Michael Gove urges Britain to not 'confuse Islamic terror for expressions of faith'
MICHAL GOVE has warned against "lazily" lumping religious conservatism and extremism together.
Gove: People lump extremist ideology with Islam overall
The former Justice Secretary said the UK needed to be savvier about rooting out an ideology which recruited vulnerable people and youths to violent causes.
British politicians and the public also needed to be “razor sharp” with its wording to avoid linking religion with political ideologies, the Tory MP added.
Speaking to Sky News, Mr Gove said: “I think we need to be savvier about the ideology that animates people who go on to commit extremist acts and in some cases are drawn into terrorism.
“There is some lazy thinking out there, which means people lump in this extremist ideology with religious conservatism, with Islam overall.
“I think we need to be razor sharp in recognising that there are distinct ideologies, distinct groups that we can spot who are responsible for incubating a particular view of the West, of Jewish people, of gay people, which is designed to radicalise young men.”
The former Cabinet minister also said identifying extremist recruiters was not always complex and as they are so open about their agenda.
Michael Gove added the globalisation of society, more advanced technology and social media, had opened up new platforms for terrorist organisations to spread their ideology.
He said: “We know the organisations that are responsible for this view because in many cases they are quite open about their agenda and about the thinkers who have influenced them.
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It’s not primarily fidelity to faith that drives these people
“There is a sophistication in which extremist organisations work which means sometimes they work through the internet, and sometimes they work through groups at further education colleges or universities.
"They isolate and identify vulnerable and questioning young people and gives their lives a new, and sometimes darker, meaning."
Hitting out against people drawing a comparison between radicalisation and religion, the former education secretary urged people to separate Islam from religious perversions of it.
Mr Gove said: “The critical thing here is, it’s not primarily fidelity to faith that drives these people, it is a political belief that everything in a totalitarian state should be government by laws, yes which come from God and which are seen as Islamic, but the important thing to recognise is it is an ideological-political belief, not an expression of faith.
“Unless people draw a distinction between the great faith that is Islam and the particular perversion of it, a political perversion which is Islamism then we get into all sorts of trouble.”
The former cabinet minister’s come as it was revealed over the weekend that more than 200 undercover SAS soldiers will be deployed in shopping centres and high streets across Britain following fresh MI5 intelligence of a terror attack planned for Christmas.
Despite the UK already being on alert, sources said they are responding to “new and urgent” threats following a warning from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which is part of MI5.
The deployment of SAS soldiers was announced just days after MI6 chief Alex Younger warned about the “unprecedented” scale of the terrorist threat to mainland UK.