UK calls on Muslim leaders to fight extremism
The UK foreign secretary has called on Muslim leaders to lead the fight against extremism in their countries.
Philip Hammond also warned that tackling extremism by security measures alone was simply dealing with the symptoms of a disease.
“While the West is facing a security problem, the Islamic world is facing an existential challenge. Fundamentalism and moderate Islam are incompatible and only one of them can survive,” he said.
The British official went on accusing a majority of Muslim nations of either ignoring the threat of Islamic extremism altogether or turning a blind eye to what is going on in their mosques, schools or prisons.
He did not name any individual countries, but Saudi Arabia has been repeatedly accused of allowing an extremist Wahhabism to be taught in its schools.
Hammond, speaking at the Munich security conference, said some Islamic countries had taken up the challenge through effective counter-radicalisation and counter-fundamentalist programs.
“Speaking very frankly, I think they are in a minority. Some are more or less ignoring the problem. Others still insist it is an external threat that is imported from outside and decline to look closely at what is going on in their own schools, their own mosques and their own prisons. Others are relying too heavily, almost exclusively, on a security solution,” he said.
Hammond argued the fight against extremism would continue even if ISIL was defeated on the battlefield.
Hammond argued the two fundamental causes of extremism worldwide were a lack of a hope, such as a lack of jobs, and also a framework into which that lack of hope could be channeled.
A London-based human rights activist Masoud Shadjareh says the statements blame the Muslims instead of the UK and its allies foreign policies for the emergence of extremism across the globe.
Head of the Islamic Rights Commission said British government has done nothing to stop its regional allies like Saudi Arabia to cope with the extremism.
'Blair to receive UK knighthood for war crimes in Iraq'
Journalist: Prosecute US, UK war criminals under Nuremberg principles
‘Support for Israel declining in UK, US’
Trump raises global tariffs to 15%, calls Supreme Court ruling ‘ridiculous’
IRGC Navy tests Sayyad-3G air defense missile in Strait of Hormuz
Iran labels EU naval, air forces as ‘terrorist’ in response to IRGC listing
ICE quietly buys warehouses for major detention expansion
Family of US citizen killed by Israeli settler demands end to impunity
VIDEO | Press TV's news headlines
VIDEO | Trump’s 'Gaza Riviera' vs. tents: Deep divide over US' 12-point plan
VIDEO | Palestine Action is back!
PressTV NEWSLETTER
now
This makes it easy to access the Press TV website
