 20 years at a local mosque in Oxford, I believe that the government's top priority now should be to strip Mr. el-Fattah of his British citizenship and deport him to his native Egypt or, if that fails, to any third country willing to accept him.

Because, truth be told, his 'return' to Britain is a disgusting farce. He has no connection to Britain, except that his mother was born here and his grandmother studied in the UK for a time. Neither he nor his mother has spent any significant time in this country, and Mr. el-Fattah has clearly not been influenced by British traditions of freedom of speech, tolerance, and the rule of law.

I am also an immigrant in this country; I was born in Cape Town during the South African apartheid. I had to go through many trials before I was allowed to settle here, including proving that I am a genuine scholar fully integrated into British society, not holding dangerous and toxic views.

I would like to believe that since I have been here, I have made a significant contribution to my new homeland. I have tirelessly advocated for a tolerant form of Quranic Islam compatible with the British way of life. Sometimes I have had to have serious conversations with young people in my mosque who have been radicalized by extremist propaganda they have seen online or radical Islamic preachers in this country.

From my own experience as an imam, I know that there are already enough militant Islamic clerics in this country. The last thing we need is another Middle Eastern radical stoking hatred with his unabashed hostility towards Jews, gays, and other minorities and calling for the killing of police officers."