folio

Tommy/Steven can’t even pronounce the name of the fringe group, Al-Muhajiroun, he mentions in all his interviews as his raison d’être.

For what it’s worth, I witnessed active, practising Muslims condemning that group from 1997 onwards, long before it was proscribed by the UK government.

Indeed, I had first-hand experience with them shortly after I became Muslim in 1998, when they sent a mass email to Christian clergy in Britain, telling them to convert to Islam or face the consequences.

One of the recipients — my father, then a Canon — demanded to know whether I had shared his email address with that band of extremists, which of course I hadn’t.

Hardly a great help at what was already a very difficult time, but there we are. Just another test amongst a lifetime of them.

As it happens, I had another encounter with the group in 2005, whilst working in Central London.

An encounter — overhearing a conversation on my late arrival for Jummah prayer one afternoon — which has always led me to suppose at least some of them were paid provocateurs.

Facts or accuracy don’t matter to Tommy/Steven very much though, nor to the audience that hangs on his every word.

He neither cares to pronounce their name properly nor recognise they were a fringe group, with no real foothold in the community he insists on problematising.

But I suppose he has bigger problems now, as he spends his days giving interviews on the social media circuit, rehashing his origins story and attempting to clear his name as the new bogeyman of the establishment.

How awful to be the victim of a witchhunt. Now he knows how that feels: a poor activist being blamed for the actions of a small minority of extremists.

Now, where have I heard that before?