The Home Secretary came under fire last night for allowing a radical Lebanese propagandist with links to the extremist group Hezbollah to enter Britain for a national speaking tour.

The Conservatives urged Jacqui Smith to ban Ibrahim Moussawi from the UK, warning that he was “likely to foment extremism or promote violence”.

Mr Moussawi edits Hezbollah’s newspaper and is former political editor of the Iranian-backed group’s television station, which is banned in many countries including France, Spain and the U.S. where its output is seen as anti-Semitic.

He was recently barred from entering Ireland, where he was due to speak at anti-war meetings.

He is scheduled to appear at an event in London tonight organised by the Stop the War Coalition, with more events planned around the country over the coming week.

via Atlas Shrugs: BRITAIN BANS WILDERS BUT WELCOMES ISLAMIC EXTREMIST.

Melanie Phillips writes at The Spectator:

the Communities Secretary Hazel Blears delivered a major speech on the subject which, far from presaging a change in strategy, was a defence of the status quo. (…She) explained that the problem was not just al Qaeda but also people who did not support violence but the ‘political Islamisms’ whose extremist ideas helped promote that violence. So what was she going to do about them – the ‘political Islamists’ — was what we now needed to know.

But she didn’t tell us. Instead, she retreated to the old comfort zone of the ‘moderate majority’ and the need to engage with and encourage the mainstream Muslim community so that violence would not take further root there.

(Afterwards) she appeared to be saying that the mainstream Muslim communities with whom the government was having all this dialogue actually had ‘extremist’ views. So while earlier she had been talking about the importance of engaging with moderates, now she seemed to be talking about the importance of engaging with extremists. And as she said, I do indeed think that such ‘engagement’ is ‘endorsement’;  more importantly, truly moderate Muslims think so too and have repeatedly begged the government not to engage with extremists in the community because it emboldens them and undermines true moderates .

Yet with groups which display

an equivocal attitude on core values such as democracy, freedom of speech or respect towards women,

there would be ‘ limited engagement’. Did that include the Muslim Brothers, or Hizb ut Tahrir, or other groups who want to Islamise Britain? Because ‘engagement’ with such people is the current strategy, and the result is that radicalisation of Britain’s Muslims is going through the roof while the government is seen to cave into the threat of violence and dance to their tune. Witness, for example, the banning of the Dutch anti-Islamist politician Geert Wilders, who threatens no-one, while according to the Centre for Social Cohesion the Hezbollah spokesman Dr Ibrahim el-Moussaoui is to be allowed into the country to teach a course on political Islam at the School of Oriental and African studies – a course apparently aimed at educating Government officials and the police.

So this guy, actually an extremer who has been chief political editor of a terrorist group’s TV is going to give a course to educate Government officials and the police.

Why is that, Mr Corbett? Is a Hizbullah propagandist more dangerous than Mr. Wilders?

In the last Garzon’s judicial operation (jan 20th) against alleged Al-Qaeda collaborators, a Pakistani named Abdul Razzaq Sadiq was detained. It has been discovered he is Executive Secretary’s of the Catalan Socialist Party (the branch of Zapatero’s party in Catalonia) in the Catalonian city Ciutat Vella. Interior Ministry’s press release published his surnames changed, so no one could guess who he really was. In all police’s documents, his surnames were in right order, so the change was made only afterwards in the Interior Ministry’s press release.

Three days after, they were freed by a Garzón’s resolution, which said that he didn’t have proofs which could link them with the terrorist group’s financing scheme. But they had been accused of sending illegally money to Pakistan.

via Un detenido por financiar a Al Qaeda es un cargo del PSC de Barcelona.

This case makes me think: why some people are detained and only three days after the judge “discovers” that there was no reason for that arrest? It’s ridiculous. All were freed. Spanish police rarely messes up in these cases as they have truly good experience in dealing with terrorist thugs. So why on earth did this happen? Yes, I know that “people are innocent till proven guilty”, but isn’t this a kind of “rare” thing to arrest several people on these so grave charges to free them only three days after?

Catalonia is one of the areas of Spain where Islamic terrorism (if we consider included in that term also financing, training and recruiting jihadoterrorists) is most spread. Last people arrested were accused of forging documents for Al-Qaeda (scroll down for English translation). The most important groups in Catalonia are both Salafists and Hibz ut-Tahrir (the one who asked for the creation of global Caliphate in an event in Indonesia, which recruits mostly online).