A question that a lot of people ask is this: If Islam is so peaceful then surely those who choose to join it should be exemplars of peace and spend their days doing good works, defusing conflicts, refusing to pick up and use weapons and generally behaving like turbo-charge Quakers? The problem is that too many of those who choose Islam also choose to behave anything but peacefully and often go straight to Jihad without passing through any stage that could reasonably be called ‘peaceful’.

A good example of a person choosing Islam and then quite rapidly it seems becoming a supporter of extremism comes from the Liverpool Echo via the New English Review blog the Iconoclast. According to the NER, a convert to Islam, Victoria Webster has been gaoled for eight months for possession of a mobile phone whilst being imprisoned in December 2019 for another terrorist offence, that of sending money to a terrorist group in Syria.

It turned out that Webster had secretly married a jihadist who was a known national security risk and a person who had associated with some of the worst Islamic terrorists that Britain has seen, including the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, the Islamic hate preacher Anjem Choudury, the ‘Muslim patrol’ thugs and a man who had amassed a collection of bomb making manuals. Webster is not in my opinion just a woman who made a bad choice in a partner, she seems to have chosen a man who is to be frank the worst of the worst.

Webster, who claimed at her sentencing for the offence of sending money to Syrian Islamic terrorists in 2019, that she was ‘on a path to reform’, acquired the small mobile phone whilst incarcerated in HMP Styal in order to keep in contact with her terrorist husband. The phone was discovered when prison officers undertook a search of cells occupied by Webster and another woman. On questioning by the prison officers Webster admitted having the mobile phone but claimed that it was only for contacting her family as she ‘felt in need of support’.

However, when the phone was examined it was found that a large number of calls had been made to her husband Ricardo Langaigne, a known and dangerous Islamic extremist.

New English Review quoting the Liverpool Echo said:

Analysis of the phone showed one number was saved with just a full stop as the name, which Webster contacted 301 times, including both incoming and outgoing calls and texts. Ms Smith said this number was attributed to Langaigne and information provided by police indicated the risk he was said to pose to national security.

Ms Rebecca Smith the prosecuting counsel said: “Of note is offending which gives an indication of an extremist mindset. Importantly, in 2013 he was convicted of an offence of affray relating to an incident when he acted in the company of Jordan Horner, also of concern to national security. They attacked a group of men drinking in the street, shouting ‘kill the non-believers’ and describing themselves as the Muslim Patrol.“

The court heard Langaigne was convicted of racially aggravated harassment for making racist remarks to a police officer and has a history since 2010 of participating in debates and demonstrations in the name of militant jihadist network Al-Muhajiroun (ALM).

Ms Smith said “such was the level of concern” over the risk he posed that Webster was not allowed to use a prison phone to speak with him, despite stating that she had “married” him in 2018.

I must admit that this is an awful lot of calls that have been made from Webster to a dangerous Islamic extremist. Whilst it is quite possible that the content of the calls may have been innocent, there is also a big possibility that they were not. We do not know whether Webster and Langaigne had been plotting anything nasty but we should not discount the possibility that they were engaged in nefarious activities.

Webster is at least going to be kept inside and off the streets for a few more months because of the mobile phone incident, but this case does raise questions as to how secure Islamic terror prisoners are whilst incarcerated? Webster must have had had the mobile phone for a significant amount of time before it was discovered and her possession of the phone does represent a significant security breach.

Yet again we have an example of someone choosing Islam and at the same time choosing extremism. This is not I’m afraid an isolated case but one of dozens upon dozens of similar cases that have emerged over the years where individuals choose Islam and also choose Jihad. Whilst I believe in things like freedom of religion and freedom to choose a religion or not as the case may be, I also cannot help but be concerned about so many converts to Islam going bad and either supporting extremists or becoming active jihadis. Maybe both the citizenry and the security services should be a lot more suspicious of those who choose Islam as a life path as it seems pretty obvious now that those who choose Islam all too often choose extremism at the same time?