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 2016-01-27.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 25 January (HL5200), whether they have had regard to the preaching and teaching of Wahhabism in mosques and Muslim education bodies in Britain as part of their work on their Counter-Extremism Strategy.

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon

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.

We consider 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”.

HM Government’s Counter Extremism Strategy and counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, set out our approach to tackling the full range of factors that allow extremist and terrorist groups to grow and flourish. These include directly challenging ideologies, including those which have a theological basis.

The Prime Minister recently commissioned a review into the funding of extremism in the UK. This will include an assessment funding that comes from overseas. The review is due to report in spring 2016.