Young muslims to receive citizenship lessons in mosque schools » Education » 24dash.com

Young Muslims will be taught citizenship in mosque schools as part of a bid to prevent them being turned into extremists, the Government said today.

Trials of the new lessons will begin in several cities at the start of the new term in September, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said.

The initiative - designed to show youngsters there is no conflict between their religion and being British - is part of a package of measures being published today.

It also includes a new independent board of academic and theological experts and a group of community leaders to advise on local responses to tackling extremism.

"We have made significant progress working with communities to build an alliance against violent extremists," Ms Blears said.

"We have a responsibility to ensure that our young people are equipped with the skills they need to stand up to violent extremists and this project will help them understand how their faith is compatible with wider shared values and that being a good Muslim is also compatible with being a good citizen in the UK.

"We need to encourage and create safe places for sensible debate around issues that extremists can seek to exploit and make sure that young British Muslims recognise that their faith teaches shared citizenship vales."

Officials said mosque teachers in London, Leicester, Birmingham, Oldham, Rochdale, and Bradford would be trained in using the new materials over the summer.

They will be used alongside traditional lessons about the Koran and focus on "demonstrating to young British Muslims that their faith is compatible with shared values and with being a British citizen - undermining the violent extremists' argument that there is a fundamental conflict between the West and Islam, and being British and Muslim", they said.

Last month the Government published a national "de-radicalisation" programme including advice to town halls to consider mapping their areas religion by religion and ensuring they had systems in place to remove funding or other support from inappropriate groups.

Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, an imam with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), said the creation of the group had been driven by Muslims rather than the Government.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We felt we needed something of this nature to help create a better structured approach to how we are educating our children.

"We feel our children need to be taught that they can be proud Muslims and proud young British people."

"Anything that helps to make our communities stronger should be welcomed - provided that it's not used to isolate, control or change what a community is."

Sheikh Mogra went on: "This board has to be something owned by us, driven by us but supported by Government. We've made it clear that it's not for Government to touch our theology or touch the way we train our people."