Downing Street Says » Liaison Committee-Muslim Engagement

Asked why the Prime Minster had taken a belligerent tone as Muslim representative’s reaction to those comments seemed to show they had not helped improve relations, the PMOS said that the response from within the Muslim community was not as uniform as was being suggested. The Prime Minister’s comments should not be a surprise as we had ruled out a public inquiry in the past. When you had 70 ongoing investigations, as Peter Clarke from the Metropolitan Police had confirmed yesterday, the argument for not diverting attention, energy and resources away from those investigations was a powerful one. In terms of what we had done there was no point hiding the fact that we strongly disagreed with the suggestion that nothing had been done in the last year. Of the 64 recommendations that the various working parties had come up with 27 were for government. Two had been completed: One, extending provision of equal opportunities and recent equality law to cover discrimination on the grounds of faith and two, ensuring that the youth green paper was accessible to Muslim youth. There were another 17 of the government recommendations either in progress or already happening. This included an FCO and Home Office programme for young Muslims to visit Islamic countries.

We had expanded the minority ethnic achievement project. We were moving to improve RE teaching. We were establishing a steering group at DfES to look into Islamaphobia. Outside the government recommendations we had community groups against extremism set up in places like Leicester, Redbridge and Dudley. Of the nine recommendations from the young people’s working group eight had been implemented. The community itself had last week launched the Mosque and Imams Advisory Board. John Denham had asked about the Commission on Integration and Cohesion and we had announced the chairman, Dara Singh last week. 18 influential Muslim Scholars had spoken to audiences on the Scholars road shows where we estimated that up to 30,000 people had attended. The prison service was doing more to ensure young Muslims were better prepared for going back into the community. So there was a lot of activity going on within government and the wider community. The Prime Minister was also clear that government could only do so much and that the Muslim community must take up the slack. In certain places it was but he would like to see it doing more.

Put that John Denham’s concern was that there was not an action plan to check off against, the PMOS said that we disagreed. Part of setting up the Department for Communities and Local Government had added focus to this in the areas that came under Ruth Kelly’s responsibility. Phil Woolas had also indicated his role in that too. It was important that we did not divert attention away from the central issues about the need to tackle extremism into infighting about how well we were doing. The reality was progress was being made. More progress needed to be made, but we needed to concentrate on the objective rather than the unnecessary diversions.

Asked whether the Prime Minister thought it was an issue of leadership within the Muslim community, the PMOS said that was a matter for the Muslim community to choose it’s own leaders and it was not wise for people outside that community to offer a commentary on that. The Prime Minister’s central starting point on this issue was that the majority of Muslims were moderate and did not condone extremism or terrorism. It was important, however, to mobilise that moderate opinion to express that view. The Prime Minister believed that the community needed to do more to take on extremism in its midst. He had been saying this for some time and it had been one of the themes of his major foreign policy speech in March.

Asked how the Prime Minister responded to those who pointed to the Bloody Sunday inquiry, the PMOS said that the reasons for setting up the Bloody Sunday inquiry were relevant to the peace process. It was a different time and era. We all had to recognise that the inquiry for whatever reasons had taken a long time and had cost a lot of money. The central point, however, was that you had to ask what would any 7/7 inquiry tell us that we did not already know and when you weighed that against the diversion of money and resources was it worthwhile. This was why the Prime Minister believed that an inquiry was not justified.

1 Comment »

In the past Muslim community was victim of Paki-bashing and now it is victim of terrorism. God knows what is going to happen in future.
Comment by Iftikhar — 5 Jul 2006 on 7:15 pm | Link

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» Tuesday, July 4, 2006

Liaison Committee-Muslim Engagement

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