Non-Subscriber Extract
Former Islamist radicals warn UK of ideological differences
03 March 2008
The police service and the government must properly understand the difference between Islam and Islamism if it is to defeat terrorism, according to a former radical.
Ed Husain, author of The Islamist, told chief officers at the first ever ACPO counterterrorism conference in Brighton: "If you are only thinking about the next bomb, then you are only thinking about the seeds of the problem."
Mr Husain told the conference: "Whereas the Government has issued guidelines about using the language of extremism, we must not be afraid to name Islamism for what it is - it is not Islam. Islamism is a 1950s, post-colonial ideology. It is a perversion of Islam [and this] needs to be put out there in the public domain."