Opposing jihad terror and plotting jihad terror are the same thing, right?

There she goes again. British Prime Minister Theresa May gave a very similar speech in December 2016. Last Monday night, she recycled it at the United Jewish Israel Appeal dinner, and included in it the same libel of me that she put in the first one. Could Theresa May herself really believe this nonsense? Does she really believe that standing against jihad terror is essentially equivalent to plotting jihad mass murder?

In the midst of a long boast about how much she opposes anti-Semitism, May said: “And I acted to keep those who peddle hatred and extremism out of our country. I kicked out Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. I stopped Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Pastor Terry Jones – because Islamophobia comes from the same wellspring of hatred. And I stopped people like Dieudonne coming to Britain. Because nothing excuses antisemitism – not comedy, not satire, not even irony. Antisemitism is just hatred. And it is just wrong.”

So as far as May is concerned, Pamela Geller and I are the “Islamophobic” equivalents of Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. May expects her audience to be familiar with Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada, and for good reason, since both are notorious in Britain, although n neither lives there now. Abu Hamza is in solitary confinement in a super-max U.S. for, among other things, conspiring to set up a training camp for jihad terrorists in Bly, Oregon. Abu Qatada was convicted of plotting the jihad massacre of Americans and Israelis in Jordan, to which he has returned.

Now have I plotted to fly a jetliner into Big Ben, or blow myself up in a crowd of Britons? No, I’ve never plotted, called for, or approved of any kind of terrorist or vigilante violence against anyone. And thus May’s speaking of me as the flip side of Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada is beyond outrageous: it’s so ridiculous that it should lead any competent member of the British Parliament to question not only her fitness to remain in office, but her sanity.

“Islamophobia,” she says, of which I am guilty and thus barred from the U.K., “comes from the same wellspring of hatred” as anti-Semitism. And so she is boasting to a Jewish group about banning me, a wholehearted supporter of Israel, and Pamela Geller, a Jewish woman, from Britain, and then claiming that she is against anti-Semitism. Pull my other leg.

May’s implication is that “anti-Muslim rhetoric” — that is, public discussion of the jihad threat and what can be done about it — leads inexorably to the demonization of Muslims and ultimately to genocide. This is ridiculous, overheated rhetoric that only hinders the prospects of any genuine discussion of the salient issues, and that is probably the goal all along. The purpose of May’s equivalence of “Islamophobia” with anti-Semitism is designed to intimidate people into thinking that criticism of Islamic jihad terror and Sharia oppression of women, gays, and others leads to the concentration camps, and thus there must be no criticism of these things. The unstated assumption is that if one group was unjustly accused of plotting subversion and violence, and was viciously persecuted and massacred on the basis of those false accusations, then any group accused of plotting subversion and violence must be innocent, and any such accusation must be in service of preparing for their subversion and massacre.

This is simply a method to foreclose on any criticism of jihad terror and Sharia oppression. By equating me with jihad terrorists, May is essentially saying that opposing jihad terror is as bad as plotting jihad terror. And that is exactly how May is acting now in her shabby little police state: British authorities are hounding and persecuting foes of jihad terror, while jihad preachers roam free and act with impunity. How will Britain look in five years, or ten, as this continues?

Future generations of free Britons, if there are any, will curse the name of Theresa May as one of the chief betrayers of their nation.