One of Britain’s most senior woman police officers has been on television explaining why she wants to help young British lads from going off the rails. “This is not about criminalising people.” said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball. “It is about preventing tragedies.”

And what is the nature of the delinquency that these young men are in danger of falling into? Drugs? Downloading internet porn?

None of that. These young “British” men are Muslims running off to Syria to take part in the savage civil war there.

About 400 young British Muslims have joined the Jihad to Syria and police say the number of “Syria-related arrests” has increased substantially this year, to 40 between January and March, compared with 25 in the whole of 2013. Some 20 have turned up dead, some get arrested at British airports and some turn up voicing the terrorist videos that are so much part of Islamic warfare.

None of this should have caused any surprise. These young Muslims are doing no more than following the precepts of a religion which encourages adherents to go on Jihad for the glory of the Prophet. But the discovery that Muslims act like Muslims has however, taken the British authorities entirely by surprise. So they have hurriedly formulated a strategy for dealing with this entirely unexpected and baffling phenomenon.

As you would expect, the new approach has been tailored to ensure that no Muslim sensibilities are offended by any “racist”

stereotyping. So Helen Ball, who is Britain’s senior co-ordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, is taking the “softly softly” approach – she is appealing to Muslim womenfolk to inform the police if they detect a son mysteriously developing symptoms of radicalisation. She is the figurehead for the new campaign: “Prevent Tragedies — starting the conversation on Syria” — surely the most mild-mannered anti-terrorism campaign in history.

One of the most mysterious things about this contagion is that nobody seems to have a clue as to the cause. Is it an airborne agent or something in the water perhaps? Nobody, least of all Helen Ball, seems to want to talk about this side of things. Muslim family after family seem equally baffled — they have assured the media they have no idea why sons would suddenly take off like this.

Needless to say, this new initiative — formally unveiled last Thursday — will be accompanied by lavish amounts of taxpayer money to Muslim groups which have not been slow to sign up to and, in an impressive display of willpower, have been able to keep a straight face while parroting the government message.

One Muslim woman’s contribution, for the benefit of the media, was typical “Women are agents of change, particularly mums in the home. They are the ones who can nurture and safeguard their children.”

Muslim radicalisation and how to deal with it is actually becoming quite a gravy train in the academic and political worlds. There are think tanks, training companies, seminars, conferences, and university departments queuing up for a slice of the government action available for this totally unforeseeable problem.

It looks like the work isn’t going to dry up anytime soon. Two weeks ago it emerged that an 18-year-old Brighton Muslim died during fighting while a 41-year-old man from Crawley in Sussex had been killed in a suicide bombing mission in Aleppo.

Muslims acting like Muslims is also the central thread of a growing story about an Islamic plot to take over schools across England, replace many teachers and install a hard-line Islamic ethos, in a conspiracy which has been dubbed “Trojan Horse.”

The government has launched an inquiry centering on Birmingham where an alleged Islamic takeover plot has now spread to 25 schools. Roving morality squads have been patrolling the playing fields and corridors telling girls off for not wearing veils and ensuring gender segregation in class.

Again, this totally unforeseen and unexpected example of Muslims acting like Muslims has taken everyone in authority completely by surprise. The Education department has effectively suspended the running of six schools and will likely throw out the schools’ entire governing bodies.

Muslims are also acting like Muslims in Bradford where, after hundreds of complaints from White parents, the education authorities have admitted that a covert schools network is also being established. Dozens of White teachers have been pushed out of their jobs and have been prevented from speaking out by gagging clauses in their severance packages.

An inspection report by the Department for Education, leaked to the Daily Telegraph, found that girls at one school were made to sit at the back of the class, exam syllabuses were “restricted to comply with a conservative Islamic teaching” and an extremist preacher was invited to speak to children.

Last week it emerged that the alleged ringleader, the chairman of governors at this school, wrote a detailed blueprint for the “Islamisation” of state schools in 2007. The Head Teachers Association has also weighed in and said attempts had been made to “alter their character in line with the Islamic faith”, including sidelining parts of the curriculum and attempting to influence the appointment of Muslim staff.

You might think that all this chaos, disruption and disharmony might be the last thing needed in schools in austerity Britain but that would be to take the short-sighted view. Surely the unstated elite strategy around multiculturalism is paying off superbly well. After all a divided population is a quiescent population and will be far too distracted to look at the bigger picture.