The British Middle East Eye website published excerpts from a recent book authored by British journalist Peter Auburn, in which he presented the role of a neo-conservative research center in dismantling the values ​​of tolerance and the principles of multiculturalism in the United Kingdom, targeting primarily Muslims there.

In

an article

reviewing the book issued by Simon & Schuster Publishing House, the site reported that some might have believed, after the disaster of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, that the ideology that led US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Anthony Blair to fight this " The bloody adventure" has lost its credibility, but that hasn't happened.

He said that the neo-conservatives have been setting standards to a large extent determine the parameters of political discourse, while the proponents of this policy continued to occupy many prominent positions in British and American public life.

Why is the West wrong about Islam?

Peter Oborne says in his book entitled "The Fate of Abraham: Why Is the West Wrong About Islam?"

(The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam) There are several reasons for this influence.

In Britain there is a London-based think tank called Policy Exchange, a think-tank that has kept the neo-conservatives ablaze.

Although there is little public interest in this center, it has continued to exercise an astonishing influence in political circles.

It was initially associated specifically with marketing, an ugly word that describes how private sector regulations and standards have found their way into the education system and the civil service.

For Auburn, a veteran journalist who previously worked for the Daily Telegraph and has won several media awards and authored several books, perhaps the most important achievement of the center was the reformulation of government policy towards British Muslims.

He goes on to say that the government, the police and the intelligence services initially considered their duty to be limited to law enforcement rather than to monitoring people for their personal beliefs or beliefs.

British police encourage Muslim leaders in Britain to be active in political life to make it easier to classify and target them later (Getty-French)

Abu Hamza Al-Masry as an example

Perhaps what happened to the Islamic preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri - who did not hide his sympathy with Al-Qaeda - is in Auburn's eyes a wonderful example of this approach to dealing with Muslims in Britain by those agencies.

Abu Hamza, who was the imam of Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, used - in the opinion of the author of the article - his position in calling for "violent" jihad, and he was skilled in keeping his sermons within the framework of the law.

His sudden expulsion from the mosque by the worshipers - not the British state - raised astonishment and astonishment.

The author of the book we are dealing with considered this expulsion - which he describes as a sensitive operation - an old model of intelligence work and community monitoring.

He explains that the group of Muslims who overthrew Abu Hamza al-Masri embraces ideas that many segments of British society see as hostile.

Among the group's members are sympathizers with the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement "Hamas".

Almost all of them, without exception, according to Auburn, are against the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and resent Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In his book, the author notes that many worshipers at Finsbury Park Mosque have socially conservative views on issues such as homosexuality and women "which are no longer mainstream in Britain".

None of these views bothered the London police, who were happy to cooperate with the Muslim community in expelling a figure they considered a threat, in reference to Abu Hamza al-Masri.

Britain's neo-conservatives admire the ideas of former Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair (Al Jazeera)

Ending the British Tolerance Approach

This approach of "cultural pluralism" was at the heart of the British style of dealing, as long as immigrants abide by the law, they were allowed to follow the customs and traditions of the countries from which they came.

However, the Center for "Policy Exchange" eliminated the British approach to tolerance, as its analysts agreed that the police should confront violence, but they differed sharply among themselves about any tolerance of ideas that they believed might become an entry point for such violence.

The center was founded in 2002 by a group of conservatives who feared that their party was heading towards permanent opposition, in the wake of the party's heavy defeats in the 1997 and 2001 general elections.

They called themselves "modernists", and they admired Tony Blair, who was then leader of the Labor Party, and supported the war on Iraq.

These modernists believed that it was their duty to reproduce the achievements of Blair that contributed to the success of his party.

Michael Gove, a senior member of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's cabinet, was the first head of Policy Exchange.

The Center's Impact on Cameron's Policies

When David Cameron decided to run for leadership of the Conservative Party after the party's defeat in the 2005 elections, he looked to the center for ideas that shaped his thinking.

