RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Islamic State (ISIS) is newly emboldened by the departure of Donald Trump from the Oval Office and the return to power of the forces of appeasement, denial, weakness and surrender. The National reported Thursday that “children are being exposed to ISIS terrorism online during lockdown, raising fears of brainwashing,” according to British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab. Raab talked tough in response, but all he really offered was more of the same: lip-service to counterjihad efforts from a government that lacks the will to confront this foe, and would rather pretend that its real problem is “right-wing extremists.”

Dominic Raab (pictured above) told Parliament that “security services were fighting hard to combat the threat,” but he also recounted “the terrorists’ rising global influence, with armed groups in Africa and Asia adopting its violent methods.” The “biggest worry,” however, “was the ‘perfect storm’ of young people stuck indoors during lockdown, and going online to relieve their boredom where they were subjected to extremist indoctrination.” Accordingly, Raab said, “we can see a worrying rise in the proportion of children and teenagers that are now being arrested for terrorism offences.”

Yeah, that’s it, Raab, boredom leads to jihad. Give these boys a basketball and a job at Tesco and all will be well, right?

ISIS, he continued, is “still able to carry out lethal attacks,” and contrary to all the propaganda about “white supremacists,” it is still Britain’s “most significant terrorist threat.” Raab asserted that ISIS “more and more reliant on its perverse propaganda and warped narrative to try and maintain its relevance and cement support for its terrorist attacks. Daesh [the political elites’ favored euphemism for the Islamic State] maintains a steady drumbeat of violent communications, which they distribute with encrypted messaging applications.”

But never fear. Raab declared that British intelligence officials were “taking the fight online” and “degrading their network by dismantling their lies.” He added: “We’re approaching it with total vigour and determination.”

Yeah, sure you are, tough guy. In reality, your government is in full-on surrender and appeasement mode. Can you imagine what a fiasco Britain’s response to online ISIS recruitment really is? British security agents, thoroughly indoctrinated with fictions about Islam being a religion of peace, go online and tell Muslim youth that the Islamic State (ISIS) is telling “lies” and is un-Islamic because Islam teaches peace and tolerance, or because the Islamic State commits violence in the name of Islam, or because it kills innocent people in the name of Islam, or because it resorts to violence even thought it hasn’t been attacked, or because its jihadis take infidel women as sex slaves, or because it teaches that jihad has to do with warfare, or some such.

All these actions and others of the Islamic State can be and are justified by Islamic texts and teachings, as ISIS’ own literature repeatedly reminds us. The result of this is that the British agents’ appeal to these Muslim young people on Islamic grounds is foredoomed to fail, because if those young people have even a rudimentary knowledge of Islam, they will know that what the agents are saying is what is really un-Islamic. But the agents themselves don’t know that, and are abjectly ill-equipped to deal with it.

Raab’s claim that British officials are fighting against ISIS “with total vigour and determination” is just more theatre of the absurd. In reality, the Boris Johnson government is inundating the country with Muslim migrants, among whom there is an unknowable number of Islamic jihadis, without making any attempt to determine if any of them are actually jihadis. It is smearing and stigmatizing people who oppose jihad violence and Sharia oppression. It is devoting resources to prosecuting “anti-Muslim hate crimes” that consist of someone saying rude things to a Muslim.

And while continuing to bar foreign foes of jihad terror from the country, British officials are still admitting jihadis. MailOnline reported in mid-February “a terrorist who claimed asylum in Britain after he was sentenced to death in Egypt for a failed assassination plot is set to win the right to stay in this country. Yasser Al-Sirri, 58, first claimed asylum in 1994 but was turned down and has taken the issue to court more than eight times at great cost to British taxpayers. Al-Sirri, who was also charged in the US with assisting someone involved in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, has appeared in several tribunals since.” Yet despite all this, “a tribunal decided he was entitled to remain in the UK as a refugee.”

Dominic, why are you even bothering to try to counter jihad recruitment online when you’re busy ushering jihadis into your country? Do you seriously think jihad recruitment can and will happen only online?

Alas for Britain. It isn’t just Meghan Markle; Dominic Raab and the Boris Johnson government are just the latest millstone around its neck.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.