Richard Spring MP
Member of Parliament for West Suffolk

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.

In a country which has mostly worn its religion comparatively lightly, at least for the past few hundred years, religious fanaticism seems very alien and incomprehensible. How many times have my constituents tackled me to ask me why it is that people born and brought up here so hate our way of life that they wish to kill us.

Although they overlap, it is just about possible to distinguish between two strands of terrorism. There were some in this country of Irish parentage who felt attracted to the IRA. Yet however terrible and reprehensible their actions were, at least the IRA was rooted in a territorial based quest. However difficult, it was possible to begin a negotiation and ultimately achieve a settlement. With religious or ideological and non land based terrorism, the enemy is a way of life; it is hugely more difficult.

Yesterday Jan Moir wrote an excellent piece in the Daily Telegraph, as did Michael Gove in the Times. Britain, for all its imperfections, is an extraordinarily tolerant and open society. Ultimately it is the communities themselves from which these potential killers have emerged who have to be the guardians of our liberties by helping to identify religious rabble rousers and fanatics, and those who have succumbed to their views. It is absolutely in their interest to do so and we have to assist this process as comprehensively as we can. Iraq, hedonism, Palestine or licentiousness can in no way justify the indiscriminate murder and mayhem of people in this country, irrespective of their faith or background, simply out of misplaced fury and loathing for the society we all live in.