Speaking ahead of the country’s biggest annual gathering of Muslims this weekend, Naseer Dean, the London head of the influential Ahmadiyya Muslim group, launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May.
He argued that Tory ministers had allowed for the radicalisation of 4,000 young British Muslims by failing to grasp the scale of the problem of religious extremism.
He accused the media regulator Ofcom of being “reactive” rather than proactive and attacked the Home Office for cutting off funding to vital services aimed at monitoring extremist preachers.
And he called on the Government to “educate itself” about Islam so that "they have a better handle of what is going on in the mosques".
Shortly after the General Election, the Prime Minister announced plans for tough new rules to tackle extremism, claiming Britain had become a “passively tolerant” society.
They included “closure orders” brought in to shut buildings used by extremist preachers and a ban on radical clerics mixing with vulnerable young Muslims.
But, in an exclusive interview with Express.co.uk, Mr Dean rubbished the proposals as “a knee-jerk reaction”.
“They are expecting the local authority and everybody to be monitors and to snoop, which is not the way to go,” he said.
“They need to find out what is going on in the mosques and a lot of the clerics that are coming to the United Kingdom are being allowed to come here.” » | Tom Batchelor | Friday, August 21, 2015
