Living Together
David Cameron, speaking the day before yesterday at the ‘Islam and Muslims in the World Today’ rightly warned against cultural separation in Britain. We do need to inspire people coming to this country, and those ethnic minorities living here, to embrace the feeling of being British. The Government should help this process by shifting power away from the centre and back to local communities, helping to foster a sense of UK identity. However, David Cameron stated that the onus also lay with the Muslim community and faith leaders to lead actively the communities they represent in the direction of involvement with the wider local community.
The type of leadership and courage we need to see was recently shown by the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr Ali Gomaa, one of the world’s foremost experts in Islamic scholarship. He had the courage to state categorically that the ill-trained scholars who preach extremism have no authority to do so.
In Syria, the Grand Mufti openly talks about his Christian and Jewish brothers and sisters, all linked to Abraham. He invited me to speak in his mosque in Aleppo last Friday – there were 2000 people in the congregation. My fellow MPs and I were very well received. It was an extraordinarily moving and memorable occasion. This is what tolerance and mutual understanding is all about.