Why Britain’s elites give a free pass to Islamism

The BBC’s recent documentary about Gaza has been revealed to be thinly veiled pro-Hamas propaganda. The Beeb’s decision to produce and air it reaffirms a disturbing truth: the British establishment is incapable of reckoning with Islamism.

Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone was shown on BBC Two last week. It features numerous children with links to Hamas, the Islamist terror group that rules over Gaza and orchestrated the 7 October massacre in southern Israel in 2023. The narrator of the documentary, a Palestinian teenage boy, is the son of a Hamas government minister. A second child who plays a large role in the programme is a recurring star of Hamas propaganda. Another has a father who is a captain in the Hamas-controlled Gazan police. Yet all are presented by the BBC as ‘ordinary’ Palestinians.

The documentary has faced an intense backlash since these facts were brought to light. The BBC eventually announced that it would pull the film from iPlayer and launch an investigation into the allegations. So how on Earth did such a film come to be made by the BBC in the first place?

When it comes to Islamism, the British establishment has an undeniable blind spot. Instead of facing up to the threat of radical Islam, the liberal media and state agencies have hidden behind a façade of multicultural tolerance. Anyone who dares criticise Islam or its extremist offshoots is tarred as a far-right ‘Islamophobe’.

This has reached a point where the UK now has quasi-blapshemy laws protecting Islam from criticism. Earlier this month, a man was attacked with a knife outside the Turkish consulate in London while he was burning a Koran. The attacker was arrested – but so was the man he had attacked. Just a week before, another man was not only arrested in Manchester for setting fire to a Koran, but the police then also released a picture of his face, his full name and even the street he lives on. This was despite the obvious risk of violence this could subject him to. The message was clear: ‘Islamophobia’ may not technically be illegal in the UK – yet – but if you criticise Islam, you may still find yourself in trouble with the law as well as a violent mob.

For the British establishment, Islam is treated less as a religion and more a racial badge. To attack Islamist extremism is supposedly to attack a ‘brown-skinned’ community – a notion that smothers debate and only deepens divides between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Apparently, to criticise political Islam – or heaven forbid, the religion of Islam itself – is to engage in crude ‘populism’. Concern about Islamism is considered the preserve of a low-brow, working-class sentiment. Anyone who raises the alarm must be little more than an uneducated, racist rabble-rouser.

In turn, many in the elite see themselves as the protectors of Muslims, as shielding them from the hordes of neo-fascists in the working classes (even though these are largely imaginary). Others fear being seen as Islamophobic. This is exactly what allowed horrors like the grooming gangs to go on for so long. It has also let Islamist terror attacks unfold unchallenged.

No doubt this same patronising view of Muslims contributed to the BBC’s screw-ups over that Gaza documentary. In the Beeb’s black-and-white worldview, Muslims must always be the victims. Even if those Muslims might be members of Hamas, which is waging a genocidal, anti-Semitic war against Israel.

A society that refuses to recognise the dangers of radical Islam will struggle to protect its citizens from the consequences – whether that’s terror attacks or the shutting down of free speech by mob rule. The free pass we’ve given to Islamism must be revoked immediately.

Neil Davenport is a writer based in London.