Islamism in Britain: what is the threat?

Overview

This episode of The Intelligence from The Economist leads with Britain’s difficulty in telling apart the religion of Islam and the political ideology of Islamism. Hosts Rosie Blore and Jason Palmer talk to the paper’s Britain correspondent, Sonny Loughran, about whether Islamism is a genuine threat, a matter of perception, or both — and about how the confusion between the two terms distorts policing, politics and public debate.

The central argument is that conflating Islam with Islamism produces two opposite errors at once: it fuels anti-Muslim bigotry, and it lets a small, organised Islamist current present itself as the authentic voice of British Muslims. Loughran describes a political ideology that is often authoritarian, rejects integration and opposes pluralism, free expression and equal rights, but stresses that most Islamists are not violent and prefer entryism — quietly occupying institutions rather than attacking them.

The segment covers polling on Muslim attitudes, MI5’s counter-terror caseload, school disputes in Yorkshire and Wakefield, the government’s new definition of anti-Muslim hostility, the PREVENT programme, segregation, Sharia councils, and who suffers most from Islamism. The episode then turns to a second, unrelated story on America’s crackdown on transfer pricing, built around the long-running IRS case against Coca-Cola, and closes with a light piece on the absurdity of corporate training videos.

Segment Summaries

[01:34] Episode introduction

[Fact] The episode is presented by Rosie Blore and Jason Palmer, who say the show will cover America’s efforts to tax business profits made overseas and the glory of corporate training videos. [Fact] The hosts introduce the main segment with a recent news item about anti-Muslim sentiment in Britain.

[01:57] Anti-Muslim sentiment and a missing distinction

[Fact] Hundreds of men in balaclavas blocked access to the port of Dover, chanting “stop the boats” and “Christ is king”. [Fact] Loughran says much anti-migrant anger is in fact anti-Islam, and cites a poll from last year suggesting more than half of respondents agreed that Islam is incompatible with British values. [Fact] He says the idea that Muslims are incompatible with British culture is nonsense and that some of it is frankly racist. [Fact] He argues the rise of these views is also the result of Britain’s long-standing failure to distinguish between the religion of Islam and the political ideology of Islamism.

[02:58] What Islamism actually is

[Fact] Loughran defines Islamism as a political ideology that believes government and society should be guided by Islamic principles, essentially that Sharia law should become the law. [Fact] He says it is often authoritarian, rejects integration into Western society and opposes pluralism, free expression and equal rights. [Fact] He notes this can lend itself to violent tactics, but jihadis are only one particularly extreme subcategory of Islamists. [Fact] According to Loughran, many Islamists are not violent and instead seek influence through lobbying and protests. [Inference] The framing suggests Britain’s counter-extremism apparatus is better suited to confronting violence than to contesting a non-violent ideological movement operating inside normal political life.

[03:51] How much sympathy exists among British Muslims

[Fact] Loughran says polling minority groups is very difficult and any results should be treated with a big pinch of salt. [Fact] He says it is fair to conclude that British Muslims are more socially conservative than the general public, and a poll commissioned by The Economist found a majority think same-sex relationships are morally wrong. [Fact] Counter-extremism experts give a rough estimate that between 10 and 20 percent of British Muslims have Islamist sympathies, and the same poll found a third of Muslims support the view that Islamic principles should guide public life, laws, politics and government. [Fact] Loughran says most Muslims he has spoken to have never met an Islamist and barely know what Islamism is. [Fact] He gives two examples of blurred lines: an imam in Bradford who called the idea of Sharia law in England stupidity but whose Facebook account called for Muslims to do more to create the caliphate, and a progressive young Islamic studies teacher in Manchester who rejected Sharia’s relevance to 21st-century Britain while saying laws based on revelation would obviously be preferable in an ideal world. [Inference] The examples imply that Islamist-adjacent attitudes often appear as loosely held instincts rather than formal membership in an organised movement, which makes the 10-20 percent estimate hard to interpret.

[05:33] Is Islamism a problem, or a matter of perception

[Fact] Loughran says it is a bit of both and depends what is meant by a problem, noting that MI5 head Ken McCallum says about 75 percent of MI5’s counter-terror workload concerns Islamist extremism. [Fact] He reiterates that most Islamists are not violent and that in the West they generally prefer a strategy of entryism, in which a small group of ideologues wields outsized influence by hiding their true beliefs and occupying positions of power. [Fact] He compares this to the far left in the 1970s, which sought seats on local councils and in the Labour Party’s youth wing, and says Islamists are equally interested in getting their people into schools and getting their mosques listened to by the police. [Fact] He says Gaza is a flash point because it produces an odd alliance between Islamists and the far left.

