Cameron likens Islamic separatists to BNP
· Tory leader rails against Muslim Council of Britain
· Report says groups exert undue political influence
Will Woodward, chief political correspondent
Tuesday January 30, 2007
The Guardian
The Conservatives will today accuse Islamic groups including the high-profile, mainstream Muslim Council of Britain of promoting separation and ignoring the wishes of the people they represent.
A report by the party's policy group on national and international security will tear into the MCB as part of a generalised attack on the concept of multiculturalism, which it says has divided people rather than simply respecting their differences.
The report will underline comments made by the party's leader, David Cameron, who warned yesterday that separatist Muslims who promote sharia law and demand special treatment for their faith are the "mirror image" of the British National party.
The report says a significant number of Muslim groups are "keener to promote ideologies than the totality of the communities they claim to represent", and that their political influence greatly exceeds the extent to which British Muslims feel represented by them.
In an attack on the MCB - which has until recently been feted by government ministers - the report says: "Its hardline members tend to dominate policy and crowd out more moderate and varied voices. As a result the MCB's claim to 'foster good community relations and work for the good of society as a whole' is hard to reconcile with some of the positions it has taken."
Mr Cameron included extremism and multiculturalism among divisive factors which made people feel ashamed of being British. He also called for some of the money spent on translating official documents into other languages to be spent on English lessons in an effort to integrate more people into mainstream society.
In a speech on community cohesion in the Lozells area of Birmingham - the scene of clashes between Asian and black men in October 2005 - the Conservative leader identified five "Berlin walls" of division: extremism, multiculturalism, poor educational standards, uncontrolled immigration and poverty.
The 7/7 bombings brought this debate into sharp focus, Mr Cameron said. "But let us not in the process ever give the impression that this question of Britishness, this question of community cohesion, is all about terrorism, or all about Muslims. If we do, then we actually make it harder to beat the terrorist threat," he said.
He condemned the British National party's creed of "pure hate" but added that those who sought "... a separate law for British Muslims are, in many ways, the mirror image of the BNP".
A poll by the Policy Exchange thinktank yesterday, showing that 37% of 16- to 24-year-old British Muslims wanted to live according to sharia, was "extremely worrying", Mr Cameron told Radio 4's Today programme.
Last night Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, the high-ranking former diplomat who chairs the policy commission, said multiculturalism "has tended on the whole to emphasise differences between us rather than actually creating a framework in which difference flourishes".
While stressing that the group was not singling out Muslims, she did criticise the MCB's approach. "We would like it to say that they actually stand specifically and explicitly for integration," she told BBC2's Newsnight. But it "does not in our view take a sufficiently strong stand against that kind of view".
She attacked the MCB's supportive references to the conservative Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. But on the same programme, Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary of the MCB, said Mr Qaradawi had spoken out against extremism.
"In the report, in all its mentions of the Muslim Council of Britain, there's no mention of any of the positive work we've done," he said.
"The MCB is proud to stand for integration. We want British Muslims to play their full role in all aspects of British society, we want obstacles to be removed."
He rejected the criticism of multiculturalism and said the radicalisation of British Muslims was due more to British foreign policy.
Backstory
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) was set up in 1997 as a platform for British Muslims and a means to raise their concerns within wider British society.
As an umbrella organisation representing more than 250 Muslim groups, the MCB has gained a degree of recognition as the "go to" organisation when journalists and politicians seek Muslim opinion.
Yet the lack of a single figurehead comparable, for example, to the Church of England's Archbishop of Canterbury means the MCB is often criticised for not being truly representative.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conse...001749,00.html
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