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Blair: 'Confront evil ideology'
19/07/2005 17:59 - (SA)
London - Prime Minister Tony Blair called on Tuesday on Britain's Muslim community to confront the "evil ideology" behind the London bombings after a meeting with leaders from Islamic groups.
Blair said Muslim Britons and others must "confront this evil ideology, take it on and defeat it by the force of reason and argument".
Blair was speaking at a joint press conference with visiting Afghan president Hamid Karzai, after his meeting with 25 Muslim leaders, including lawmakers, businesspeople and religious figures.
He said the gathering "revolved around a very strong desire of people from right across the Muslim community in our country" to deal with the problem.
True faith of Islam
Blair said as well as condemning the July 7 attacks in which at least 56 people died, the Muslim representatives expressed their determination 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".
Three of the four men blamed for the suicide bombings, which ripped apart three London Underground trains and a bus, were British-born Muslims of Pakistani origin.
The fourth was a Jamaican-born Briton who converted to Islam.
Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, the main representative body for the country's 1.6 million-strong Muslim community, described the 90-minute meeting as "important".
'Criminality has to be addressed'
He said: "The meeting was an important listening exercise for the prime minister and people across the Muslim spectrum.
"What really came out ... that there is certainly this criminality in the community that has to be addressed."
Sacranie also emphasised that only a "very, very small minority" of British Muslims espoused extremist views.
On Tuesday, a newspaper poll said two-thirds of Britons believed there was a link between the London bombings and the conflict.
Blair rounded on this view, warning that it was dangerously close to "the sort of perverted and twisted logic" used by the terrorists themselves.
Excuse
Blair said: "Of course, these terrorists will use Iraq as an excuse, or use Afghanistan.
"September 11, of course, happened before both of those things and then the excuse was American policy, or Israel."
British police were mounting a massive investigation into the London blasts, much of it focused on who might have helped the suspected bombers plan the attacks.
Several British papers carried reports about a trip to Pakistan made last November by two of the suspected bombers, a 22-year-old Shahzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sadique Khan, 30.
According to The Times, which carried grainy security pictures of the pair passing through immigration at Karachi airport, Pakistani authorities knew the identity of the British-born mastermind behind the attacks.
- AFP
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