Downing Street Says » Ruth Kelly meeting

» Monday, October 16, 2006

Ruth Kelly meeting

Asked for further information on Ruth Kelly’s meeting today, the PMOS said that Ruth Kelly was meeting with the local authority leaders. She would be addressing the issue of extremism across the board, and she would say that extremism was not just a problem for Muslim communities, but rather, for all of us, and we all had a shared responsibility in taking it on. In terms of the Muslim community, we must proactively support the work being done by many moderates within the Muslim community and elsewhere to take on such extremists. The PMOS said that action already taken by the local authorities in fighting extremism since 7th July included the setting up of forums against extremism, and other education programmes which taught the rejection of violence etc. Therefore, there was already a lot of work underway.

Asked if it was true that some schools had been given training on how to spot potential extremists in classes, the PMOS replied that he was not sure if individual schools had. However, in general, what people were trying to do was encourage a situation where there was education about the benefits of pluralism, and about why we needed to reject violence. That was all part of the education programmes that had been set up since 7th July.

Asked for comment on today’s Guardian story about universities being encouraged to spy on students, the PMOS replied that there was a misunderstanding in that the approach in universities was to teach the positive case for pluralism, rather than spying.

Put that the story had quoted a document, the PMOS said that they had misunderstood the document, but suggested the journalists checked with the Department for Education for more information.

Put that the Muslim community leaders were not at the meeting with Ruth Kelly, the PMOS pointed out that this was a meeting for local authority leaders, and we had separate meetings with Muslim communities.

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