British prime minister Tony Blair has been warned that issues affecting young Muslims and extremism are not amenable to "the politics of symbolism" and that the Muslim task force which he announced last week may well fail.
The warning from Muslim peer Kishwer Falkner came as Abdul-Rehman Malik, the contributing editor for Q-News, The Muslim Magazine, said most young Muslims across Britain "have never heard of the people the prime minister asked to speak in their name" at last Tuesday's Downing Street summit.
Their contributions to the debate about Islamic fundamentalism and the terrorist threat followed weekend polling evidence which suggested discontent among some Muslims with the existing moderate, pro-British "community" leadership with which the government and police are seeking to forge an effective partnership against the bombers and those who inspire them.
As polling evidence pointed to divisions within Britain's Muslim communities, Baroness Falkner, a Liberal Democrat peer, warned: "The problem is so grave that the politics of symbolism and weekly initiatives will no longer do."
The baroness asked if the task force was the answer "or merely yet another attempt at a 'Big Conversation', New Labour style." She suggested an alternative way forward might be a "real" commission of inquiry to ask why, among other things, "some communities are so segregated that they do not even share the common language, far less shared values."
Writing in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph, Baroness Falkner said the problem was not one which would be solved by better communication or networking.
The basis for action, she suggested, was a recently leaked Home Office/Foreign Office paper examining whether there was a link between extremism and terrorism, and how to seek to prevent young people being drawn to them.
The paper was drawn from input from the security services, intelligence debriefings, surveys of Muslim opinion, discussions with Muslim representatives and civil service Muslim advisers.
Describing it as "curious" that it was not the basis "for action here and now", Baroness Falkner said it showed that there had been careful and deliberate analysis which might guide to where change was needed.
Noting it was "as if this work is unacknowledged by government", she added: "Perhaps this is because it would be an admission that the government has not been and will not be able to prevent terrorism altogether, and that its policies abroad may indeed contribute to the risk at home."
Writing on the same themes in the Observer, Abdul-Rehman Malik said to be successful, a task force must be independent of Downing Street.
He suggested if the government was to tackle the problems of extremism, social exclusion and lack of civic participation, the work of this group should be re-framed as a royal commission answerable to parliament.
Suggesting possible roles for people such as Bolton boxing hero Amir Khan and singer-songwriter Yusuf Islam, Mr Malik said a truly legitimate commission would pull people out of the grassroots with a track record of necessary, meaningful and creative work.
Referring to the established leadership represented at Downing Street last Tuesday, he said: "A few months ago, groups like the Muslim Council of Britain would have dismissed claims that angry, globalised and ideologically hardened Muslim men could potentially become terrorists carrying out attacks on British soil. Now its leadership is going to great lengths to sound as if they were trying to prevent these terrible attacks all along."
No one group should bear the burden of representing "the unrepresentable", Mr Malik concluded. "If the government wants to eradicate the causes of terror through a battle of hearts and minds, then it will not waste time with figureheads. It must get into inner cities and join grassroots workers in their struggle to put Muslim Britain right."