Ok I'll happily admit I've done no research past the public cooperation with Qulliam and his Oxford Union appearance. Looking up a couple of articles it seems he has since distanced himself from that and described his 'conversion' by Quilliam as a paid sham.

This is Reddit though, and the way I use it is to post the opinions I have, read what others say and have the odd joke here and there. I'm interested in the idea of 'counterjihadist' - not heard that term. Is this what you would apply to groups like EDL who use violence and intimidation to get their message across? And would it apply to Pegida? Someone further in the thread posted a link to their stated objectives, which seemed far more reasonable than I expected (spin I assume), elsewhere I've read Pegida UK want to ban the building of Mosques. Doesn't seem very supportive of freedom of religion as the objectives appeared to.

When I watched Robinson's (lennon's?) speech at Oxford, one thing I took away from it was that in my community, where Muslims are well integrated but a very small minority, I hadn't come across the issues he talked about that bothered him. It may be manipulation, but I got the sense he did genuinely feel that people in his community had been targeted by extremists, whether by violence or sexual coercion. I got to thinking that maybe there are places in the UK where those concerns were real, and if we continued to ignore anyone who spoke out about it then you would just see more and more people becoming disenfranchised and joining movements like the EDL. Can you recommend any speakers/writers that provide some sort of balanced narrative? Genuinely interested in learning more about a debate that seems to be polarising people into misinformed views. The major parties just seem to skirt around it and capitalise on the confusion and fear. I like Corbyn and McDonald's approach of trying to get dialogue with everyone, but I know that's not always realistic, and as we've seen in the coverage will bite you in the arse in terms of public opinion.