Should individuals convicted of terrorism run for public office?

Last year, when Israeli soccer club Maccabi Tel Aviv played Aston Villa in a Europa Conference League match, Shahid Butt used social media to call on Muslims from around the country to travel to Birmingham to show solidarity with Palestinians and to prevent the Israeli team’s supporters from, in his words, “desecrating” and “dirtying” the city.

This year he is running for public office in the UK despite being convicted in Yemen in 1999 over a terror plot targeting the British consulate in Aden, an Anglican church and a hotel.

In this article, I write about the dangers of normalising exclusivist, extremist and violent ideologies: