The Home Secretary was barracked by a protester as he tried to address a hand-picked audience of Muslims in East London today in which he called on parents to monitor their children for signs of brainwashing by extremists.
John Reid was midway through a speech in which he urged Muslims to do more to root out potential terrorists when he was interrupted by a man identified as Abu Izzadeen.
Mr Izzadeen, a well-known Islamic extremist who has been investigated over remarks about the July 7 suicide attacks, brought a young boy with him into the meeting and said his aim was to disrupt John Reid’s speech.
He shouted down the Home Secretary, calling him a tyrant and yelling: "How dare you come to a Muslim area when you have arrested so many Muslims in this area."
Mr Izzadeen, a Muslim convert also known as Omar Brookes is said to be a former spokesman for the radical Islamic group al-Ghurabaa, an offshoot of al-Muhajiroun - both of which are now banned in the UK.
He came to public prominence last year after refusing to condemn the 7/7 London bombings, instead, describing the attacks as "Mujahidin activity" which would make people "wake up and smell the coffee".
"I am furious I am absolutely furious - John Reid should not come to a Muslim area, we do not want to see him. John Reid, Tony Blair and George Bush’s crusade can all go to hell," he said today during Mr Reid’s speech.
"You all know as Muslims that we are treated as second class citizens," he shouted to the crowd. "How many Muslims have been arrested?"
Still shouting, Mr Izzadeen was ushered from the hall by a number of police officers and continued to address journalists outside as Mr Reid picked up the thread of his remarks. Minutes later though, a second protester again interrupted, shouting: "Enemy of Islam" and holding up placards reading, "John Reid Go To Hell" and "John Reid. You will pay."
The Home Secretary had been expecting a tricky reception, and in a sign of the tension surrounding his visit, the precise location of today's meeting, in Leyton, East London, not far from the scene of the botched police raid in Forest Gate and the arrest of several suspects in connection with last month's alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners, had been kept secret.
Mr Reid defined the Government's campaign against terrorism as a contest of values rather than a battle of religions or ideologies, and he said that mainstream Islam shared a host of common values with rest of British society.
He said that the values shared by Britain's Muslim community and the rest of the country were "deep and enduring and worth fighting for", adding that terrorists were not Muslims "in the true sense of the word".
He went on: "They are militants who seek to achieve their aims through the forces of terror and violence. They cloak their language in the rhetoric of Islamic teachings, but they behave in ways that contradict the very principles of the Islamic faith.
"They believe that the West is evil and that all modern values are corrupting to Muslims, when in fact, it is they who are wicked and ruthless and they who are corrupting young Muslim minds.
Urging parents to be on the lookout, he said: "There is no nice way of saying this. These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings. Grooming them to kill themselves in order to murder others."
Mr Reid's speech had attracted attention because of his challenge to Muslim parents to look out for signs of radicalisation in their children. Yesterday, he wrote a column in The Sun, in which he asked Muslim parents to "look for changes in your teenage sons", including "odd hours, dropping out of school or college, strange new friends".
But today Mr Reid limited his remarks to a broader description of battle against extremism and quoted a saying given to him by a local imam, which said: "Every man is the herdsman of his own family, every employer is a herdsman, and has responsibility for his employees, and every leader in the community, and nationally, has the responsibility to guide and to lead."
Among others protesting today was Anjem Choudary, who objected to the insinuation that Muslim children may be brainwashed.
He said: "Muslims do not need British values. We believe Islam is superior, we believe Islam will be implemented one day. It is very rich for you to come here and say we need to monitor our children when your Government is murdering people in Iraq and Afghanistan."
One of the older local residents attending the speech at Leyton Youth Centre was 55-year-old Shankat Khan, who welcomed the fact that Mr Reid had made the visit but said that it was very narrow to suggest that it was just Muslim children who were being targeted.
"What about the British parents? What about the Afro-Caribbean parents? We are as worried as other parents are but we need to be part of a wider society," he said.
East London has been the focal point for complaints about the Government's attempts to involve Britain's Muslim community in the fight against Islamic extremism in the UK. Ministers have been criticised for ignoring the work of a taskforce of community leaders, academics and imams set up after the July 7 suicide bomb attacks in London last year.
While the Government has supported recommendations such as "roadshows" by moderate Islamic scholars to counter extremist ideology, it has resisted more controversial ideas, such as a public inquiry into the bombings.
Last month, Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Communities, set up a new body to promote better race and community relations in England but tensions were raised once again after the arrest and charging of 17 British Muslims for an alleged attempt to blow up passenger aircraft over the Atlantic, the fifth terror plot the police claim to have disrupted in the last year.
Responding to the Home Secretary's article in The Sun, the editor of the Muslim News said Mr Reid's comments were "worse than looking for reds under the bed", a reference to anti-communist witchhunts in America during the 1950s.
"The Home Secretary is generating a new climate of fear against Muslims, by not only suggesting they are all potential terrorists, but appears to be also trying to divide Muslims families," said Ahmed J Versi.
Commenting on Mr Reid’s words, Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Attorney General, said: "While John Reid’s remarks are relevant, he is in danger of repeating what the Prime Minister has already said; that Muslim extremism is a problem for the Muslim community. He needs to realise that it is a problem for all of us."
Mr Grieve accused ministers of showing no real leadership on the issue, adding: "They have proved happy to pursue grand, headline-grabbing gestures, but have not delivered when effective action was required.
"The Government has not shown itself able or willing to do the grinding, difficult work of eradicating the root causes of this problem."
