A convicted terrorist who is standing as a councillor has praised jihad as a ‘compassionate act’ despite claiming he has turned his back on extremism, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Shahid Butt – who will be an independent candidate in Birmingham in May’s local elections – has also told Muslims ‘not to take Jews and Christians as friends’ in an interview.
Mr Butt is standing in the inner-city Sparkhill ward, which has a 91 per cent ethnic minority population – nearly 70 per cent of whom practise Islam.
The activist has worked on the Home Office Prevent scheme and previously sat on the West Midlands Anti-Terrorism Steering Committee.
In 1999 he was handed a five-year sentence in Yemen for terrorism. Mr Butt and five other UK nationals were found guilty of plotting to blow up the British consulate, an Anglican church and a hotel in the city of Aden. They denied the charges.
Since he returned to the UK in 2003, Mr Butt claims he has turned his back on jihad – or Holy War – and has spent more than two decades guiding youngsters away from extremism.
He supported calls for protests against Maccabi Tel Aviv when they played Aston Villa in Birmingham last November.
Fans of the Israeli football club were banned from attending the game due to safety concerns.
Shahid Butt (pictured) will be an independent candidate in Birmingham in the May local elections
Shadid Butt (centre, pictured here in a TikTok campaign video) says he can serve Sparkhill better than the incumbent Labour councillors, who he claims do not speak English
Mr Butt urged ‘every local Muslim’ to attend the demonstration but told them not to bring knives, machetes or guns.
But in footage from one of the protests, he tells the crowd: ‘Muslims are not pacifists… if somebody comes into your face, you knock his teeth out.’
In an interview posted in 2024 on YouTube, Mr Butt describes fighting jihad in a foreign country as an act of ‘compassion’.
He says: ‘How much more compassion can somebody show that they’re willing to risk their life to go into a war zone and to fight for people who they don’t even know?’
Mr Butt also said that British jihadis who went to Syria were doing so out of sympathy, despite many being prosecuted under the Terrorism Act on their return.
He says: ‘Somebody wants to go there and fight, let him fight, because he’s doing it out of compassion.’
In the same video he condemns Isis, saying the terror group ‘hijacked’ the religion of Islam.
Last night Mr Butt said he was only ‘making a point’ in the interview and has spent years preventing British Muslims from going to Syria to join terror groups.
Mr Butt supported calls for protests against Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv when they played Aston Villa in Birmingham last November. He is pictured here protesting
Mr Butt claims he has turned his back on jihad – or Holy War – and has spent more than two decades guiding youngsters away from extremism
‘I’ve met people who wanted to go and join Isis and talked them out of it,’ he added.
In another YouTube interview four months ago Mr Butt argued that Muslims must not take Christians and Jews as friends.
He says: ‘Allah says in the Koran do not take the Jews or Christians as your friends and protectors.’
When asked about his comments Mr Butt said he was referencing the Koran and does not hate Jews or Christians.
He said: ‘I work with Christians, I work with local churches I am not anti-Semitic as I believe Jews are my cousins.’
Last night he was criticised for his remarks.
Ghaffar Hussain, a former Prevent manager who runs anti-extremism group the Groundswell Project, said: ‘At a time when the social fabric is already frayed, we don’t want people to express such bigoted views.’
Lord Walney, the Government’s former political extremism adviser, said: ‘It beggars belief that this man who was jailed for terrorism in Yemen and appears to justify Brits fighting jihad abroad could end up holding elected office in Britain.’
Mr Butt (pictured as a younger man) says he found Islam after attending protests near Parliament against the publication of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie in the late 1980s
The activist says he fought in Afghanistan and Kashmir in the late 1990s and was a lieutenant to hook-handed imam Abu Hamza (pictured), who preached violent jihad at Finsbury Park Mosque in north London
Mr Butt grew up in Sparkhill, where he became part of an Asian street gang called Lynx – which fought skinheads and racists in the area – for which he was jailed.
He says he found Islam after attending protests near Parliament against the publication of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie in the late 1980s, which some Muslims claimed blasphemed their religion.
In the mid-90s Mr Butt provided aid to Bosnia’s Muslims, who were facing a genocide by Serbs.
He later joined the war with jihadi fighters.
The activist says he fought in Afghanistan and Kashmir in the late 1990s and was a lieutenant to hook-handed imam Abu Hamza, who preached violent jihad at Finsbury Park Mosque, north London.
Mr Butt and five other UK extremists – all members of Hamza’s Supporters of Sharia group – went to Aden in December 1998 and were arrested for allegedly plotting to bomb the British consulate, a church and the Movenpick hotel on Christmas Day.
Two days after their arrest, 16 Western tourists were kidnapped in Yemen, apparently by a group linked to Mr Butt’s team. Three British hostages and an Australian were killed in a botched rescue.
Mr Butt says he can serve Sparkhill better than the incumbent Labour councillors, who he says do not speak English.
