Muslims to confront 'evil ideology', says Blair

British Prime Minister Tony Blair today held a summit with 25 Muslim leaders, including MPs, peers, businessmen and religious…

British Prime Minister Tony Blair today held a summit with 25 Muslim leaders, including MPs, peers, businessmen and religious leaders, and education experts.

Mr Blair said there would be a network of people prepared to take on arguments within the Muslim community and confront "this evil ideology and defeat it by the force of reason".

Opposition leaders Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy were also at today's talks, along with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Mr Kennedy said that setting up a new task force to tackle the issue was to be considered.

After this morning's hour-long meeting Mr Blair said: "The meeting revolved around a very strong desire of people from right across the Muslim community in our country to be united, not just in a condemnation of the terrible terrorist attacks here in London but also to confront and deal with head-on the extremism that is based on a perversion of the true faith of Islam but nonetheless is real within parts of our community here in this country.

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"There was a strong desire from everybody there to make sure we establish the right mechanisms for people to be able to go into the community and confront this," he said.

Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, who attended today's Downing Street meeting, told GMTV that there had been a "clear increase in disenchantment" among Muslim youths.

He said there were a number of factors to explain the trend.

"Muslim youths are generally underachieving with high rates of unemployment. . . . The Chatham House report also said the Iraq war had made it easier for al-Qaeda to exploit a sense of grievance among the Muslim community."

However, Anjem Choudary, UK leader of the militant Islamist group al-Muhajiroun, said Muslim leaders should not meet Mr Blair for talks.

In a BBC interview, Mr Choudary declined to condemn the July 7th bombings in London and warned there was a "very real possibility" of a repeat of the atrocities.

Yesterday British Muslim religious leaders and scholars issued a fatwa outside the Houses of Parliament in response to the London bombs that killed at least 56 people. It condemned the use of violence and stated that suicide bombs were "vehemently prohibited".