UK Muslim leader: Take Action Against People Radicalizing Their Own Children

By Alison Lesley --
14 Jul 2015 --

A Muslim leader in the UK demands that Islamist fanatics who radicalize children should be shunned by their communities.

Rafiq Hayat, president of the moderate Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Britain, told the Sunday Express that “certainly there has to be some action against people who are radicalizing their own children.”

According to Hayat, one way to do this is to ex-communicate the fanatics from the Muslim social circles. “They can come to the mosque but they cannot mingle with the larger community,” he said, adding that “they have to feel they have done something wrong before being taken back into the fold.”

Hayat’s statement comes after a gunman, said to be an ISIS fighter, killed 38 people in the Tunisian resort town of Sousse. The majority of the victims were Britons. Hayat has written to Prime Minister David Cameron to express his sympathy for the victims of the attack. The community has also increased security in their mosques.

The world head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, has also condemned the attack in Tunisia as well as the recent attacks in France and Kuwait. “Such attacks have no place in the world and are completely contrary to the true and peaceful teachings of Islam,” he said.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is an Islamic religious movement that was founded in British India near the end of the 19th century. Its followers, commonly known as “the Ahmadis,” were one of the first Muslims to arrive in the UK and other western countries. The community is estimated to have between 10 and 20 million followers worldwide.