The journalist & the jihadi conman

Book review of The Messenger

In the book under review, Shiv Malik, a corporate communications professional and former investigative journalist, recounts the unnerving tale of being conned by a man who claimed to be an Islamist sympathiser with links to terror organisations.

After the 7/7 bombings in London, the British media was keen to probe home-grown terror emanating from Muslims born and brought up in Britain turning to Islamist ideology. Malik, who has worked for a number of British media outlets over the years, was keen to interview Hassan Butt, an Al Qaeda-affiliated radical, who as early as 2002 had claimed that he had recruited British