CAIRO, September 23, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – British Muslims have launched the first ever National Advisory Council of Imams and Mosques to nurture home-grown imams and set standards for preachers, a leading British newspaper reported on Friday, September 23.

"This is an historic move. As British Muslims we need to be prepared to modernize the way we operate, encouraging integration and helping our children to feel proud to be British," the Guardian quoted Labour peer Lord Nazir Ahmed as saying at a press conference with Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

Ahmed said the council will unify religious discourse and melt all Islamic traditions in one pot.

"We are no longer Pakistani Muslims or north African Muslims but British Muslims," he said.

The council would be independent of the government and led by a host of Muslim leaders in Britain, the mass-circulation paper said.

Clarke said he supported the proposals from Muslim leaders and announced that £5m would be made available to fund the work over the next 18 months

The proposals include forums to tackle extremism and Islamophobia and a roadshow by populist scholars and Muslim figures, such as Tariq Ramadan and Yusuf Islam, who could articulate to Muslim youths what it meant to be both British and Muslim.

Both Ramadan and Islam are members of two of the the select working groups.

"We must make it easier for young Muslims to obtain access to mainstream Islamic teachings in the English language," said Bunglawala.

The new council is aimed at reducing reliance on foreign imams and "attract young, suitable candidates who will become our home-grown imams," according to Ahmed.

The body would also assist mosques in training and accrediting imams, he added.

"The prayer is in Arabic but the translation must be done in English so that we can reach the 50% of under-24s who do not understand Arabic," he said.

Ahmed said there were 2,000 imams, of whom only 300 were homegrown.

"In some cases those running Britain's mosques were illiterate or even had criminal records," he said

Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, who headed the working group on extremism, said: "We must make it easier for young Muslims to obtain access to mainstream Islamic teachings in the English language which robustly oppose extremist ideology ..."

The British foreign policy and anti-terror measures have once again proved a contentious issue.

Clarke acknowledged that there was controversy between the government and Muslim minority leaders over the role of the Iraq war and other foreign policy issues in tackling extremism.

John Denham, the Labour chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, said Britain needed to be prepared to change "the emphasis of our foreign policy" if it was to win the consent of the Muslim minority in the domestic fight against terrorism.

"It is no exaggeration to say that Israeli policy in the occupied territories is not simply a matter of foreign policy," said Denham.

"It is no exaggeration to say that Israeli policy in the occupied territories is not simply a matter of foreign policy - it is a matter for British domestic security policy too," he said in an interview with the Spectator.

A survey by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) showed on Wednesday, September 21, that most of the British Muslim students believed that changing foreign policy would be the most effective way of reducing the threat of terrorism against Britain.

A further 62% believe that British foreign policy played either a complete or major role in causing the London attacks.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said in July that the world must make progress on issues used by terrorists as a reason for violence such as the Middle East conflict, admitting that the Iraq war was used to recruit terrorists.