If the opinion polls are correct, in under two weeks Labour's Sadiq Khan will be elected Mayor of London. This is extremely troubling. Despite his noisy denunciations of terrorism and the Jew-hatred infecting his party, questions about his attitude to extremism continue to mount.
In 2003, he spoke at a London conference where he criticised anti-terror legislation for targeting Muslim groups. He spoke alongside Yasser al Siri, charged in 2002 and convicted in 2005 for assisting the man behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York, and Sajeel abu Ibrahim, who ran a terrorist camp that trained the ringleader of the 2005 London bomb attacks.
Khan's people say he was only doing what was required as a human-rights lawyer and, at the time, chairman of Liberty. This is absurd. The extremists he has spoken alongside or associated with were not always his clients. His support for them far exceeds any professional relationship or MP's duty to his constituents. Atma Singh, who was Asian affairs adviser to the former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, has accused him of being "too willing to turn a blind eye to terrorism". For a decade, said Singh, Khan campaigned for terrorists Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan. Ahmad, convicted of conspiracy and providing material to support terrorism, was a key radicaliser in London. Yet before his trial, Khan declared his childhood friend to be "innocent".
Khan has said he's "embarrassed and sorrowful" about antisemitism in the Labour party and wants Jeremy Corbyn to "take a tougher stance".
Yet he has chosen to sanitise Islamist Jew-haters, as well as officiate in an organisation with ideological roots in Jew-bashing radical Islam.
Last year, a government report said the Muslim Brotherhood viewed western society as "inherently hostile to Muslim interests" and was "prepared to countenance violence… where gradualism is ineffective". It said the Brotherhood dominated the Muslim Council of Britain.
Yet Khan chaired the MCB's legal affairs committee. In 2004, while he held that post, the Brotherhood ideologue Yusuf Qaradawi arrived in Britain to protests. Qaradawi supported terrorism against British forces in Iraq and endorsed human bomb attacks on Israelis as "evidence of God's justice". Yet Khan told the Select Committee on Home Affairs "…Mr al Qaradawi is not the extremist that he is painted as being".
Khan has said he will fight "Islamophobia" when he becomes mayor. That's a threat to shut down concerns about Islamist extremism. These disturbing questions, however, extend beyond Khan himself. For his mind-bending attempt to play the Muslim card by presenting himself as the victim of an ethnic and religious smear campaign is parroted by supposed Labour "moderates".
Yvette Cooper described the claims of Khan's extremist sympathies levelled by the Tory mayoral candidate, Zac Goldsmith, as "irresponsible and dangerous" and "a full-blown racist scream". Her charge was as disgraceful as it was revealing. Her implication that Khan is being criticised because he is a Muslim is untrue. It is not racist (and since when was Islam a race?) to question a history of extremist associations.
Cooper came close to saying such concerns about extremism are anti-Muslim. That is how debate is silenced. Khan has been sustained, indulged and encouraged by the Labour party. They winked at his questionable attitudes because he belongs to what is, for many of them, an untouchable victim group. If he becomes Mayor, it will be the Labour party beyond Corbyn that is to blame.
Melanie Phillips is a Times columnist
