Government Launches Commission to Ease Inter-Faith Tensions

The government’s Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly has said that tensions between people of different ethnic groups and faiths in Britain must be tackled. Kelly’s comments come as she launched a ‘Commission on Integration and Cohesion’, whereby she urged for a new and “honest” debate to take place on diversity.

|PIC1|The new Commission will commence its work in September, and is a fresh initiative investigating how communities in England tackle tensions and extremism.

One thing that the body will not look into, however, is whether faith schools are a good thing, and she continues her persistence is emphasising that parents should have a choice.

As the terrorist threat continues to loom over Britain, the government has planned to build more faith schools, but has faced opposition from those that say it could lead to an increase in segregation between those of different faiths.

The launch by Kelly comes at a time when the media eye has highlighted the issues of isolation and alienation amongst faith groups, in particular among young Muslims.

The schedule put forward by the Commission is to tour the UK from next month till June 2007, investigating how communities across major cities and towns tackle the challenges of segregation, as well as social and economic divisions that have been witnessed among some ethnic groups.

As she launched the Commission in London, Kelly declared that the UK had now moved away from a uniform “consensus” on multi-culturalism. She explained that people were now questioning whether multi-culturalism was a good thing and whether it in fact encouraged separateness.

|TOP|One particular focus the Commission specifically is not looking to engage with is that of the ideology of a “perverted form of Islam” – which is something that the government will look to deal with in other ways.

Rather it will look to build bridges for people to communicate and get to know the other citizens around them, to cut off the growing sense of separateness.

Praising some English towns, such as Oldham, in making progress in uniting people together despite a history of problems, Kelly said, “Multi-culturalism, different communities in Britain, the fact that Britain is open to people of all faiths and none, has been a huge strength of this country.

“But what we have to got to do is recognise that while there have been huge benefits, there are also tensions created.

|AD|“The point of the commission... is to try and examine how those tensions arise and what local communities can do on the ground practically to tackle those and make a difference.”

Kelly also said she accepted there were “elements of the Muslim community that profoundly disagree with British foreign policy”. However, she pointed out that foreign policy was not a “root cause” of extremism and could not be tailored for any one section of the community.

Conservative Party representative Damian Green said, “There is a huge and vital challenge to be met in helping Britain's Muslim communities integrate fully with the rest of society. We hope that this latest government initiative has more substance than previous initiatives which have tended to grab a headline but then achieve very little in the long term.”

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg warned the Commission, "To be truly effective, any attempt to reach out to disaffected members of our Muslim communities must also incorporate an honest debate about this government's foreign policy and some of its counter-terrorism measures.”

Regarding faith schools, Kelly told that Church of England Schools were among the most “diverse” in the country, and she urged that other faiths should not be denied the same opportunities. She also suggested that faith schools could be encouraged to play sports matches against each other, or to twin themselves with schools of a different faith, both of which could ease relations between faith groups.