It's one rule for British Muslims and another for David Cameron's friends when it comes to extremists

What exactly is extremism? For most of us, we see it in the rants of radicals such as Anjem Choudhury or the marches of the English Defence League or Pegida.

Last month, the government launched its controversial counter-extremism strategy. It restated the definition of extremism much more broadly as the “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.

Yet, in as many weeks, the very same government rolled out the red carpet for the Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose government is guilty of large-scale human rights abuses. It invited the Egyptian dictator Sisi to Downing Street though he toppled a democratically-elected government and is accused of brutally cracking down on the democratic aspirations of the Arab Spring. And at the same time our government opened a new Royal Navy base in Bahrain, channelling funds into a regime that continues to pursue a policy of sectarianism and anti-democratic despotism.

By the government’s own new definition, the regimes it courts are extremist. And yet it is now welcoming Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a man whom it would not be difficult to describe as anything other than an extremist.

This was the person who, after all, was once banned from the US and UK for his dubious role in the killing, raping and looting of thousands of Muslims in the state of Gujarat. He belonged to the RSS, a movement whose religious fanaticism is well-documented. Since he took office last year, protests and the growing culture of intolerance in India under his watch, have been growing.

Of course, we are told that in the world of diplomacy, realpolitik and the national interest trumps ‘British values’. The absurdity of the government’s counter-extremism strategy is therefore plain to see. On the one hand we are told that the fight against terrorism and extremism is global, yet on the other, this ideological war that the government is pursuing only applies to a select few “extremists”.

And despite falling under the new definition, those few would presumably not include the 37 per cent of the British population who would support policies to reduce the number of Muslims in the UK, or those philosophers who support Plato’s view of a benevolent dictator, or MPs who in the last Parliament who voted against same-sex marriage, including the current Education Secretary Nicky Morgan.

The minister heading this counter-extremism strategy, the Home Secretary Theresa May, failed to explain what she meant by “extremism” on the Today Programme in July. And according to former National Policing Lead for Prevent, Sir Peter Fahy, this ambiguity leads him to say that this might lead to a “police state”.

Even before the counter-extremism strategy comes into play, Muslims are being viewed as potential radicals as the Prevent duty is being implemented in a discriminatory way. In recent months, various people have been reported for suspected extremist activity, including a toddler, a student who has discussed eco-terrorism, and a teenage girl who converted to Islam. They are all the victims of a divisive and controversial ‘conveyor-belt theory’ of extremism, whose hard right proponents are hell-bent on arguing that there is something in Islam itself that needs tackling.

The discrimination that the Prevent strategy is perpetuating is not helping in the fight against terrorism and is instead leading British citizens to look at Muslims in a negative way. There has, for example, been a 70 per cent rise in hate crime against Muslims in the last year according to the Metropolitan police. When the government seems not to care, is it any wonder that many British Muslims consider themselves as second-class citizens?

Miqdaad Versi is a grassroots Muslim activist and assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. The views expressed here are his own. Follow him on Twitter: @miqdaad