The United Kingdom is on the verge of breaking apart, as a van attack on Muslims leaving a London mosque raises the potential of violent exchanges between Muslims and the indigenous British population.

The supposedly conservative government of beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May is preparing a crackdown on "Islamophobia" in response.

And May also has cited the attack as reason to support her controversial plan to regulate the Internet, including censoring so-called "extremist" content.

Yet Britain today is already a highly regulated society. With the recent passage of the Investigatory Powers Act, the United Kingdom now has the "most sweeping surveillance powers in the western world," according to the left-wing British paper the Guardian and dissident Edward Snowden. The United Kingdom is already well-known for its widespread use of security cameras in almost every public setting. However, despite the use of tactics some would call Orwellian, the U.K. is still struggling with a 24 percent increase in knife crimes over the last year, even with heavy government regulation of blades and a campaign against supposed media glamorization of the crime.

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Pamela Geller, internationally renowned human-rights activist and author of "Stop The Islamization of America," argues any attempt by the British government to increase surveillance and further crack down on speech will be futile.

"This kind of retaliation was only a matter of time," she told WND. "Jihadis can't continue to bomb, mow down, and slaughter citizens and expect no reaction, time and time and time again. Especially when people see law enforcement and the government jumping to aid the side of the enemy. Yes, there will almost certainly be more of this. And Muslims will certainly respond in kind. The U.K. now faces the real possibility of tit-for-tat sectarian violence in mainland Britain -- a civil war by any other name.

"I have been warning about this for years. The more the political and media elites ignore and downplay the jihad threat, the more people will lash out. This will continue to escalate."

G.M. Davis, a Stanford Ph.D. who wrote the 2015 book "House of War: Islam's Jihad Against The World," also saw the attack as inevitable.

"Unfortunately, it is only a question of time before the native populations of Europe grow fed up with the systematic incompetence of their governments' handling of the Islamization of their urban centers and take matters into their own hands," he said. "Even more unfortunately, some individuals will use the very tactics of Muslim terrorists in their misguided attempts at vigilantism or vengeance.

"The recent attack on the Finsbury Park mosque is such a case. The effect of such an attack, now classified as 'terrorism,' will be to further solidify the European establishment's prejudices that Islam is a peaceful religion in need of protection from right-wing fanatics rather than a hostile political movement that desperately needs to be contained by proactive government action," David said.

"There will be a natural tendency in the media to equate all such attacks, whether Muslims' terrorist acts, which stem from the ancient teachings of the Quran and Muhammad, or cases such as Finsbury Park, which, at least at this point, seems to have been the work of a genuine 'lone nut.'"

The suspect in the Finsbury Park attack has been identified as Darren Osborne of Wales, a father of four, who reportedly yelled, "I've done my bit" as he was captured by an angry crowd.

Leo Hohmann, news editor at WND and the author of "Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration And Resettlement Jihad," condemned Osborne's actions. But he warned the U.K. has imported an irrepressible conflict.

"The United Kingdom has had three jihad attacks in 10 weeks," he said. "And some non-Muslims like Darren Osborne of Wales will be inspired by the same spirit of evil to launch counter-attacks against Muslims, which only plays into the hands of the jihad-preaching imams and secular globalist politicians looking to implement more intrusive monitoring of U.K. citizens."

Hohmann predicted British Muslims will soon violently retaliate.

"The imams will follow the example of their 'perfect man,' Muhammad, who loved to play the victim card to inspire his followers to violence," he said. "The Quran teaches that persecution of Muslims is worse than killing, so look for more killing in the U.K. to avenge what happened at Finsbury Park."

America is headed down a suicidal path – but it's a subtle invasion, and not many Americans understand the full extent of the problem. Get all the details in Leo Hohmann's brand new book "Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad," available now in hard copy or e-book at the WND Superstore.

Geller said the response of the media and the British government following the Finsbury attack was very different than how they responded to attacks perpetrated by Muslims.

"After Islamic jihad attacks there are cautions against a 'rush to judgment,' explanations of how Islam is peaceful and a search for the attacker's motive, even when he pledged allegiance to ISIS and was screaming 'Allahu akbar,'" she noted. "But in this case it was deemed 'Islamophobia' immediately, and foes of jihad terror blamed."

Davis also noted the widely disparate reactions.

"The liberal press will enthusiastically tout any connection a perpetrator of an attack like the one at the Finsbury Park might have to any nationalistic, anti-immigrant, or anti-Islamic group," he said.

"It will similarly emphasize any such sentiments that he expresses, with the clear aim of smearing all expressions and actions aimed at saving Europe from the Islamic danger, even the most reasonable and eminently legal. This contrasts with the consistent tendency to downplay the Islamic essence in terrorism committed by Muslims; in such cases, we are told the perpetrator must have been ipso facto 'radicalized,' a tautology that equates with committing the violent act itself."

Davis believes there will not be many more anti-Muslim attacks in Europe in the short term. However, in the long term, he foresees disaster.

"Most native Britons will be at least as appalled by the Finsbury Park attack as by acts of Muslim terrorism," he opined. "Plus, the government will be all too happy to repress any individual or group it suspects of harboring violent right-wing sympathies, in a way that it is more reluctant to do when it comes to Islamic groups.

"Nonetheless, if European governments do not dramatically rethink their policies on Islam and halt the Islamization of their countries, at some point in the future we will see the development of groups outside the official political structures that will begin to act effectively as independent militias. Their purpose will be to protect the native populations that official governments no longer do. At that point, an effective three-way civil war will begin between the official governments, jihadist groups, and native militias fighting what they will see as a desperate, last-ditch effort to save European civilization."

Hohmann also shares a pessimistic view of the U.K.'s future.

"What we are witnessing in the U.K. is nothing short of the meltdown of a once-great civilization," he said. "This is the inevitable result of decades of mass immigration, without assimilation, from the Third World, combined with the Brits' own spiritual and cultural morass. It's like a cultural hardening of the arteries that, once it progresses to an advanced stage, is virtually impossible to turn around and avoid death.

He said the values of these mostly Islamic Third Worlders do not coincide with Western democracies, which were built upon the Christian values of tolerance and freedom.

"Having largely rejected its Christian heritage, the U.K., like Germany and France, now find themselves disarmed and morally bankrupt, unable to provide a compelling religious alternative to Islamic fundamentalists," Hohmann said. "Their only faith is in themselves, and even that has been weakened by progressive educators who bang the drum of 'white privilege,' self-guilt and self-hatred, which only makes them more vulnerable to the trickery of Islamic 'dawah' or outreach."

The leaders of Western Europe, charged Hohmann, promised their citizens a multicultural utopia. Instead, he said, they have doomed their own nations to destruction.

"Violence, fear, loss of freedom, national suicide," said Hohmann, summarizing the consequences of mass immigration. "These are the transforming qualities of any government policy focused on importing mass numbers of unassimilable migrants and giving them special rights and privileges beyond those of one's own citizens."

America is headed down a suicidal path – but it's a subtle invasion, and not many Americans understand the full extent of the problem. Get all the details in Leo Hohmann's brand new book "Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad," available now in hard copy or e-book at the WND Superstore.