[06:29] Local authorities, schools and the cost of conflation

[Fact] In 2021 a schoolteacher in Yorkshire received death threats after showing a cartoon of the Prophet in a religious studies lesson. [Fact] An autistic schoolboy in Wakefield received similar threats after he allegedly dropped a Quran. [Fact] After protests by local imams supported by local councillors, both the teacher and the schoolboy were suspended, while those issuing the death threats faced no serious police action. [Fact] Loughran attributes this response to the conflation of Islamism with Islam, saying it only makes sense if police assume all Muslims share these religious sensitivities and fear widespread disorder. [Inference] The cases are presented as evidence that fear of communal unrest can override protection of individuals, with the state disciplining those who offended rather than those who threatened violence.

[07:21] National policy, the hostility definition and PREVENT

[Fact] Some counter-extremism researchers worry that Islamist framings are allowed to dominate national policy debates when they are presented as the view of the Muslim community. [Fact] Earlier this year the government published a new definition of anti-Muslim hostility, which critics, including many Muslims, say undermines free speech by conflating criticism of Islam with bigotry against Muslims. [Fact] Loughran says there are not entirely unreasonable suggestions that the definition was drafted with input from Islamist-leaning campaign groups that claim to represent the Muslim community at large. [Fact] Islamists and others have campaigned for scrapping PREVENT, the government’s counter-radicalisation programme, on the basis that it discriminates against Muslims. [Fact] He notes that Islamist extremism accounted for only 8 percent of referrals last year, and that an independent government review in 2023 found the narrative of discrimination had led to hesitancy around reporting Islamist-related concerns.

[08:33] Demography, elections and segregation

[Fact] Loughran agrees that a rising Muslim share of the population leads, other things equal, to an increased number of Islamists. [Fact] He notes a big campaign to elect more independent Muslim MPs, which has been backed by former leaders of groups that are now prescribed as Islamist. [Fact] He says it is entirely plausible that a growing Muslim population might elect more Muslim MPs put forward by such groups. [Fact] He adds that these networks mostly thrive in dense, segregated Muslim communities, and that while segregation rates nationally have fallen, there are more of these neighbourhoods than ever before. [Inference] The combination of demographic growth, entryist organising and concentrated communities suggests electoral and institutional influence could expand faster than the overall share of Islamist sympathisers would imply.

[09:27] Who suffers most from Islamism

[Fact] Loughran says the main victims of Islamism in these communities tend to be other Muslims. [Fact] He cites secular Bangladeshis in East London and minority sects as frequent targets, and says women are particularly vulnerable. [Fact] The government reckons there could be 85 Sharia councils in Britain, described as voluntary bodies mainly for settling family disputes. [Fact] Some women campaigners argue these councils enable coercion and misogyny and that police are often reluctant to intervene.

[10:00] What governments should do

[Fact] Loughran says the most important step is to reject the narrative of incompatibility, noting that Islamists and the far right agree Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western civilisation. [Fact] He argues there is no reason that has to be true, that Islam is what Muslims make of it, and that Islamism is one relatively recent strand of Islam. [Fact] He says this strand should not be treated as awkward to criticise in the name of cultural sensitivity, and that plenty of liberal Muslim scholars already criticise it. [Fact] He concludes that the task is to call out entryism and bigotry of all forms, whether from Islamists who bully other Muslims or from the far right, which brands all Muslims as a threat to Western civilisation. [Inference] The recommendations place heavy weight on political and rhetorical clarity — redrawing the Islam/Islamism line — rather than on specific new legal or security powers.

[12:32] America’s transfer pricing crackdown

[Fact] The segment says American businesses have for decades padded their bottom lines by shifting profits to subsidiaries in low-tax jurisdictions abroad, known as transfer pricing. [Fact] Shira Aviona, The Economist’s US business correspondent, says transfer pricing is not necessarily tax dodging, since multinationals genuinely need to move assets between jurisdictions, but it can be a good tax planning strategy. [Fact] She explains that a company can sell assets cheaply to a low-tax subsidiary and book large profits where they are lightly taxed. [Fact] She says US-based companies saved at least 11 billion dollars through tax havens last year, according to the advocacy group the FACT Coalition. [Fact] The roots of today’s enforcement push stretch back to the Obama administration, cases against large companies move very slowly, Biden signed up to an OECD agreement that Trump has since abandoned, and the IRS is now pursuing companies including UnitedHealth, Amgen and Meta.

