Shadow minister for militant Islam

Meet the shadow minister for militant Islam

James Forsyth

1 September 2007

Paul Goodman MP has a tricky brief

Separatism is the problem, according to Goodman. In the course of an hour-long conversation he mentions it no fewer than 17 times. The answer to this problem, he says, is to bolster moderate Muslims. It often is: never have so few been invoked by so many. But Goodman, who is a Jewish-born Roman Catholic and well versed in religion, can at least define what this platitude means. ‘Moderate Islam has as its core not wishing to see different people living under different law. Not wishing to see sharia incorporated into British law.’ I ask him about polls that show that two in five Muslims want some kind of sharia law. He says, ‘You have to look at these polls a bit more closely as you have a spectrum. A spectrum that runs all the way from Abu Izzadeen [the extremist who famously heckled John Reid for daring to come to a Muslim neighbourhood] who, I believe, wants separate sharia jurisdictions where Muslims are in a majority — alcohol bans, bars on conversion to Christianity and all of that — to people like the bulk of my Muslim constituents in Wycombe who want to live under their own religious law but also want to obey the law of the land.’

I ask Goodman if he thinks wearing the full veil is a symbol of separatism. ‘There are worries that the niqab is associated with a kind of separatist extremism. That was Jack Straw’s view, and it is certainly mine.’ He is keen to say he shares Jack Straw’s view on the matter. When I try to press him on what government should do about the question, whether full veils should be barred from, say, schools, Goodman is wary of laying down a general rule. However, he does say that if individual schools chose to ban them, his ‘own view is that would be right’.

The money that the government is putting into its efforts to tackle extremism worries Goodman. He fears that if you ‘simply funnel money at one part of the community’, you risk creating the ‘sense of grievance that developed up in the northern towns which manifested itself in 2001’. However, he is sympathetic to the idea of establishing a college to educate policymakers, civil servants and the police about separatist extremism.