"EXTREMISM
Tackling the causes of poverty. Fighting for real opportunity. And there’s one more big social reform in our mission to rebuild Britain as an even greater country. We need to confront – and I mean really confront – extremism.
When I read what some young people born and brought up in this country are doing, it makes me feel sick to my stomach. Girls not much older than my eldest daughter, swapping loving family homes and straight-A futures for a life of servitude under ISIL, in a land of violence and oppression. Boys who could do anything they wanted in Britain – who have benefitted from all this country stands for – instead ending up in the desert wielding a knife.
This ideology, this diseased view of the world, has become an epidemic – infecting minds from the mosques of Mogadishu to the bedrooms of Birmingham. And here’s what we need to do. One: tear up the narrative that says Muslims are persecuted and the West deserves what it gets. Never mind that it’s Britain and America behind the biggest effort to help the victims of Syria. Who is ISIL murdering more than anyone else? Muslims. No-one should get away with this politics of grievance anymore.
Two: take on extremism in all its forms, the violent and non-violent. People don’t become terrorists from a standing start. It begins with preachers telling them that Christians and Muslims can’t live together. It moves to people in their community saying the security services were responsible for 7/7. It progresses to a website telling them how to wage jihad, fight in Syria, and defeat the West. And before you know it, a young British boy, barely 17, is strapping bombs to his body and blowing himself up in Iraq. We have to stop it at the start – stop this seed of hatred even being planted in people’s minds, let alone allowing it to grow.
Three: we need to tackle segregation. There are parts of Britain today where you can get by without ever speaking English or meeting anyone from another culture. Zoom in and you’ll see some institutions that actually help incubate these divisions. Did you know, in our country, there are some children who spend several hours each day at a Madrassa? Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with children learning about their faith, whether it’s at Madrassas, Sunday Schools or Jewish Yeshivas. But in some Madrassas we’ve got children being taught that they shouldn’t mix with people of other religions; being beaten; swallowing conspiracy theories about Jewish people. These children should be having their minds opened, their horizons broadened…not having their heads filled with poison and their hearts filled with hate.
So I can announce this today: If an institution is teaching children intensively, then whatever its religion, we will, like any other school, make it register so it can be inspected. And be in no doubt: if you are teaching intolerance, we will shut you down.
This goes to a wider truth. For too long, we’ve been so frightened of causing offence that we haven’t looked hard enough at what is going on in our communities. This is passive tolerance. And I’ll tell you where it leads: To children, British children, going to Pakistan in the summer holidays, before they’ve even started their GCSEs, and forced to marry a man they’ve never met…children, British children, having their genitals mutilated, not just in a clinic in Lagos but the backstreets in Britain. This passive tolerance has turned us into a less integrated country; it’s put our children in danger. It is unforgiveable.
So let me say it right here: no more passive tolerance in Britain. We’ve passed the laws – now I want them enforced. People who organise forced marriages – I want them prosecuted. Parents who take their children for FGM – I want them arrested. And as we do that, we shouldn’t just be saying what’s wrong with these practices; we should be saying what’s right with Britain.
Freedom. Democracy. Equality. These are precious. People fought for them – many died for them…in the trenches, a century ago; on the beaches, 30 years later…in the Suffragettes; in Gay Pride. Half the world is crying out for these freedoms – they see what we’ve achieved with them. Free speech – and the best literature in the world. Freedom of religion – and many faiths living side by side, peacefully. Free thinking – and the endless advances in medicine and technology that has brought. A free economy – and a standard of living our grandparents could only have dreamed of.
I want my children – I want all our children – to know they’re part of something big – the proudest multi-racial democracy on earth. That’s why we’re making sure they learn British history at school. That’s why we started National Citizen Service to bring different people together. I want them to grow up proud of our country. That’s right: less Britain-bashing, more national pride – our way, the Conservative way, the only way to greater days."
http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/full-text-david-camerons-2015-conservative-conference-speech/
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