Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party or UKIP and a member of the European Parliament, told Fox News host Neil Cavuto that the open door immigration policy instituted by Tony Blair's Labour government has led to the current environment out of which extremist groups like ISIL and al Qaeda draw new recruits.
"Much of this recruitment to extremism is going on within the organizations of the state," Farage said.
"It's happening within schools, and especially it is happening within prisons. And one of the reasons it's being allowed to happen within the organs of our state is that we as governments, we as nations, we as countries, are not being robust enough in defending our values. We have been weak and they've taken advantage of us."
Farage has been a critic of 'multiculturalism,' which he says has created culturally homogenous enclaves within Western European nations such as the United Kingdom and allowed the spread of jihadist recruitment.
We have been through, in my country over the course of the last 20 years, particularly since Blair became prime minister back in '97, a level of open door immigration to the whole of the world, on a scale that we have never seen before.
And allied to that has been a taxpayer-funded, state idea that multiculturalism is good. Now, let's just define what we mean. If we mean by multiculturalism, people of different religions, different skin color, living together within the same community, I have absolutely no problem with that whatsoever, and I'm sure none of your viewers on this show do, either.
But if what we mean by multiculturalism is actually encouraging people to stick to their original languages, to stick to their original religions to the total exclusion of what everybody else in that country may be, if we use money to encourage division within society, then is it in wonder we're in the mess we are now?
Farage said that although he has been attacked for "daring to attack this PC, politically correct, wonderful, marvelous agenda of multiculturalism," the results of the UK's open immigration policy have severely divided communities in Britain along racial, linguistic, and religious lines.