A week after the failed attacks in London and Glasgow, the Muslim Council of Britain has called an emergency meeting of imams and Muslim community activists to work out a strategy for combating extremism. Their particular concern will be young Muslims, and the radical groups trying to recruit them to their hard-line understanding of Islam, with all its disdain for the Western way of life. Those meeting in London on Saturday – and in a separate gathering in Oxford – are likely to see imams as a vital part of the task. They are the official interpreters of Islam, and the public officials of the Muslim world whose word should carry maximum authority. But a BBC study has led some influential figures in British Islam to doubt their imams are equal to this most urgent of tasks.
