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Terrorism and Community Relations

I congratulate the Chairman and all the members of the Select Committee on a first-class and prescient report. I did not come with prepared remarks, but I want to say a few words before the Front-Bench spokesmen make their contributions. I simply want to reflect on what happened in my constituency earlier this year and on some of the lessons that I have started to draw from those events. I do not pretend for one moment to have a blueprint or any solution to the problems that the debate has explored. I recall the sense of almost physical shock that went around Aylesbury when it was discovered that one of the bombers had been living in the town. Although the initial shock dissipated somewhat when it was discovered that the man had lived there for only a short time and was not from the largest Muslim community in town—the Pakistani community—people were left with many questions and uncertainties. On a point to which my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) alluded, over the past few months white constituents have much more frequently raised their sense of mistrust and fear, both in conversation and in formal correspondence. That is not just a fear about known terrorists, but a fear that a large part of, or the entire, British Muslim community is somehow a kind of fifth column that cannot be relied on to stand up for this country. We cannot dismiss those fears, or the fact that events since 9/11 and July will have added to the number of people who feel a sense of disquiet. I visited a mosque soon after the police raid on Northern road in Aylesbury. The initial response was a forthright condemnation of terrorism, and the second response was a sense of real frustration at the extensive publicity given for many months to a handful of unrepresentative individuals. There was also frustration that some of those people had not been taken to court, or booted out of this country, long before. I have a few reflections to make on the challenges that we face as a country, starting with the tension between different generations in the Muslim community. I agree strongly with the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) and the hon. Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) that it is not enough for any of us—whether constituency Members of Parliament or Ministers—to talk only to the elders of the Muslim community, although clearly it remains important that that is done. There are real issues about tensions between generations in that community, and I subdivide them into two distinct problems. One is that in the largest Muslim communities—the Pakistani and Bengali communities—we find relatively low standards of educational attainment, participation in higher education and work-related skills, just as we do for poor whites and Afro-Caribbeans in Britain. Those are not new issues. Also, in every such ethnic or religious group, the boys seem to do worse than the girls. Those problems can certainly lead to disaffection. In some cases, they can lead to young people being tempted into crime, because they can afford a better standard of living that way than by carrying out an unskilled but legitimate job. I have had meetings with senior members of the Muslim community in my constituency where they have said to me, ““The trouble is that white society is corrupting our young men, with crime, drugs and a focus on sexual gratification which we reject.”” In a sense, that social problem—we are aware that it applies to a number of different communities—is perhaps more susceptible to the intervention of policy makers than the second subdivision. That relates to those from the Muslim community who are well educated, but who, as the Chairman of the Committee said, find their sense of identity neither with the United Kingdom and British traditions and institutions, nor any more with their parents' way of life; they sometimes reject their parents as insufficiently Islamic. Instead, they find their identity in the community of world Islam, or in an extreme interpretation of that community. Through satellite and cable television, they can obtain access to media that provide an Islamocentric or Arabocentric view of the world that is absent from mainstream television news coverage. Fellow citizens of ours learn about countries such as Kashmir, Palestine and Chechnya in a different way from those who rely on BBC news, Sky or other mainstream media outlets. We cannot communicate with the elders alone. We all have to find ways of communicating with all members of the community. With regard to those who are well-educated, it is, as my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) said, a matter of somehow trying to make our political institutions accessible and attractive to aspiring young men and women. We need them to want to change the world by participating in British politics rather than seeking to reject not only particular policies but an entire method of doing business. One point that I wanted to make was touched upon in the report but has not been mentioned this afternoon. It is about what goes on in our prisons. For perhaps a decade, there has been a growing number of Muslim prisoners in prisons and young offenders institutions. I believe that the Prison Service needs to give close attention to the religious and citizenship education of those people. The chaplaincy service is crucial. I have seen reports that the Aylesbury young offenders institution—the Minister will know that it is one of only two high-security institutions in England—had some real problems a few years ago with a man who, as well as providing religious instruction was providing access to some extremist texts. I am glad to say that that is in the past; indeed, the governor has praised the local imam for his constructive and energetic work in the prison chaplaincy team.