[15:14] The Coca-Cola case

[Fact] Aviona calls the Coca-Cola case the largest, the one tax experts call the Super Bowl of transfer pricing, and says it has been running for more than a decade and may reach a conclusion in an appeals court ruling within months. [Fact] In 2015 the IRS said Coca-Cola owed an additional 3.3 billion dollars for the 2007-2009 audit cycle. [Fact] The IRS, which had lost such cases in court for decades, won a stunning victory against Coca-Cola about five years ago; Coca-Cola appealed and has continued to use the same tax formula. [Fact] With interest, what began as 3.3 billion dollars could stretch to a total bill of 20 billion dollars if the IRS wins on appeal. [Fact] Coca-Cola argues it shifted profits appropriately because its subsidiaries made valuable marketing investments, and says the IRS agreed to the formula it used in 1996. [Fact] As of July, Coca-Cola had set aside 530 million dollars for a potential 14 billion dollar extra bill, since it has already paid the IRS 6 billion dollars, which would be refunded if it wins; Amgen is similarly confident and had to settle an investor lawsuit accusing it of being blase in its disclosures.

[17:42] Can the IRS keep going

[Fact] Aviona says the IRS budget has been slashed under Trump and the agency is struggling to maintain its caseload, with government lawyers heavily out-resourced compared with the tax lawyers and accountants working for multinationals. [Fact] She says that in the long term, because the money at stake is so large, transfer pricing is likely to remain among the IRS’s biggest priorities under any future administration. [Fact] She adds that enforcement has become easier as more corporate profits sit in intangible assets such as intellectual property, algorithms and AI models rather than in physical factories. [Fact] She notes that America’s soaring debt increases the incentive for the tax authority to capture a share of corporate profits, and that Trump wants American companies to pay whatever tax they pay in America rather than abroad, even though he favours lower rates. [Inference] The assessment suggests the Coca-Cola ruling matters less as a one-off windfall than as a signal of whether the IRS can still credibly litigate against the largest firms.

[19:54] The strange world of corporate training videos

[Fact] Andrew Palmer, host of The Economist’s Boss Class podcast, says corporate training videos confer useful skills, prevent legal trouble and fulfil compliance obligations, but watching one is an easy way to try out time travel. [Fact] He describes decades-old footage with grainy images, men in ties, women in pleated skirts, and a winning formula of non-existent budget, terrible actors and stilted dialogue. [Fact] He cites examples including a workplace harassment video about horseplay, an online course on slips, trips and falls featuring a waiter and a basket of french fries, and a cyber security video warning about a USB flash drive found in an office car park and about never sharing passwords. [Fact] He notes that the courses end with multiple-choice questions, badges, gold stars and screen-filling confetti, and argues that treating an audience as children makes their behaviour revert to childish norms. [Fact] His conclusion is that by the end of the whole experience you have a credential but have absorbed almost nothing.

Podcast Review

The lead segment is the strongest part of the episode. It offers a compact, well-structured account of a genuinely difficult distinction, moving from definition to polling to case studies to policy, and it avoids the trap of treating either anti-Muslim prejudice or Islamist entryism as the only problem worth naming. Loughran is an effective guide precisely because he keeps separating categories: social conservatism is not Islamism, non-violence is not moderation, and criticism of Islamism is not bigotry.

The highlights are concrete and memorable, particularly the Bradford imam whose private convictions and public postings diverge, and the Yorkshire and Wakefield cases in which those making death threats escaped serious police action while the teacher and the schoolboy were suspended. The treatment of the government’s new anti-Muslim hostility definition and of PREVENT referral figures adds policy substance rather than leaving the discussion at the level of vibes.

The limitations are mostly structural. The format is short, so contested claims — the 10-20 percent estimate, the 8 percent referral figure, and the suggestion of Islamist-leaning input into the hostility definition — are reported rather than interrogated, and no Islamist or Muslim community representative is heard in the transcript answering the case against them. [Inference] The polling is inherently hard to trust, as the segment itself concedes, and the machine-generated transcript garbles several names and phrases, so some attributions in this summary are best treated as approximate.

The second and third segments are a different register and will divide listeners. The transfer pricing discussion is a clear explainer with a strong narrative hook in the Coca-Cola case and a sober assessment of the IRS’s depleted capacity; the training video piece is pure comic relief. The episode suits listeners who want a daily briefing on British domestic politics, US tax enforcement and workplace culture, and who prefer sharp framing over depth on any single subject.