The more I listen to British Muslim leaders, the more obvious it seems that the single biggest problem facing the Muslim community in Britain - and, by extension, the rest of us as well - is a lack of responsible and courageous leadership, writes David Adams
There appears to be no one within that community prepared to confront their own people with hard and uncomfortable truths. You will wait in vain to hear any Muslim leader challenge head-on the ludicrous but now widespread belief among British Muslims that they are living in a country which actively discriminates against them because of their religion.
Rather than risk confrontation, influential Muslims invariably play along with - and add weight to - this fundamentalist-inspired gripe. British society is, by any measure, one of the most open and tolerant in the world. Yet, listening to Muslim leaders, it sounds, at least as far as Islam is concerned, like one of the most oppressive and discriminatory.
Senior Muslims will happily talk all day on television or radio of rampant "Islamophobia", police prejudice and the subsequent alienation of their young people. Yet never are they able to publicly concede that an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of terrorists being rooted exclusively within one religious community is that a great deal of police attention must be focused there as well.
It is little more than a year since 52 people were murdered and more than 700 injured by suicide-bombers in London. A few days after that, a similar bombing attempt was thwarted.
Yet there is no acknowledgment by influential Muslims of any need for special security measures and little apparent recognition of the deep hurt caused to, and commendable tolerance of, the wider British public.
Muslim MPs and peers seem no more willing to challenge the myth of Muslim victimhood than the innumerable religious and community leaders who regularly stalk the media.
Recently, six members of the British parliament joined 38 community groups to sign a letter calling on Tony Blair to change British foreign policy because it ". . . risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad". One might have expected parliamentarians, at least, to stand firm on the principle that no democratic government can afford to bend to a threat of violence or, as in this case, allow itself to be held hostage by a tiny minority of its citizens. Instead, they meekly went along with their co-religionists.
Although there is no chance of their leaders spelling it out, British Muslims need to realise that their outrage, whatever its stimulus, is no more nor less legitimate than that of other sections of society. In line with the rest of us, neither are they entitled to express their anger by any means other than peaceful protest, lobbying and the ballot-box.
The obligation on every citizen to abide by the law and express anger and frustration only in a peaceful manner is a small price to pay for the benefits of living in a liberal democratic society. It takes little imagination to picture the chaos that would ensue if extreme members of every special interest group felt they had a perfect right to resort to terror tactics, or the threat of such, every time they were angered by events at home or abroad.
Since the London suicide-bombings of July 2005, senior British Muslims have been eager to lay blame for the radicalisation of some within their community at many different doors. Yet, despite their efforts, the unavoidable truth is that they themselves must shoulder much of the blame. For years, they failed to challenge a succession of fundamentalist imams who were quite obviously engaged in a process of radicalising the British Muslim community.
They stood by in cowardly acquiescence and said nothing while week after week Muslim communities were treated to hate-filled anti-western sermons and the heaping of praise on martyrdom and suicide-bombers, decapitators and kidnappers.
Little wonder then, with no one prepared to counter their views, that the extremists managed to bring swathes of young people and others under their spell.
Compare, for example, the unequivocal position of our own leading Northern Ireland Muslim, Abdul Al Jibouri, with the lack of leadership shown by Britain-based leaders.
Last Sunday, speaking on BBC Radio Ulster, Mr Al Jibouri said: "Islam does not encourage people to go and blow people up - this is based on fundamentalists and the way they interpret the Koran . . . Terrorism and active terrorism is totally against Islam and I would be the first person to condemn it."
Or the positive attitude of Nuara Bazama, of the Federation of Students' Islamic Societies, quoted in this newspaper on Wednesday: "Ireland has been very good to the Muslim youth and we've been very good, in turn, to Ireland . . . "
Those British Muslim leaders who, to date, have abdicated their own responsibilities in this regard can hardly now feign surprise that so many young British Muslims hold extremist views. Instead of trying to shift the blame on to others, it is time that they lived up to their job description and provided real leadership by starting to challenge and undo the work of the extremists.