The Daily Mail has obtained footage of a prominent government-paid Islamic cleric supporting jihad against Israel and inciting against Jews during the recent Israel-Hamas conflict. It is a pattern that has been repeated on numerous occasions over the years, where bungling UK officials have been hoodwinked into paying or employing extremist Imams seeking positions of prominence in order to surreptitiously preach their Islamist rhetoric.
The latest member of this club is Imam Irfan Chishti MBE, who provides training to the police, the NHS and in schools on how to spot radicalism and neutralise extremist views. He is co-founder of Me and You Education, a training program to raise the awareness of far-Right and Islamist extremism.
At a rally to support the Palestinians in Rochdale eight days ago, Imam Chishti called Israel a “terrorist state,” referring not only to the recent conflict, but the “historic” loss of Palestine. He described non-Muslims at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem as “vile human beings” who were “desecrating” it. Sounding like a representative of Hamas or Hezbollah, Imam Chishti several times poses the question, “Where is the modern-day Saladin?” He continues and lauds the “mujahideen” and the “shahids” then prays: “We ask you Allah that you accept every single shahid who has given their life for Palestine.”
Imam Chishti also repeats the Islamist lie that historic Muslim rule over Palestine had been akin to a heavenly abode for Jews and Christians. The revisionist history is supposed to justify a jihad against the evil Zionists. Islamists typically justify jihad by sanitising Islamic history of its crimes and pretending a utopian rule that never existed in reality. This is the underlying problem that Western governments are unable to comprehend in their push for a two-state solution to this conflict. It is not the solution that Islamists (including those living in the West) with their sense of entitlement seek.
Addressing his cheering audience, Imam Chishti dispenses advice on how to respond to the perceived menace: “exactly the strategy that those Jewish, Zionist politicians are doing and we also know how to respond. It’s got to be long term, it’s got to be economic, it’s got to be with strategy.”
Ironically, this is a man who is paid by the UK government to combat extremism under the counter-terrorism Prevent scheme. The Home Office has now launched an urgent internal investigation and have affirmed that Imam Christi’s Prevent role is under review.
Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle, Imam Chishti said “I now appreciate that my ill-chosen words will have caused offence and hurt to the Jewish community and I tender my most profound apologies.”
He appears to believe that only Jews would find his views offensive which further illuminates his unsuitability for the role he was tasked with.
Imam Christi’s Twitter feed too is very revealing for it shows that he endorses tweets with the kind of extremist and antisemitic beliefs that the government’s Prevent Strategy was designed to eliminate:
