Jihadi John and his ilk have many friends in Britain, says DOUGLAS MURRAY

IS BRITAIN finally waking up to the monsters we have been creating?

JihadiJohnIG•REUTERS

Jihadi John has been unmasked as British Muslim Mohammed Emwazi

For a year we have known of a British Muslim – dubbed Jihadi John – who is IS’s star executioner. With his British accent to introduce the act, in video after video he has sawed the heads off innocent hostages including British citizens Alan Henning and David Haines. 

He tried to disguise his identity but on Thursday it came out. Mohammed Emwazi is a 26-year-old British citizen who came to this country from Kuwait as a child. 

Now we know who he is we also know who his circle is and what a disgusting and disgraceful glimpse this gives us of modern Britain. 

First there is his education. 

A lot of people still pretend that Muslims become terrorists because they are poor or undereducated. Yet once again that false narrative has been dealt a blow. 

Emwazi had all the advantages that the British state can offer in education. He even ended up at Westminster University. 

Many if not most of Britain’s high-flying terrorists have been university graduates. 

Many if not most of Britain’s high-flying terrorists have been university graduates

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to bring down a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, was the head of the Islamic Society at University College London.

For years our campuses have been the best places in the country to recruit. Left-wing professors and vice chancellors have turned a blind eye for years as terrorist recruiters use their campuses and student Islamic societies to teach a daily diet of hate. 

As chance would have it Thursday provided a perfect example because Emwazi’s old university was doing business as usual – or would have been – until the revelations caused the event to be cancelled. 

Westminster University’s Islamic Society was meant to be hosting a speech by radical cleric Haitham al-Haddad. 

This is a man who preaches hatred of women, gays, non-Muslims and almost everybody else who does not subscribe to his fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. 

After the death of Osama Bin Laden, al-Haddad said that the dead terrorist would go to heaven. 

That is a pretty normal evening’s entertainment for Westminster University where previous Islamic Society speakers have included the now dead Al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki. 

Westminster is one of the worst campuses in the country for radicalism. Yet how did the authorities respond when news of their famous ex-student leaked? 

With the usual diversity boilerplate: “As a London-based university operating in a diverse multicultural city we are fully aware of all the influences within this international city.” 

University of WestminsterGETTY

Mohammed Emwazi a.k.a. 'Jihadi John' attended the University of Westminster

And then of course there is the other reaction of Jihadi John’s friends.

The campaign group Cage is allowed a lot of airtime on the BBC and Channel 4. Its leaders are routinely introduced as being from “a human rights campaign group”. 

In fact Cage is a pro-terrorist group. Cage has campaigned for years not just for the release of people in Guantanamo but also of those who have been convicted of terrorist offences. 

People such as Aafia Siddiqui (Lady Al Qaeda) who was jailed for 86 years for attempting to murder Americans in Afghanistan and Djamel Beghal, jailed in France for preparing a terrorist attack. Cage campaigns for the release of these convicted terrorists and many more. 

What a non-surprise that they should be friends with Emwazi. 

And there the organisation’s leaders were yesterday on our television screens praising their friend. 

The head of Cage, Asim Qureshi, even appeared to shed a tear as he told a press conference what a “beautiful young man” Emwazi is. 

He described him as “extremely kind, extremely gentle. [The] most humble young person I ever knew”. 

I wonder if that is any comfort to the families of Alan Henning or David Haines? 

But there are further depths to be plumbed and one of them was duly reached. Qureshi and his friends immediately tried to turn the story around. 

The problem, they claimed, is the British security services. They claimed that MI5 had harassed Emwazi while he was in Britain and made him feel bad. 

In fact the truth is that such claims are deeply irresponsible unless it is stressed that they come from an utterly disreputable source. 

Cage has consistently covered for radicals by claiming that it is our security services who are in the wrong. It pretends that the people who keep us safe are putting us in danger.

Nothing could be further from the truth. But Cage and other radical groups say this because they know MI5 and MI6 do not and cannot respond to such lies and because in the final analysis radical Islamists want to hamper our societies, cause confusion and division in order that our free and open societies lose. This is the brutal truth underlying this. 

The Jihadi Johns are just the people this country exports. They can be killed on a foreign battlefield. 

Far more troubling is the wellspring of support on which they can draw from home. That support comes not only from radical Muslims but also from idiotic, sympathising travellers who mistake enemies of our societies for mere critics of it. 

Academics who think terrorist recruiters are exercising free speech and the media organisations who think terrorist supporters are human rights heroes – these are the problems we must confront at home. 

This is the challenge of our time that we are failing. 

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