Ruth Kelly urges action on Muslim extremism

LONDON, Oct 16 (Reuters) Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly is to meet police and council leaders today to discuss how to target Islamist extremists as senior Muslim leaders accused the government of running an Islamophobic agenda.

In a private meeting, Kelly will tell 20 officials of plans to target Islamist extremist ''hotspots'' by encouraging the council and police chiefs to pick out mosques, schools and universities where young Muslims are being influenced.

''The new extremism we're facing is the single biggest security issue for local communities,'' Kelly will say.

''This is not just a problem for Muslim communities. We all must play our part in responding to it.'' The Guardian newspaper said other measures being planned included asking university lecturers and staff to check on Muslim students and to report on those they suspected to be supporters of militants.

Kelly's meeting today keeps the debate about Muslim extremism and integration at the top of the political agenda, coming amid a growing row over whether the use of the veil by Muslim women hinders community relations.

However the focus of attention has prompted the Muslim Council of Britain, the UK's largest Islamic group, to write to Kelly complaining that there had been a ''drip-feed of ministerial statements stigmatising an entire community''.

''What is happening, especially in the last few months, has been a barrage of demonisation of the Muslim community to such an extent that the community is now scared and the whole community feels vulnerable,'' MCB general secretary Muhammad Abdul Bari told BBC Radio.

''What, simply, (ministers) are doing is trying to undermine and marginalise further the Muslim community, especially those organisations which have been working so hard for community cohesion.'' The debate over Muslim integration has been growing steadily in the last few weeks since Home Secretary John Reid made a powerful speech at the Labour Party conference last month when he vowed to stop Muslim extremists setting up ''no-go'' ghettos.

That was followed by Leader of the House of Commons Jack Straw saying that Muslim women who wore full veils made community relations more difficult because they acted as a ''visible statement of separation and difference.'' A number of government ministers have spoken out in support of Straw since then and the debate escalated further last week when a Muslim teaching assistant was suspended from a school in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, for refusing to take off her veil.

Conservative home affairs spokesman David Davis wrote in a Sunday newspaper that there was a feeling that Muslim communities were ''excessively sensitive'' and that Muslim women wearing veils risked creating a ''voluntary apartheid''.

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