The ideas of the "Policy Exchange" center influenced British Prime Minister David Cameron (Al Jazeera)

More than any other similar organization, the Center was able to formulate what came to be known as the philosophy of the British ruling class in the 21st century.

When the center was established, it included a foreign and security policy unit, but its publications and literature did not express an interest in domestic extremism.

However, this changed after Dean Godson took over as Director of International Affairs Research in 2005. Godson apparently interpreted his duties as a mandate to create a domestic policy toward British Muslims.

The issue of Muslims as a foreign policy issue

Auburn says in his book that the British political right used to discuss the issue of Muslims in the country as if it was a foreign policy issue, adding that such behavior should not come as a surprise.

Since 2005, Godson seemed to undertake the task of "ripping up" the counter-terrorism strategy adopted by successive British governments, promoting a new approach to dealing with Muslims through reports and seminars, especially other media.

Goodson argued that the means used by the British state against terrorism - especially against the Irish Republican Army (IRA) - were no longer feasible.

The natural response of the British state - in the face of the threat of "terrorism" following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York - was to reproduce the Irish experience.

How to identify the targets

The police got to know the leaders who had links with the local communities and whom they thought they could trust, and they sought to lure them into British politics, invited them to participate in public forums and provided them with the necessary funding.

The aim of the police was to identify and isolate violent individuals and to gather intelligence about their activities.

However, the Center for "Policy Exchange" saw that this strategy is wrong "because the British government was not only confronted with terrorists."

And there was something much bigger in the making, and that was confronting ideologies.

In the opinion of the Center, Britain was among a group of countries, led by the United States, engaged in an internecine war against a group of "murderous" enemies devoted to a project aimed at destroying Western civilization.

These "killers" - according to the definition of the center - are "Islamists who embrace a deadly ideology called Islamism (political Islam)."


The term "Islamism"

Islamism - according to Wikipedia Encyclopedia - is a political, media and academic term used to describe political change movements that believe in Islam as a "political system of government", and this term is used by anti-Islamist political groups.

The Center acknowledges that not every Islamist is violent, yet it believes that "Islamism" is an idea that had to be fought, and that had to be defeated in the end.

According to the Center for Policy Exchange, Islamism is a worldview that teaches its adherents that Islam is a comprehensive political doctrine, and therefore "must be treated as such."

The same center claims that the Islamic perspective essentially divides the world into two different astronomy, the "Islamic" and "the rest".

Do not negotiate with the Islamists

Accordingly, there is no room for negotiation. Islamists - in the view of the center - may never accept democracy, the rule of law, political institutions or the nation-state.

Therefore, there was no point in attracting Muslims to the fray of politics unless they renounce the “Islamist” prejudice, in which case they can be welcomed.

According to Policy Exchange's analysis, the core objective of counter-terrorism policy is no longer just to protect citizens from violence, but to emphasize that it is a matter of Western values ​​in the face of alleged Islamic "extremism," as Auburn puts it.

The writer goes on to say that the first publication issued by the center dealt with the British government's cooperation with what was later termed "radical Islam", and it was prepared by Martin Bright, a left-leaning journalist, when he was the political editor of the newspaper "New Statesman".

Bright based his publication on information leaked by a source from the British Foreign Office, which made him uncomfortable with the government's relationship with Islamic organizations at home and abroad.

A dangerous doctrine that contradicts the West

In his paper, Bright targeted the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Council of Britain, accusing them of "promoting a dangerous ideology that is incompatible with the West."

The Middle East Eye article concluded that the ideas of the Policy Exchange brought about a change in Britain and made the concept of citizenship similar to the American style, where new arrivals to its lands are expected to abandon their previous identities and engage in one melting pot.

The project of the aforementioned center was nothing but an attempt to destroy the British identity from where he wanted to save it, and his arguments could not have written such success without the support of powerful allies, led by the Conservative Party, as Auburn put it.