A reformed “liberal left-winger” academic whose research prompted Theresa May to launch an investigation into Sharia courts, has warned that liberals are enabling Muslim fundamentalists to Islamise the West.

Dutch political scientist and legal scholar Machteld Zee said that by stifling criticism of Islam, “useful infidels” are helping conservative Muslims isolate Islamic communities and encourage them to be more religious and insular.

Zee gained unprecedented access to Sharia courts in the UK while researching for her Ph.D. in law. After sharing her findings, the then-Home Office chief Theresa May ordered an independent inquiry over concerns the courts discriminate against women.

The researcher at the University of Leiden was interviewed recently in Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad about her new book, Holy Identities: On the Road to a Sharia State. An analysis of the problems of the Netherlands’s multicultural society, Zee was driven to write the book after spending time in Britain’s Sharia courts.

“If you compare the Netherlands in the 1980s with today”, she said, “You will see the increased influence of Islam everywhere. Saudi Arabia and other countries have flooded the world with thousands of imams, Islamic text books, mosques and a lot of money.”

Interviewing the political scientist, Dutch journalist Wierd Duk noted that in Holy Identities Zee argues Islamic fundamentalists who share the Saudi regime’s goal of Islamisation are being helped by “useful infidels” — non-Muslim intellectuals, politicians, and opinion-shapers who don’t want to cause offence.

Zee replied: “Yes, leading multiculturalists actually believe that Muslims should be shielded from criticism because it would inflict psychological harm. Although there are many Muslims who find this view idiotic, others use it to call those who criticise Islam ‘Islamophobes’ and ‘racists’.”

The Algemeen Dagblad journalist noted that since her work on Sharia courts Zee went from being a self-described liberal left winger, to warning the world “against a lack of knowledge and lack of resistance to advancing radical Islam”.

The academic said her research in Birmingham and London opened her eyes to a “parallel society” where “sharia law trumps secular law”. “I object to it because these practices are contrary to the rights of women”, Zee stressed.

It’s important that people learn about Islamisation, she asserted, because the Muslim Brotherhood is handsomely funded by fundamentalists and aims for world domination. Sharia courts are a part of this, the researcher believes.

Zee said: “Authors that I studied for my investigation were generally benevolent towards sharia courts. But guess what? None of them had ever attended a session of such a court. They don’t know what is happening there.

“Now they ask me to tell them all about it. Judges in these courts tell women to accept polygamy and to not to report domestic violence to the police. Violent fathers are given custody of their children. I get the impression that as these facts become known, the tide of the public debate is turning. I hardly hear anyone pleading in favour of sharia courts now.”

Holy Identities, the Algemeen Dagblad journalist says, “finds that politically correct elites try to cover up abuse within Islam and to trivialise the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.”

“I think I set things straight. I note that influential Western intellectuals discourage any criticism of Islam, which helps fundamentalists to isolate Muslim communities and ‘Islamise’ them. That’s no more than an observation. I want my book to serve as a brief guide which informs readers about fundamentalist Islam.”

Zee said she believes that in the future, Dutch people will “have to be much more defensive and put limits on Islamisation”, and states that ordinary citizens should defend their own values and beliefs.

“Why does a college in The Hague pre-emptively decide to forgo the Christmas decorations? Why is alcohol being banned in places frequented by Muslims?” the political scientist asked before pronouncing: “We shouldn’t. We’re doing it to ourselves”.