The move was announced after the publication of a Times/ITV News poll, which suggested that a significant minority of British Muslims believe they are at war with the rest of society, with 13 per cent saying that they regarded the July 7 bombers as martyrs.

Tony Blair said yesterday that the poll showed that the overwhelming majority of Muslims were decent, law-abiding people who wanted to put an end to extremism.People within the Muslim community needed every help in mobilising to combat the extremists’ ideology and methods.

“That is the only way we will defeat it in the end. That means showing how these extremists’ attitudes towards the West and towards our own way of life are wrong and misguided,” he told The Times.

As the Prime Minister made his comments, 17 organisations representing Sunni and Shia Muslims in Britain signed a declaration stating that violence had no place in Islamic beliefs, teachings and practice. It proposed a “national Muslim forum on combating extremism”.

Some British Muslims, the declaration admitted, were uneasy about the body, arguing that Islam was not to blame for extremism. However, it added: “We acknowledge this may be true, but we emphasise that Muslims must accept that there are extremists and terrorists who justify themselves by reference to Islam.”

Mr Blair, appearing before Commons select committee chairmen yesterday, said there was an impression that Muslim leaders sympathised with extremists’ grievances but disagreed with their actions.

Mr Blair disagreed with critics who said that the Government was to blame for not doing more to combat extremism in Muslim communities. “The Government has its role to play in this, but, honestly, the Government itself is not going to defeat this . . . I am not the person to go into the Muslim community and explain to them that this extreme view is not the true face of Islam.” But he would be prepared to meet again those who had served on the working groups set up after the July 7 bombings.

Mr Blair defended the police raid on a home in Forest Gate, in East London, in which one man was shot. “I suspect that most Muslims would recognise that Forest Gate, in a sense, had to happen,” he said. “The police, if they receive this information, what can they do? They are bound to go and investigate.”

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