UK Security and Entry Clearance Procedures

Debate between Siobhain McDonagh and Alison Thewliss

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered UK security and entry clearance procedures.

With extremism on the rise and threats to our national security increasing, tightening up UK entry clearance procedures should be our top priority, but sadly we have increasingly taken it for granted that our borders are policed and secure from non-UK threats. I sought to bring this issue before Parliament following the brutal murder of Glasgow shopkeeper Mr Asad Shah in March this year. Mr Shah was murdered by an Islamic extremist who violently hated his peaceful Ahmadi Muslim views. His killer, Tanveer Ahmed, declared that he killed Mr Shah to

“protect the honour of Islam”.

Mr Shah’s brutal murder, the first of its kind on UK soil, has terrible implications for this country. The radical extremist Islamist views that inspired the killing have been fanned by extremist preachers from outside the UK being allowed to come into this country and spread their hate. Our entry clearance regulations have failed to prevent their entry.

Anti-Ahmadi hate preachers are being let into the UK as we speak, and are calling for Ahmadi Muslims to be killed on account of their faith. For instance, just a month after Mr Shah’s murder, a prominent anti-Ahmadi preacher from Pakistan was touring UK mosques with his message of hate. After I found out, I requested an urgent meeting with the Home Secretary and senior representatives from the Ahmadiyya Muslim community. I was grateful to have met the Home Secretary, but I was extremely disappointed by the fact that reforming entry clearance policies did not seem to be a priority. The Home Secretary did not seem to be aware of this particular radical extremist preacher having been allowed into the UK. It is no exaggeration to say that I left the meeting with a genuine fear for UK security and a grim feeling of surprise that we have not seen even more anti-Ahmadi terrorism on UK soil.

I have no reservations in saying that inadequate Home Office entry clearance procedures are allowing the entry into this country of individuals who pose a direct threat to our democracy and our social cohesion. I shall highlight in my speech why it is so urgent that the Home Office tackles this urgent problem now. As a side point, it is extremely ironic that although individuals who spread hate are allowed into the UK, every MP will be aware that a large number of completely law-abiding Pakistani citizens are refused entry clearance to attend weddings, funerals and other important family events. That, too, is the result of problems with Home Office entry clearance.

I turn to a case study that highlights the gravity of the situation. Mufti Muhammad Hanif Qureshi is a radical Islamist cleric from Pakistan who has repeatedly been allowed into the UK to spread the sort of anti-Ahmadi hate that led to the murder of the peaceful Mr Asad Shah. To be clear, the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, to which Mr Shah belonged, is a persecuted religious group in Pakistan. The Ahmadis live by their message of “love for all, hatred for none”, and they categorically reject terrorism in any form. But despite how well-established and peaceful the community is, Ahmadi Muslims are victims of terrible injustice. As they do not believe that Mohammed was the final prophet sent to guide mankind, they face accusations of heresy among orthodox Muslims. At worst, they face extreme violence in Pakistan—and now, sadly, in the UK, too. Anti-blasphemy and anti-terror laws are wrongly used against them in Pakistan, and they are murdered on the grounds of their faith. To this day, they are branded worse than apostates by hard-liners and forbidden by the state to call themselves Muslims.

The intolerance and hatefulness has made its way to the UK. The Muslim Council of Britain has long been criticised for not acting to counter anti-Ahmadi hatred, partly because it, too, does not recognise the Ahmadis as Muslims. Mr Asad Shah in Glasgow was the first Ahmadi Muslim to be murdered on UK soil on the grounds of his faith. Mufti Hanif Qureshi is an individual who is greatly responsible for spreading messages of hate. He is the founder of Shabab e Islami, and is well known in Pakistan for his virulent anti-Ahmadi preaching, of the sort that inspired the murder of Mr Shah. For instance, in a recording of a sermon Qureshi delivered in 2014, which is freely available on YouTube, he said with regard to Ahmadi Muslims:

“Let them know those who consider Sunnis as cowards that Allah has honoured us with the courage and power to strangulate those involved in blasphemy, to cut out their tongues, and to riddle their bodies with bullets. For this, nobody can arrest us under any law”.

