The Centre For Social Cohesion

But go down a bit and one paragraph in particular screams off the page. Mr Cameron writes:

‘We do need greater understanding of the true nature of the terrorist threat. There's too much complacency about it among non-Muslims, and too much denial of it in the Muslim community. But our efforts are not helped by lazy use of language. Indeed, by using the word 'Islamist' to describe the threat, we actually help do the terrorist ideologues' work for them, confirming to many impressionable young Muslim men that to be a 'good Muslim', you have to support their evil campaign.’

Using the word ‘Islamist’ does no such thing, and there should be quite a number of young Muslims (whether ‘impressionable’ or otherwise) who would be right to feel offended by the very suggestion. Anybody who knows anything about Islam knows that you describe a believer in Islam as a ‘Muslim’, and a believer in violent jihadist ideology as an ‘Islamist’.

But – as Melanie Phillips reports – it gets worse. Now on his famous Webcameron, the Conservative leader has declared:

‘Every time the BBC or a politician talks about ‘Islamist terrorists’ they are doing immense harm (and yes I am sure I have done this too, despite trying hard to get this right.) Think of Northern Ireland – ‘IRA terrorist’ was fine because it marked them out as part of a terrorist group, Catholic terrorists would have been a disaster. Yet that is the equivalent of what we are doing now.’

It’s possible that Mr Cameron has been taking lessons from the EU and their terrorist-sensitive lexicon (reported here). It’s certainly odd to see anyone attack the BBC for not being sensitive enough when describing terrorist-related activities (readers will remember that this is the same BBC which refuses to use the word ‘terrorist’ even when describing the people who blew up Londoners on the trains and buses two years ago).

But there is a gaping, indeed fundamental, mistake displayed in Cameron’s comments, and one for which an explanation should be asked. As Melanie Phillips points out on her blog:

‘The Pope and the Catholic priesthood worldwide were not issuing encyclicals or sermons calling on the faithful to destroy unbelievers and install Catholicism as world government; the most influential religious authorities in the Islamic world are instructing their faithful to destroy unbelievers and install Islamic world government. To equate Islamist terror with Irish terror as if it were really ‘Catholic terror’, while insisting that the term ‘Islamist’ or ‘Islamic’ terror is now a forbidden term, would be Orwellian were it not simply so utterly stupid and ignorant.’

A leader who doesn’t know the reporting rules of the BBC has displayed no terrible fault. But a leader who can’t tell the difference between the actions and demands of the IRA and the actions and demands of the Islamists who are currently taking so many lives – and primarily those of Muslim believers – is cause for serious concern.