Islamist Violence and Official Silence
11th November 2025
The priorities of Britain’s extremism researchers, and even those of the country’s state apparatus, do not reflect the fact that Islamism presents the greatest terror threat to the UK. Islamism is a religio-political movement that aims to reestablish a theocratic Caliphate in the modern world—a single polity encompassing all of the world’s Muslims, within which Sharia Law would be followed in all matters, and non-Muslims would be reduced to (at best) second-class citizens. This ideology began with the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, and it now exists in multiple variants and offshoots worldwide. Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, Boko Haram, Hamas, the Taliban, and the Shi’ite regime ruling the Islamic Republic of Iran are all overtly Islamist entities, while the governments of Turkey and Qatar might diplomatically be described as influenced by or sympathetic to Islamism.