Maajid Nawaz is spot on with his claim that Britain can defeat the toxic ideology of Islamism in the same way as it defeated its twin sister, racism (To tackle extremism we need to first understand racism, 27 February). Racism and Islamism have a lot in common. Both are erected on fascist ideologies – the former on the superiority of race; the latter on the superiority of religion. In fact, Islamists are the Muslim equivalent of the BNP racists, except the former have a violent global agenda.
Britain fought racism by challenging it everywhere – universities, the National Health Service, media and other institutions. The strategy worked because the majority of British people have no stomach for such warped ideology. Since, as a recent BBC poll amply pointed out, there are more than enough Muslims who have no time for Islamism, the battle against it has to be fought by these Muslims – not for the sake of the British government, but for the sake of their own long-term survival – while leaving its violent offshoots to the government to deal with.
Randhir Singh Bains
Gants Hill, Essex
• The media appetite to find out what turned Mohammed Emwazi into a serial killer is (thankfully) not matched by a similar desire to find out what turned Jimmy Savile into a serial sex offender (From west London to Raqqa: a killer’s journey into jihad, 27 February). Much as I concur with Maajid Nawaz’s article on the need to campaign against the west’s brutal wars and the racism within its societies, seeking out “reasons” for Islamic State atrocities lets them off the hook: Islamism is in and of itself a far-right political ideology, one that can only grow if it is not challenged head-on by the left.
Peter McKenna
Liverpool
.jpg?w=600)
