Preventing extremism
- 4 Jul 06, 11:32 AM
"I am probably not the person to go into the Muslim community and persuade them". That confession - with the emphasis firmly on the "I" - was the most revealing part of .
It tells us a great deal more than the official response to one of his own Muslim MPs, Sadiq Khan, who has worried aloud that the government might become "the Duke of York - marching all these talented British Muslims up the hill of consultation and dialogue, only to march them down again as very little appears to have changed." You can read his speech . Mr Khan was speaking from his experience as a member of the Preventing Extremism Together working groups set up after 7/7. He was articulating the complaint that the government is not really listening to the grievances of the Muslim community. A charge that was taken up by the chairmen of two Commons committees this morning - both Labour MPs as it happens.
Tony Blair made clear that he thinks this is all beside the point. "The problem", he said, was not what the government had or had not done. It was the failure of the Muslim community to have a "fundamental enough debate". It is, he argued, not good enough for people to say "we understand" the anger of those who commit acts of violence but that we disagree with the methods they pursue. The "whole sense of grievance" must be challenged and is wrong.
You could sense his frustration that he knew he wasn't the man to do it.
