A Muslim Police Officer Is Fighting a Language War in Britain

A Muslim police officer is fighting a language war in Britain: “U.K. Muslim Police Association Urged End to ‘Islamist’ and ‘Jihadist’ Labels,” by Jules Gomes, Middle East Forum, June 25, 2026:

The paper concludes with proposals “to remove the direct association of terrorism with Islam” and instead use terms like “Irhabi/Irhabism/Irhabist”— words derived from the Arabic word for “fear” or “dread” and used to refer to terrorism and terrorists in modern Arabic —as well as “anti-Western Terrorism” and “right-wing terrorism.”

Kabbani ignores an inconvenient fact. Islamic scholars have acknowledged the relationship between Islam and political violence in the modern era. Stressing the legitimate use of the term, Mehdi Mozaffari, a Muslim scholar from the University of Aarhus, defines “Islamism” as “a religious ideology with a holistic interpretation of Islam whose final aim is the conquest of the world by all means.” Several Muslim authors have used the term “Islamism” to denote political Islam, Mozaffari writes, naming the Sudanese Hasan al-Turabi, the Tunisian Salwa al-Sharaf, and Aziz al-Azmeh, the author of Islams and Modernities.

Policy Paper Demonizes Zionism

Kabbani, who struggles to obscure the connection between Islamism and political violence, is however, quick to demonize Zionism which he claims strips Muslims of their humanity and portrays them as “human animals,” “monsters,” and “Amalekites.”

Muslims in Israel, living in the “Zionist entity,” are not demonized, as Kabbani claims. They enjoy every civil and political right of Israeli Jews. They differ from the Jews only in this: Jews must, while Muslims may, serve in the Israeli military.

While Judaism’s teachings are inclusive and compassionate, Zionism engages in “acts such as killing, raping, engaging in ethnic cleansing, and constructing settlements in Palestine and Lebanon over the past 75 years and beyond,” Kabbani argues….

The only people whom Israel tries deliberately to kill are those who want to murder, or have murdered, Israelis. The IDF makes a tremendous effort to minimize civilian deaths, using millions of dropped leaflets, email messages, and robocalls, to warn civilians away from sites about to be targeted. As for his charge about Zionists raping, there has been no “raping by Zionists” of Muslims. In fact, in the past, the Arabs have accused Israeli soldiers of being “racists” precisely because they did not rape Arab girls. The Arabs could not imagine there might be any other reason that explained the failure of Israeli soldiers to rape Arab girls and women. Nor does Israel practice, as Kabbani claims, “ethnic cleansing.” In 1949, at war’s end, there were 160,000 Arabs in Israel. Today, there are two million Arabs in Israel. Kabbani needs to answer our obvious query — what “ethnic cleansing”? The only “ethnic cleansing” in the area has been that Jordan carried out in 1949, when every Jew was forced out of Judea, Samaria, and the Old City in Jerusalem.

Following the public outrage, NAMP has distanced itself from the report authored by Kabbani—who has yet to respond to queries from FWI sent via LinkedIn and NAMP’s contact email. “We understand that the publication of this document has affected several communities, and we regret any concern, discomfort, or misunderstanding it may have caused,” the organization said in a statement. “The author of the paper no longer works within the police service and is no longer associated with NAMP.”

“NAMP categorically does not ‘defend’ Hamas or any other proscribed organization,” the statement noted. Nevertheless, it insisted that its “longstanding position has been to highlight the risks of linking religion with terrorism and the use of terms such as ‘Islamist terrorism,’ which can contribute to the stigmatization of Muslim communities and fuel hostility towards Muslims.”

It’s good that the author of this report is no longer with the police, but what about other members of the NAMP who may have had a hand in its composition? All those involved in its production should be discharged from the police force. And the NAMP, while claiming it does not agree with Kabbani’s paper, in fact repeats his main demand: that any “linking religion with terrorism” is impermissible, and such terms as “Islamist terrorism” should be forbidden. But the texts and teachings of Islam itself do indeed promote the terrorism that Muslims commit. Qur’an 8:12 and 8:60 describe the need to “strike fear” in the enemy by “striking at their necks.” And so do a dozen other verses. And after all, in one of Muhammad’s most famous hadiths, he exclaims that “I have been made victorious through terror.” (Sahih al-Bukhari 2977) What does Khaldoun Kabbani make of that?