Such highly inflammatory and hateful sermons have indeed incited others to commit violence and murder. In 2011, Pakistani politician Salmaan Taseer, who opposed Pakistan’s anti-Ahmadi laws, was shot dead by his bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri. After his arrest, Qadri said he had been inspired to act by a 2010 sermon delivered by Qureshi in Rawalpindi, in which the cleric branded the likes of Taseer as “deserving to be killed” under Islamic law. Qureshi was arrested after Taseer’s murder, but later released, and continued to defend the murder in public sermons before Qadri was executed in January this year.

The same hateful preacher who inspired the murder of a prominent Pakistani politician just a few years ago was last month allowed to enter this country without any problem, despite the murder of Mr Asad Shah in Glasgow just months before. Could the Home Office not make the connection between the incitement of anti-Ahmadi hatred and the committing of murder? Just last month, on 4 May, Qureshi spoke at a Luton mosque where, according to the mosque’s spokesperson, he made a “very impressive” speech to an audience of hundreds. The event doubled up as the 36th annual Khatm-e-Nubuwwat meeting at the Luton mosque. The Khatm-e-Nubuwwat—translated as the “finality of the Prophet”—movement has been implicated in the violent persecution of members of the Ahmadi religious sect in the UK and Pakistan. Despite that, it is a registered charity in the UK and is listed on the Charity Commission website.

Members may well be aware that Khatm-e-Nubuwwat is well known for its anti-Ahmadi views and regularly invites preachers from Pakistan to visit the UK on speaking tours to spread the message of hate. Qureshi is just one example. His words have incited violence in Pakistan and they will incite violence in this country, too. He should be banned from ever travelling to Britain. Given the context of anti-Ahmadi sentiment in the UK and growing religious violence throughout Europe, his message of hate has no place here. How on earth could he have been granted entry clearance? A quick Google search brings up hundreds of English-language news stories about his preaching, yet such a basic level of research was apparently beyond the Home Office.

At my meeting with the Home Secretary, I was stunned to be informed that the high commission in Pakistan had only recently hired a specialist Urdu section for its intelligence office. It seems that until recently there was no one at the high commission in Islamabad who could actually understand some of the watch lists unless they were translated into English. How can our anti-extremism measures be so weak that such terrible oversights occur? Despite the fact that the UK authorities seem to lack the basic linguistic resources needed to identify extremist threats, we know that extremist rhetoric can be changed to moderate for the English-speaking media, and then revert to extremist for Urdu speakers. It is much easier for radicals like Qureshi to switch between the two.

The case study of Qureshi is important because we tend to take it for granted that our borders are policed and protected from individuals who might cause harm to our country. We all lead our lives in the hopeful confidence that the Home Office and immigration officials are able to refuse entry clearance to any person deemed undesirable. We put our faith in Government Departments and agencies to protect our democracy and peace. As far as I know, there is no exhaustive list of reasons why someone’s visa application can be rejected by UK authorities, but there is a list of unacceptable behaviours that would lead to a person being refused entry to, or excluded from, the UK. Qureshi seems to me to fulfil all the criteria, including

“using any means…to express views which”

seek to

“justify or glorify terrorist violence”

or incite or

“provoke others to terrorist acts…or foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK”.

Exclusion is not targeted against any specific group. Those excluded can include, and have included, far-right extremists, homophobic extremists and Christian, Jewish and Islamic extremists. In November 2014, the Home Secretary said that she had excluded “hundreds of people” from the UK—suggesting that those powers are sometimes enforced—including 61 people on national security grounds, 72 who

“would not have been conducive to the public good”

and 84 hate preachers. So why was Qureshi able to enter this country just a month after his brand of anti-Ahmadi hatred had inspired the murder of a peaceful Glasgow shopkeeper?

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for securing this debate. The murder of Mr Shah in Glasgow absolutely shocked all of us in the city. Does she agree that while hate preachers such as those she has described can come into the country, the Ahmadiyya community in Glasgow and the rest of the UK cannot really have confidence that the UK is keeping them safe?

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady’s comments. The expressions of hatred across the country, particularly since the referendum result was announced last week, show us the importance of preventing extremism by all means. Simply, it threatens the fabric of our democracy and our social cohesion. Mr Shah’s murder demonstrates how high the stakes are.

