Tunisia, and European Council

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Indeed, the role of women was an important one in Tunisian democracy, moving the country towards the democratic future that we hope it will continue.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I give my best wishes to Matthew James, a gas engineer in Swansea who took three bullets in protecting his fiancée; he is now recovering in Cardiff hospital. In talking in Swansea to both Shi’ite and Sunni imams from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Iraq, I have found that they are as one in saying that the Daesh are impostors, gangsters, murderers and blasphemers. Will the Prime Minister work side by side with the mainstream Muslim community and give them the resources they need to combat radicalisation, rather than saying that it is their fault and their problem? It is our problem, and we must solve it together.

[The Prime Minister]

I think that the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in how he puts it. They have a role to play, and we should help them play it. One of the challenges has sometimes been the relevance of the mosque to young Muslims when it can sometimes seem less relevant to their lives. That is why we need to address the whole issue of ensuring that imams have good English when they are dealing with potentially alienated and radicalised young British people.