Former MI6 Head Calls on Muslims

Former MI6 head, Sir Richard Dearlove, told a conference that Muslims are best placed to root out extremism in Britain. He said:

At the moment it is very easy for al-Qaida to recruit its foot soldiers. The most effective way for Muslim communities to police the al-Qaida influence in the UK is to do it themselves. Community policing in the UK has failed in this specific area.

Would this failure have to do with the government and media giving all their attention to groups run by extremists and Islamists. A group who's head threatens Britain with 2 million home-grown terrorists is not a group that will tackle terrorism. A group that boycotts Holocaust Memorial Day is not a group that will oppose extremism. A group who's leaders call for non-cooperation with police and who support Hamas and Hezbollah is not a group that want to stop Islamism.

By giving these groups all the attention, the moderate majority are effectively silenced and ignored. Instead the debate about Islamism is skewed because we take the opinion of Islamists as mainstream. The government must lead on this by completely ignoring such groups. If we stop shining the spotlight on the extremist groups we might start to find the moderate groups out there.