The best we can hope for is tolerance

John Gray, Britain’s foremost political philosopher, says that  Ruth Kelly’s new campaign against Islamic extremism is doomed because it exaggerates the scope for cohesion in our fragmented modern world

The only thing that can be known with reasonable certainty about Ruth Kelly’s new programme of engagement with Muslim communities, which the Prime Minister told the House of Commons at last week’s meeting of the liaison committee will tackle Islamist extremism ‘head-on’, is that it will be muddled and ineffective. Nothing the government has done suggests it is ready to examine why extremism is gaining ground. Tony Blair persists in claiming that Britain’s role in the Iraq war has played no part in the process — an assertion that has been repeatedly questioned by intelligence analysts, and which suggests an inability to engage not only with Muslims but also with reality. It is not only the Blair government that is at fault.