A top British Muslim from the UK's opposition party has rejected a call made by Prime Minister David Cameron for the Muslim community in Britain to boost its efforts to foil the spread of Islamic State ideology among young Muslims, saying conservative Muslim communities in UK do not encourage the youth to join the militant group.
Yasmin Qureshi, a member of the opposition Labour Party from the Midlands, said not even the US' white population has to make amends for the crime of the white shooter who is accused of killing nine black parishioners in South Carolina, the Christian News Headlines reported.
"In Charleston (South Carolina) you have a white man who has killed nine black people in a church. I don't hear a single word, or anyone saying, that the whole of the white population of America has to apologise for the actions of one white man," Qureshi said.
"It feels absolutely awful. I'm getting really tired of having to apologise," said Qureshi, who is a Pakistani-born Muslim.
Qureshi made the statement after Cameron urged Britain's 2.8 million Muslim residents to work harder in their homes and mosques to prevent young Muslims from being swayed by ISIS.
The prime minister claimed that parts of the ultra-conservative and traditionalist wings of the Muslim community in Britain are encouraging teenagers to fly to the Middle East to become ISIS jihadists, a charge Qureshi denied as "completely wrong."
"When they hear about acts of terrorism they shake their heads with disgust and say, 'Our religion is being maligned,'" she said. "To say Muslims who are very religious support ISIS is wrong and I wish people would stop saying this," she said.
Speaking at a security conference in Slovakia, Cameron said police and intelligence agencies should not be blamed for people wanting to leave and join ISIS, and that young people are vulnerable to shifting to violent extremism, BBC reported.
"The cause is ideological. It is an Islamist extremist ideology, one that says the West is bad, that democracy is wrong, that women are inferior, that homosexuality is evil," said Cameron.
"It says religious doctrine trumps the rule of law and Caliphate trumps nation state and it justifies violence in asserting itself and achieving its aims. The question is: How do people arrive at this world view?"
Cameron blamed members of the Muslim community who "don't go as far as advocating violence, but who do buy into some of these prejudices."
It "paves the way for young people to turn simmering prejudice into murderous intent" and to "go from listening to firebrand preachers online to boarding a plane to Istanbul and travelling onward to join the jihadists," he added.
Cameron made the remarks as a British family of three sisters and their nine children reportedly were smuggled to join the ISIS.
Seventeen-year-old Talha Asmal from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, is believed to be UK's youngest suicide bomber after he reportedly killed himself in Iraq.
