Muslim campaigner calls for London mosque overhaul to save youngsters

London: The battle for the hearts and minds of young Muslims in London is being lost because the vast majority of clerics that practise here cannot speak English, leaving a vacuum that jihadist groups ruthlessly exploit. So says Ed Hussain, 34, co-director of the counter-extremist think-tank Quilliam and himself a "reformed jihadi" who knows what it's like to be young, impressionable and subject to unchallenged Islamist rhetoric.

Speaking in the wake of reports last week by British Army officers in Afghanistan who say they're engaged in "a surreal mini civil war" with home-grown jihadists "bizarrely sporting Brummie and east London accents" who have travelled there to support the Taliban, Hussain says it is time that the government woke up to what is going on in UK mosques.

"The government sends troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan but they ignore the Taliban mindset being fostered under their noses in our mosques," he says. "You might wonder why they haven't learned from last time when British Muslims, inflamed by the rhetoric from hate preachers such as Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri, went out to fight for the Taliban in 2001. Eight years on, most of these hate preachers have been deported or imprisoned but the problem persists. Why? Because when extremist groups come into our mosques and stir up young people to go to Afghanistan, our imams are nowhere to be seen."

The reason for the imams' "silence and paralysis", he says, is simple: they can't speak English.

According to Quilliam's groundbreaking report, Mosques Made in Britain, published last week with the results of the first poll of more than 1,000 mosques, 97 per cent of imams come from abroad, mostly from Urdu and Bengali-speaking villages in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

"Physically these imams live in Britain but psychologically they're still back in their villages in Mirpur and Sylhet. The mosque management committees, typically made up of first-generation elderly male immigrants, hire these imams because they are cheaper to employ: their average salary is £12,000 compared with £30,000 for a locally-trained imam and because they don't rock the boat.

"And instead of them being made to learn English by the state when they arrive and undertaking some form of education in the ways of our liberal democracy, the government turns a blind eye. The vast majority of imams from abroad haven't even gone through the basic legal requirement of a Criminal Records Bureau check. It's nothing short of scandalous."

Last week communities secretary Hazel Blears said the government would confront extremist groups head-on as part of a new strategy, rather than shunning them. In a speech at the London School of Economics she said: "If we are to effectively challenge terrorism, we need to build a growing coalition of support. If we are to change minds and win this debate, it will be through bringing in new voices and challenging views that we find unpalatable."