Fattah had spent many years in an Egyptian prison, becoming a cause célèbre for confronting that country’s authoritarian and highly oppressive regime. He was granted automatic citizenship in 2021 by the last Conservative Party government because his mother was born in the UK, and he thus took advantage of a change in the law from July 2019, which meant that he was not subject to a good character test. Such a test was deemed to be “discriminatory."
What a mistake that turned out to be!
Had a good character test been possible, Fattah would surely have been left to the mercy of his brutal Egyptian captors and never granted citizenship in the United Kingdom. The Home Office rules that unacceptable behavior can include using a medium for the purpose of “writing, producing, publishing or distributing material to incite, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular belief" or to “provoke other serious criminal activity."
His social-media posts, which were mysteriously scrutinized only when it was too late, reveal a cocktail of poisonous views about Jews, Christians, Britain and white society. In 2010, he expressed his support for killing “any colonialists and specially Zionists," and said that such acts were “heroic." He later described himself as “a violent person who advocated the killing of all Zionists including civilians."
In another post, he told his followers that he hated “white people," and he specifically referred to British people as “dogs and monkeys." This is the type of dehumanizing rhetoric so beloved of Islamist radicals like Al-Qaeda.
During the 2011 riots that convulsed so many city centers in Britain, he encouraged rioters to “go burn the City or Downing Street or hunt police fools." The police, he went on, “are not human" and “don’t have rights, we should just kill them all."
Let’s be clear. The problem is not that he has a different opinion on Zionism or the politics of modern-day Britain. It is that he has advocated for extreme violence against Jews, British institutions and white people.
These vile and despicable views are arguably a matter of criminal incitement, rather than the words of a noble dissenter. Fattah has since apologized for his tweets and claimed that they were “mostly expressions of a young man’s anger and frustrations in a time of regional crises." Yet some have questioned the legitimacy of his contrition, especially given that he has blamed a Zionist campaign for attacking him. In other words, he has reverted to victim blaming and antisemitic conspiracy thinking rather than a genuine reckoning with his past.
For its part, the British government has said that it knew nothing about Fattah’s repugnant views, something repeated by the senior Conservatives who called for his release. That may well be the case, but it surely exposes as hollow the pronouncements made by British politicians to care about national security. The least one can expect from the authorities is basic due diligence on those being allowed to settle in the United Kingdom.
By not doing so, this government and the previous one has spat in the faces of Jews who are already reeling from the mass shooting during Hanukkah at Bondi Beach that left 15 people dead. Moreover, they are insulting the vast majority of law-abiding and decent people in Britain who reject extremism, among them moderate Muslims who reject political extremism and violence.
Most people in Britain do not seek to close the borders to all newcomers. But they rightly insist that new citizens should share national values, reject violence and integrate fully in society. Gaining citizenship should be a privilege not a right. It is a two-way contract between individuals and the countries they seek to join, not a one way ticket to freedom.
With a Tory administration granting him citizenship in the first place, and Labour Party ministers rolling out the red carpet and making his arrival here a top priority, we have a political class that is bumbling, incompetent and harmful to the national interest. Indeed, between them, they make Inspector Clouseau look like a towering genius.
We urgently need to restore good character tests in cases like that of Alaa Abd El-Fattah, which may mean leaving the European Convention on Human Rights altogether. Applicants should be law abiding, tolerant and willing to participate in a democratic society. Discrimination, far from being a dirty word, is exactly what people should demand, ensuring that people with vile views stay out while those who can contribute to wider society are given the chance to flourish.
Given Britain’s centrality to the war on terror and the battle against Islamist extremism, any tolerance for antisemitism and radicalism will seem like an abject surrender to terror.