RUTHFULLY YOURS

The same week that Mr Yousaf was extolling the idea that Britain is a proto-Nazi state and Pakistan a potential safe-haven, the Pakistani authorities saw the latest round of the interminable and unforgivable saga of Asia Bibi. This is the woman who has been on death-row in Pakistan for no crime other than the crime of being a Christian. Bibi has been awaiting execution for five years, purely because a neighbour claimed that Bibi had insulted Mohammed during an argument.

They attack the Conservative government of the UK for Nazism while not merely praising, but lauding as a safe haven, a state which actually persecutes and murders people because of their religion.

Which means that he is doing what many other people today are doing, which is knowingly to cover for a racist despotism, so long as it is despotism with an Islamic face.

Is Britain becoming a Nazi state? It would seem unlikely, but to listen to some of the critics of the Conservative government in recent days it would appear that we are only moments away from become a racist despotism.

Last week the convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities and Human Rights Committee, one Christina McKelvie, pronounced that the Conservative party is displaying “some of the most right-wing reactionary politics that I’ve heard in my lifetime” and claimed that the Conservative party’s recent conference showed what will happen in Britain “if we become bystanders and do not speak out against discrimination.” She said that some recent Conservative proposals were “reminiscent of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.”

Higher up the Scottish Nationalist Party food-chain, one of their MPs, Mhairi Black last week also compared the recent Conservative party conference to the Nazi party. She wrote without irony that she was vexed by its alleged “nationalism’, all the more “when that “nationalism” is used as a motivation or an excuse for racist, bigoted and small minded policy.” The policies of the Conservative party, she claimed, were increasingly “reminiscent of early 1930s Nazi Germany.” As though to demonstrate how sparse her knowledge of that period is, she concluded her piece by citing — as though no one could possibly have come across the quotation before — Pastor Martin Niemoller. “First they came for the Jews.”

Having sparked some criticism, other nationalists soon came to the aid of Ms Black. Notable among them was Humza Yousaf, one of the ministers of the SNP and himself a member of the Scottish Parliament. While many people on social media criticised Ms Black’s absurd rhetoric, he chose to back her up. “Those criticising, I have friends/family who have applied for dual nationality with Pakistan. Feel UK will be unbearable for Muslims in future.” This gained headlines of its own. But nobody pointed out the twin outrages of this grotesque nonsense.

PARIS—A predawn attack on a French policeman’s home, the killing of a priest during Mass and a car bomb planted near Notre Dame Cathedral in recent months were plots that appeared isolated until investigators discovered a common thread.

Their authors had all allegedly been in contact with a man whom authorities identify as 29-year-old Rachid Kassim.

From somewhere in Islamic State-held territory in Iraq or Syria, authorities say, the French national had used the encrypted Telegram chat app and other social-media tools to contact people back home—mainly French teenagers who are believed to have little or no previous connection to the terror group or each other—and instruct them on how to mount attacks.

Investigators across Europe are alarmed by the rise of militants such as Mr. Kassim, who they suspect have developed a way to “remote control” attacks from far away. That is blurring the lines between assaults carried out by militants trained in Islamic State territory and those by so-called lone wolves who authorities assumed were acting without the direction or support of terror groups.

“What worries us is a new type of attacker who only appears to be acting alone,” said Hans-Georg Maassen, head of Germany’s domestic intelligence. “Such assailants are being steered virtually from abroad via instant messaging.”

Followers of Mr. Kassim’s private channel on Telegram received instructions in mid-August on how to buy cooking-gas canisters for a car bomb, according to a copy of the channel’s content provided to The Wall Street Journal by a person with access to it. The content was confirmed by French authorities.

CELLE, Germany—The trial of a teenage girl accused of stabbing a policeman, in what officials allege was the first attack ordered by Islamic State on German soil, began on Thursday behind closed doors.

The case casts light on the growing phenomenon of radicalization among teens and the new challenge it presents for authorities, given the extensive legal protections juveniles enjoy in most Western countries.

This special status was on evidence on Thursday when the court in this small northern German town ordered reporters and the public out of the courtroom. The minor’s right to a closed-door trial, the judges argued, trumped even the “great public interest given the growing threat of Islamist terrorism.”

The 16-year-old, identified only as Safia S., is charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and support of a foreign terrorist organization. Federal prosecutors say Islamic State operatives ordered her to commit an “act of martyrdom” and helped plan her knife attack on a policeman in Hannover in late February.

“We believe she was motivated and steered in her act by supporters of IS,” said Simon Henrichs, senior federal prosecutor, after the first day of the trial.

The defendant’s lawyer, Mutlu Günal, denied a terrorist motive, however. “That the attack happened is a fact and she apologized for it,” Mr. Günal said. “But there is no terrorist background.”

The accused faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The case marks the first terror plot linked directly to the terror militia in Germany, a country that has seen a spate of attacks by Islamist extremist in recent months. Several of these followed a pattern observed around Europe of Islamic State operatives in the Middle East steering supporters remotely.