Lord Lester of Herne Hill – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Lester of Herne Hill on 2016-01-19.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answers by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 11 January (HL4752 and HL4753) and 18 January (HL4957), whether they regard as matters of concern in countering extremist ideologies the preaching and teaching of Wahhabism in mosques and Muslim education bodies in Britain, and funding from overseas for that teaching.

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon

We consider any vocal or active opposition to our fundamental values as extremist, whatever guise these are expressed under. This includes when religions are hijacked by those wishing to promote extremism. As my rt. hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in July last year “extremist ideology is not true Islam”.

Because of these concerns our Government has taken significant steps to counter extremism. We published our Counter Extremism Strategy in October 2015 which sets out a range of measures to deal with the broad challenge of extremism. We have placed a duty on specified authorities to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being radicalised. This includes schools, colleges and universities. It is also why the Prime Minister recently commissioned a review into the funding of extremism in the UK, including funding from overseas.