This weekend the Excel centre in Docklands played host to the Islam Channel's annual Global Peace and Unity event. Watching snippets of it served as a reminder that young Muslims in Britain don't have to hang out with dodgy old imams in order to become radicalised by a deliberate blurring of faith and politics.
Whatever the stated aims of the meeting, the message being touted by one group of snarling Koranic rappers that I flicked over to on Saturday afternoon was about as peaceful as a Katyusha rocket. It's hard to see the value in pressurising crusty old "community leaders" to out their "extremists", when such an aggressive identity-political stance is becoming an integral part of the continuity of popular youth culture within this particular community.
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