Shortly after the new government took over in Britain, the Quilliam Foundation, a "counter-extremism" thinktank which received around £1m in funding from the previous Labour government, wrote a private briefing paper setting out recommendations for Britain's anti-terrorism strategy. The document has since been leaked and posted on the internet, and the Guardian has a story about it.

The document argues that the problem of politicised Islam stretches beyond terrorism to include Islamist ideology more generally. This is an important point (and one that I made in my book, What's Really Wrong with the Middle East). But I'm not persuaded that Quilliam's idea of treating Islamism in its non-violent forms as an anti-terrorism issue is the right approach.

The problem with Islamist ideology, as I see it, is mainly a political one: it places the "sovereignty of God" over sovereignty of the people and, no matter how much they try to fudge that, it is ultimately anti-democratic. Even when Islamist movements engage in electoral politics, there is still God (via his self-appointed proxies on earth) lurking somewhere in the background, ready to over-ride the people's will if that is deemed necessary.

I discussed this in more detail yesterday in an article for Comment Is Free.