Extremist poison can lurk in the body politic for centuries. The militant hardline Islamic sect that preaches hatred for Jews, Christians and Hindus, scorns the values of British society and incites Muslims to apocalyptic violence against its enemies can trace its roots back to the Indian Mutiny. After the suppression of the 1857 uprising, a group of Muslims set up a seminary in Deoband as an act of defiance against imperial rule. The message was uncompromising: Muslims had to reject any compromise with Western values, cut all contact with nonbelievers and prepare themselves for conflict to establish the global victory of Islam. That Deobandi message of hatred is now, 140 years later, being preached from mosques across Britain. It is a serious threat to civil society, to religious tolerance and to the hundreds of thousands of British Muslims it seeks to ensnare, as we report today.

Few people realise the extent to which the Deobandis have infiltrated mosques, schools and Muslim neighbourhoods across the country. The ultra-conservative movement, with modern roots in Pakistan’s extremist madrassas, now controls more than 600 mosques. It runs 17 of Britain’s 26 Islamic seminaries, and they produce 80 per cent of home-trained Muslim clerics. With tactics as aggressive as their rhetoric, the Deobandis have ousted the more tolerant Sufis, exploited the malaise of many young Muslims and harnessed their alienation to the sect’s own rejectionist message. Charismatic preachers denounce music, art and television, demand the total concealment of women, and urge believers to distance themselves from the corrupting influence of their kuffar (infidel) British neighbours. Young British Muslims are told they should not take pride in being British, but see their loyalty to global Islam. Friendship with Jews or Christians is a “mockery of Allah’s religion,” they are told. Little wonder that some emerge from the mosques with hatred in their hearts.

Official Britain knows little of the Deobandis. Partly this is because the texts are not in English, the sermons are not monitored and the internet links are not policed. Partly it is because the Muslim community is wary of speaking out – either from a false sense of solidarity or because ethnic, family and community pressures are used to silence critics. Particularly insidious is the Deobandi theme that the nonMuslim world is seeking to demonise and destroy Islam. By raising the spectre of Islamophobia and playing on fears of persecution, the politically ambitious sect can portray itself alone as the guardian of Muslim values, ridiculing moderates as appeasers and integrationists as secular compromisers.

Britain is a tolerant society of many religions, but to incite hatred is illegal. Those now promoting programmes of awareness and citizenship among young Muslims cannot ignore the threat. Organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and others seeking to represent the spread of Muslim opinion cannot remain silent on the hatred in their midst. Nor can they dismiss the Deobandi message as the unrepresentative extremism of a “fringe”. Zealots who urge apartheid from the majority are as pernicious as those who would pick on Muslims for their beliefs. This newspaper will be denounced by some for “inciting” fear of Islam by publishing the words of demagogues. Moderate Muslims are just as vulnerable as non-Muslims to this virulent, exclusionary, uncompromising extremism. The ideas may be archaic, but the threat is real.