Take it from a moderate, Islamist extremism is still the biggest threat we face
'If the British public knew about the scale of cases coming into the courts around Islamist extremism, maybe then they would realise the risk that we all face'. This is a comment I made to a few friends recently. As a British Muslim, I have long questioned why some within parts of my community have sought to downplay the cancerous extremism that has taken hold of the minds of some young Muslims.
Given the sheer number of Islamist extremist cases that have gone through our courts, and which I am going to list, it is patently obvious that the scale and the depth of Islamist extremism continues to pose a real and ongoing danger to our society and our national values. A deep dive into them will show the frightening nature of some of the planning, intent and hate for our society that some of the defendants have shown.
So let's take a snapshot over the last two months and look at the types of cases that have entered our courts, and which demonstrate the scale and level of the problem that some seek to brush under the carpet in the ill-placed intention of maintaining 'social cohesion.'
On March 7 a 20-year old Kazakh born UK resident, Dzhamilya Timaeva, was sentenced to a two-year community order after being convicted of possessing a terrorist video called 'incite the believers' which she had downloaded around October 2022.
On April 2 2025, a teenager pleaded guilty to sharing Islamic State videos and propaganda on Telegram and Tiktok. 19-year-old Leo Walby admitted the six charges of dissemination of a terrorist publication between July and August 2024. On April 7 2025, an Islamist extremist born in Turkey and who arrived in the UK on a small boat was jailed for 45 months for supporting the Islamic State.
On April 10, Farishta Jami who had planned to fly to Afghanistan to join the Islamic State and 'martyr' herself, was jailed for 17 years. She had complained she was distressed the police had released a picture of herself without her face veil, leading to the same police force having to re-release a picture with her fully veiled. She had settled in the UK in 2008 and had arrived from Afghanistan.
What is interesting in the last case is that Jami, who was willing to 'martyr' herself and kill others for her Islamist extremist beliefs, had her personal rights protected by a British police force who ensured that her distress was relieved. This demonstrates the perverse narcissism that characterises so many Islamist extremists, where their rights and their beliefs trump even the basic right to life for others.
In a simple snapshot of cases over the last 8 weeks, I have counted 7 cases where Islamist groups and their extremism has percolated into the minds of people who have lived in or arrived into our country. This amounts to about a case a week. In summary, the fact is that countering Islamist extremism, its funding flows, its ideology and its 'useful idiots' is something that we should repeatedly do.
It also means calling out those who find it easier to talk about far-Right extremism but who fail to mention Islamist extremism. The latter remains the highest risk and threat to our country, and those who seek to place it in the same spectrum of other forms of extremism fail to reflect on the frequency and sheer number of cases coming through our courts. We need to remain focused and vigilant against this cancer in our society.
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