He founded the Quilliam Foundation, the enormously influential “moderate Muslim” group in the U.K. At the time of Quilliam’s founding, Husain went out of his way to launch a gratuitous attack on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq and me.

At that time I had been quite interested to determine whether Quilliam was really the sincere reformist organization it claimed to be — but this unexpected and unwarranted attack made me doubt it immediately.

I know Ayaan Hirsi Ali (a Somali ex-Muslim) and Ibn Warraq (a Pakistani ex-Muslim) personally. I know their work quite well. I know that neither is a “racist” or a “bigot,” just as I know that I myself am not one either. I know that they’re deeply concerned about how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism, as I am, and want to preserve Western pluralistic societies with their freedom of speech and equality of rights for all people, as I do.

So what does that make Ed Husain? Well, in this present case he is telling the British government that they better not seize jihadis’ passports, because that will only fuel the perception that true Muslims are unwelcome in Britain, since the jihadis consider themselves to be true Muslims. What the U.K. needs to do, Husain says, is de-radicalize the returning jihadis. De-radicalization programs have been implemented elsewhere, notably in Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. Let’s look at how they fared. From the Jihad Watch archives:

11 ex-Gitmo prisoners flee the Saudi “rehabilitation program” and join up with terrorist groups
Jaw-dropper: 25 former Gitmo detainees “return to militancy” despite Saudi rehab program!
Graduate from Saudi jihadi rehab program killed in Syrian jihad: “killed a large number of Christians before his acceptance by God”
Flight 253 jihadist wasn’t cured by Saudi anti-jihad art therapy
Former Guantanamo detainee now top al-Qaeda ideologue — “He was transferred to Saudi Arabia in 2006 where he was placed in a national rehabilitation project.”
Indonesian government admits that its jihadist rehab program is a failure

This is a high-stakes game. When de-radicalization programs fail, the failure manifests itself in a jihad attack, and the deaths of human beings. Ed Husain is asking the British government to depend on an approach that has never worked, in an arena in which any failure could result in British citizens being murdered. Whereas, if jihadis’ passports were seized, some Muslims may be angry, but a lot of Muslims are already angry.

Any Muslim in Britain who becomes a jihad terrorist because other jihad terrorists were not allowed back into the country was already a jihad terrorist. Ed Husain is asking the British government to roll the dice on the lives of its people. A high-stakes game indeed. I think Ed Husain is not the only “moderate” who will be showing his true colors in light of the advent of the Islamic State. “Ed Husain: Taking passports would only raise the jihadist threat,” by Ed Husain, London Evening Standard, September 2, 2014 :