What happened at that Islamic event? 12 men arrested, "threat to life" - then released?

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Last week, when the establishment were quietly fudging out the details of Ann Widdicombe's assassination, those headlines were suddenly replaced by news that 12 British men had been arrested over a far-right terror plot against an Islamic event.

Politicians forgot their own advice not to speculate about such events and said that "lives had undoubtedly been saved".

Then a few days later, charges were dropped. One person was prosecuted for possession of offensive weapons: a stun gun and a baton. Which is bad, but you'd be there a while if you were going to commit a terror atrocity with a baton.

So what was going on? A spokesman for the group said that they were just flying a drone to find out more information about the Islamic event.

And should we be finding out more about this Islamic event? It was an Ijtaba organised by Tablighi Jamaat. Which sounds delicious, but this international network has many links to international terrorism and has been banned in countries including Saudi Arabia.

If an Islamic event is too extreme for Saudi Arabia, then surely it might be a bit too extreme for Suffolk?

Even the Guardian has raised concerns about these events. Even without the links to terrorism, they preach a conservative strain of Islam, with modest dress and strict gender segregation and insisting that wives should primarily support their husbands' religious lives.

But in Britain, culturally and politically, our approach is to appease extreme Islam in the hope that if we placate the beast, it won't attack us. I can't see this approach being sustainable.

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