Back in 2005, in the wake of the London bombings, the then Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, said that Departments and intelligence agencies were working together to

“establish a full database of individuals around the world”.—[Official Report, 20 July 2005; Vol. 436, c. 1255.]

He said that such information about dangerous people would be available to visa and immigration staff and added to the UK’s warning index. We cannot know the details of Home Office and intelligence workings, but given the admission of Qureshi to the UK just last month, we can assume that they may not be working.

History teaches us what the consequences are when the Home Office does not do its job properly. For example, the Pakistani cleric Masood Azhar delivered extreme messages across the UK in more than 40 mosques in the early 1990s. At the time of his tour, he was chief organiser of the prominent Pakistani jihadist group Harkat-ul- Mujahideen. We now know that Azhar, who was close to Osama bin Laden, planted the seeds of extremism on his 1993 UK tour that later inspired at least two Britons to go on to plan the 2005 London bombings and the beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl. One would hope that the UK authorities had learned their lesson, but the admission of Qureshi suggests that not much has changed.

The Henry Jackson Society published a short report earlier this year as part of its “Student Rights: Tackling extremism on campuses” project, which detailed the range of individuals expressing extremist and hateful views who were given a platform at UK universities, mainly in London, in the last year. It includes South African politician Mr Julius Malema, who was convicted of a hate crime just a few years ago, Mr Asim Khan, who has compared

“homosexuality to incest and ‘burglary, theft and sexual abuse’”

and Mr Suliman Ghani, who

“has expressed sectarian attitudes towards Ahmadiyya, claiming they are not Muslims”.

The UK Ahmadi community and the very fabric of our democracy is under threat, now more than ever. In April, leaflets calling for members of the Ahmadi Muslim community to be killed were allegedly distributed in universities, mosques and shopping centres in London. One leaflet distributed widely in Stockwell, for example, entitled “Qadianis”—a pejorative name for Ahmadis—describes Ahmadis as “dualist infidels” and “worse than apostate”. It prescribed the same punishment doled out for apostates—those who have renounced their own religion—giving Ahmadis three days to denounce their faith or else “be awarded capital punishment”.

Scottish mosques are becoming increasingly radicalised in the wake of Mr Shah’s murder, and anti-Ahmadi conferences took place in Slough just a few months ago. The threat posed to our society is real and imminent, and now inept Home Office entry clearance procedures have allowed hate preachers such as Qureshi, who has called for death penalties for Ahmadi Muslims, into our UK Muslim communities. These are dangerous times for our democracy and the precedent for racial and religious hatred is huge. The British Government’s double standards are terrifying. At one end, they seek to crush all extremism—we know from the recent terrible atrocities that that goal is more important than ever—and yet they still give visas to people such as Qureshi, who incite intolerance and even violence in our society.

There should have been an absolute storm of anger following Mr Shah’s death. Just hours before he was murdered, he posted a message of peace and love on Facebook to his Christian friends, on the occasion of Good Friday. Hours later, he was brutally murdered outside his shop by a religious extremist. Why have we not called out Mr Shah’s murder for what it is—a religious hate crime? Is it because we cannot be bothered to understand that victims of Islamist extremism include other Muslims, as well as non-Muslims? I shudder at the thought that we do not take Mr Shah’s death seriously.

Developing stronger Home Office entry clearance structures to screen out individuals such as Qureshi from being able to come to this country are just part of the problem—internet and social media communication means that pan-national extremist and terrorist threats can spread beyond borders in seconds—but allowing such hatred to cross our borders is almost legitimising or endorsing their hate. Qureshi, and all those who express his hateful views, have no place in our country. Today more than ever, we have to ensure that such individuals are not able to come here and spread their hateful messages under the banner of free speech.

I ask the Minister the following questions. To what extent can the Home Office check if a person has promoted hate and extremism when a visa application is made? How do the Government monitor hate speech in Pakistan and elsewhere to help inform their visa decisions? Do the UK Government give equal weight to hate speech whether committed online, on TV or in any media, including social media? How can individuals or organisations in Pakistan or the UK provide information on such matters that would be of use? What procedures will the Government put in place to make that easier?

I sincerely hope that the Home Office takes seriously the deep flaws that are jeopardising security and social cohesion as we speak. Only then can we claim to have a society that promotes love for all and hatred for none—the Ahmadi ideal that we should all seek to live by.