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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now this week a 17 year old became Britain’s youngest suicide bomber.  Talha Asmal was one of several hundred Britons believed to have travelled to Iraq or Syria to join Islamic State militants, most recently three sisters and their nine children from Bradford are believed to have gone there too.  A few days ago the Prime Minister told Muslim communities in the UK they should take more responsibility for fighting radicalisation.  It’s an intervention that is being branded unhelpful by some senior Muslim figures and among them is Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the former Foreign Office and Faith Minister and she joins me now from Wakefield, a very good morning to you Baroness Warsi.  I just want to revisit if we can some of the exact words that the Prime Minister delivered in that speech and ask if you agree with this statement first of all that there is a version of Islamist extremist ideology where the West is bad, democracy is wrong, women are inferior and homosexuality is evil.

BARONESS SAYEEDA WARSI: Good morning Dermot.  I mean I agree with the Prime Minister when he talks about ISIS being a grave threat to us all and I agree with his analysis as you’ve described there of ISIS’s world view and I also agree that British Muslim communities have an important and a pivotal role to play in the fight against ISIS.  

DM: But he posits the question doesn’t he, how do people, those people in the UK who want to travel to support ISIL, how do they arrive at this world view?

BARONESS SAYEEDA WARSI: I think there are many drivers of radicalisation, there are many different journeys that extremists take and successive reports, indeed the Home Affairs Select Committee report two or three years ago raised concerns about the lack of empirical evidence, a research basis which helps us understand the different drivers of radicalisation and what concerns me is that against this backdrop, the Prime Minister chose to do a wide ranging speech in which he chose to emphasise one aspect which he describes as this silent condoning of this ISIS ideology.

DM: What weight though to do you give that aspect, because again the Prime Minister said that one of the reasons people who don’t go as far as advocating violence buy into some of these prejudices therefore giving the narrative weight, telling fellow Muslims you are part of this, for the Prime Minister that is one of the most important reasons, do you disagree with the weight he gives it?

BARONESS SAYEEDA WARSI: Well the Prime Minister did a wide ranging speech, he chose to emphasise on this aspect of it.  Overnight the speech, only this aspect of the speech was heavily briefed and on Friday morning it led to the headline ‘Prime Minister says Muslims helping Jihadi’s’.    Now personally I don’t find that helpful, I don’t think that helps us in the fight against extremism and I think it sadly disempowers those very people within British Muslim communities who on a daily basis are fighting this fight against ISIS.  The Imams who are giving the theological fatwas and sermons against ISIS, the community activists who are getting our young people off the streets and taking them away from this radicalisation, the inter-faith groups who are bringing different people together and helping to create a very clear sense, a clear identity of British Islam, the mosques during this month of Ramadan, the mosques, the community centres, individual families who are opening up their homes and saying come join us to share a meal – there is a tremendous amount of work that is being done across the United Kingdom and the British Muslim community, Dermot, are fighting this fight against ISIS not just because it’s the right thing to do but because they know that their children are the ones who are most likely to be preyed upon.  They know that they have to be the first line of defence and I think it’s really sad that this speech, which came 24 hours after an incredibly positive speech by Theresa May to the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism Conference in which she called for a partnership, she called to parents and community activists and theological leaders to come together with government to fight a fight which is a fight for all of us.

DM: You mentioned there the headlines which may or may not misinterpreted some of what Mr Cameron said, now he actually said it and that’s why I am sticking to the text of his speech, I can’t quite work out do you actually agree or disagree with that core part of the speech where he said there are those and presumably a tiny small minority but there are those within Muslim communities, within the United Kingdom and online who quietly condone some of these actions, do you agree with that?

BARONESS SAYEEDA WARSI: I absolutely agree, Dermot, that there are a few hundred people who believe in the ISIS ideology and it is why they choose to travel to Syria and Iraq and I also agree that there are a few thousand who support those few hundred who decide to travel but I disagree with the view that you label a community of over three million, you demonise a community of over three million because of the actions of a few hundred or a few thousand.  The British Muslim communities are part of the solution, they are fighting this fight in the front line and what we should be doing through our speeches, through our headlines, through our projects, is empowering those people in the community who are fighting this fight ever day rather than creating the kind of headlines and briefing out what we saw on Friday morning which is that Muslims are part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

DM: So do you think the speech has actually backfired and those, the vast majority within Muslim communities who would like to help out Mr Cameron and indeed the whole nation, the whole of the United Kingdom, on dealing with the extremist ideology, the speech has backfired and alienated some of them?

BARONESS SAYEEDA WARSI: I think the speech has been ill-advised, I think it has been misjudged, I think it has undone the positive speech of Theresa May from 24 hours earlier, I think it was successful in gaining a headline but I think tragically it lost sections of the British Muslim community, the very people who are fighting the fight that the Prime Minister wants to fight too.

DM: My goodness, so he’s made it even worse?

BARONESS SAYEEDA WARSI: Look, I think there has been a lot of discussions over the last 24 hours, there has been a lot of meetings, I have been down speaking to community groups.  You only have to look at the response on social networking, on Facebook and Twitter, this speech hasn’t been received well and sadly it’s not been received well by the very people who are doing the hard work, sometimes at a lot of personal detriment.  People put in a lot of volunteering hours, a lot of energy into protecting the young children who are vulnerable to this ISIS ideology and there are some great programmes out there.  There are programmes which the government, if it is serious about this, could pick up and run with.  The Maimonides Foundation for example have a programme called Inter-Faith Explorers which is working with primary school children, bringing them together at an early stage but unfortunately the government hasn’t been interested in taking it up so my plea really to the Prime Minister and to the government is if you are serious about fighting this fight against ISIS, there are many, many people in the British Muslim communities who are ready to work with you and who are ready to bring the good work that they are doing to the door of government and will ask government to support them so that we can fight this together.  

DM: But at this point you feel he has eroded the government’s credibility?

BARONESS SAYEEDA WARSI: Look, on a personal level I have a lot of affection for the Prime Minister, I have worked with him over many, many years and on a professional level I have great respect for him as our Prime Minister, I just think this particular speech was misjudged and hasn’t helped the fight against extremism which is what we all want to do.

DM: Okay, Baroness Warsi, great talking to you, thank you very much indeed, Sayeeda Warsi there.