Solsticewitch13's BOS: Don't alienate us over terror, Tory Muslim tells Cameron after he urges communities to speak out

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Don't alienate us over terror, Tory Muslim tells Cameron after he urges communities to speak out

A http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3132209/Don-t-alienate-terror-Tory-Muslim-tells-Cameron-urges-communities-speak-out.html

backlash is building from community leaders over PM's warning
Baroness Sayeeda Warsi says the PM doesn't have an understanding of what Muslim communities already do to fight terror
The PM could 'alienate' Muslims by suggesting they don't do enough
'Our religion is being maligned' say Muslim constituents

By Gerri Peev, Political Correspondent For The Daily Mail

Published: 00:08 GMT, 20 June 2015 | Updated: 12:10 GMT, 20 June 2015162 shares

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Sayeeda Warsi said Mr Cameron seemed to ignore that British Muslims were already fighting terrorist ideology

David Cameron could ‘alienate’ and ‘demoralise Muslims’ by suggesting they were not doing enough to challenge extremism, a former Tory Cabinet Minister warned yesterday.

Sayeeda Warsi said Mr Cameron seemed to ignore that British Muslims were already fighting terrorist ideology.

A backlash was building last night from community leaders over the Prime Minister’s warning that Muslims must not ‘quietly condone’ terrorist groups.

Writing for the Guardian newspaper, Baroness Warsi said: ‘My concern is that this call to Muslims to do more without an understanding of what they already do now will demoralise the very people who will continue to lead this fight.

‘The Government is acutely aware of how disengaged it is from large sections of the British Muslim communities. So advisers would have been aware how this intervention with its misguided emphasis and call to action, would at best fall on deaf ears, at worst further alienate.’

Baroness Warsi, the first Muslim to sit in Cabinet, added that Muslims were ‘fighting the same battle he is fighting. They know they have to do more, they are willing to do more, but they will do it a lot better knowing we are on the same side.

'Government needs to champion them, support them. Only then will it have the credibility to demand that communities themselves do more’.

And she criticised Mr Cameron for making the speech in Slovakia, saying: ‘He should also have been advised not to choose Bratislava as the backdrop to speak to his own British Muslim communities, but to opt for Birmingham, or dare I even suggest, Bradford.’

Her remarks came as a leading Muslim backed Mr Cameron’s calls.

Manzoor Moghal, of the Muslim Forum, told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One:

‘The Muslim community in Britain is somewhat backward in its thinking, it is refusing to move and become progressive, it is refusing to change its old habits from attire to dress code, it is refusing to come out of an isolation which is self-imposed within certain sects of Islam.

‘All these things have to change and then we might see an improvement in the behaviour of young people who’d want to stay in society and not be lured away by these false promises.’

Mr Moghal this week wrote in the Mail that ‘as the lethal cycle of British involvement in jihadism deepens, so the cries of victimhood grow stronger’.

But Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Roman Catholic church in England and Wales, told LBC Radio: ‘There are many Muslim voices in this country that condemn Isis and condemn it absolutely. We don’t hear those in the public media very often but they’re there.’

And Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi, who represents Bolton South East, accused Mr Cameron of confusing religious conservatism with support for extremism.

Londoners flee to Isis: Former Tory Cabinet Minister Sayeeda Warsi warned that Cameron is not aware of the work already being done by Muslim communities against terror. Meanwhile Londoners continue to flee to Syria to join the Islamic State, including (left to right) 15-year-old Amira Abase, Kadiza Sultana,16 and Shamima Begum, 15, pictured in February at Gatwick airport, before they caught their flight to Turkey (file photo)

She said: ‘I speak to my constituents who are very religious and whenever an incident happens they are shaking their heads in disgust and they’re saying, “Our religion is being maligned.”’

She said Muslims were tired of constantly being called on to apologise for the actions of extremists.

‘It feels absolutely awful,’ she said. ‘In Charleston you had a white man who went and killed nine black people in a church.

‘I don’t hear anybody saying that the whole of the white population has to apologise for the action of one white man.’

Dr Shuja Shafi, of the Muslim Council of Britain, described the accusations as ‘erroneous, wrong and counter-productive’.

But former radical Muslim recruiter Abu Muntasir told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘There is grooming, no doubt. So the parents need to have more communication with their children, they need to have more of an overseeing aspect of how to be a good parent.’

Hannah Stuart, of the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, said the speech should be seen as an ‘invitation’ to British Muslims to work with the Government.