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One of the London Bridge attackers was involved in a violent outburst that was reported to British counter-terrorism police almost a year ago, according to the head of anti-extremist think tank Quilliam.
Quilliam founder Maajid Nawaz told Lateline how the terrorist, Khuram Butt, attacked one of his staff members at an Eid event on July 6 last year.
Mr Nawaz said Butt started yelling "apostate" at the staff member "and then proceeded to lunge at him and physically attack him".
"He was eventually wrestled to the ground by passers by and we as an organisation reported Khuram Butt to the police as an extremist and said this man needs to be kept an eye on."
Mr Nawaz, a former Islamist who was recruited by Hizb ut-Tahrir when he was 16, said police are not able to keep up with the number of extremists in the UK and he has outlined a four-point plan to tackle terrorism.
"You've got 23,000 suspected jihadists who are, according to our own security services, running around the United Kingdom out of a population of only four million Muslims in the UK," he said.
"So when you're looking at these figures it's terribly alarming."
Mr Nawaz said the first step was to start a "civil society struggle against extremist ideology".
"By naming and shaming this ideology, the Islamist ideology, it helps us to isolate it from Muslim communities," he said.
He said the British government's counter-extremism policy must be reinforced, a counter-extremism coordinator who reports to the Prime Minister should be appointed and human rights principles must be protected.
"If the terrorists are attacking us because they hate our freedom and democracy, then why would we attack that very freedom and democracy ourselves by undermining our values and abrogating our human rights commitments?" He said.
Mr Nawaz said that while Hizb ut-Tahrir had a dangerous ideology, he did not believe the group should be banned by Western countries.
The Attorney-General, George Brandis, told Lateline last month that the Government had taken the advice of security agencies and had no plans to ban the group.
Mr Nawaz says instead western governments should "draw a line" on their ideology.
"I think instead of banning them outright, we must make their activities difficult, we must challenge them in civil society, and they need to be turned into a taboo, a bit like homophobia and racism are a taboo," he said.
Topics: world-politics, terrorism, unrest-conflict-and-war, islam, united-kingdom