Mistake of multiculturalism aided extremists says PM: Report finds politicians’ failure to tackle the hard-line views allowed fanaticism to take root

Timid politicians with a ‘misplaced’ fear of offending Muslims have allowed Islamist extremism to take root in the institutions of Britain, the Prime Minister warned yesterday.

A task force chaired by David Cameron said the policy of treating different cultures as ‘separate and distinct’ – known as multiculturalism – had been a ‘mistake’.

The panel said it was far easier to combat the fanaticism that leads to terrorism when different communities ‘come together to challenge it’.

Yesterday’s report – a response to the killing of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich – was scathing about the ‘reticence’ of politicians to confront Islamists.

It was published by Downing Street on behalf of Mr Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and a string of other senior Cabinet ministers.

The report gives a stark warning of how – by being afraid to challenge hard-line views – politicians had allowed fanaticism to take root in a string of British institutions.

It says: ‘The Government, as much as organisations and communities in the UK, must take responsibility.

‘We have been too reticent about challenging extreme Islamist ideologies in the past, in part because of a misplaced concern that attacking Islamist extremism equates to an attack on Islam itself.

This reticence, and the failure to confront extremists, has led to an environment conducive to radicalisation in some mosques and Islamic centres, universities and prisons.’

For three decades, Whitehall promoted a strategy of multiculturalism that Mr Cameron has previously described as ‘encouraging different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream’.

MailOnline