The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister, Dr Kim Howells, attended a northern England meeting on the 13th July 2006 with British Muslim business, religious and community leaders.

DR KIM HOWELLS, British Foreign Office Minister, has been touring Bradford in the North of England to meet members of the Islamic community. The city has one of the largest populations of Muslim citizens and the visit is part of the British government’s continuing campaign of engaging with ethnic minorities in the UK.

Dr Kim Howells arrived in Bradford to meet with members of the city’s Muslim community. He held a onehour session with business, social, and voluntary entrepreneurs to gauge their views and see how the British government and local people could work together to achieve success.

The Foreign Office Minister said, “Amongst communities whether, they’re Muslim communities or any other are a great many people who have a great deal to offer the country, to our economy, to our society, to politics, and it’s really trying to find out whether or not that’s a message that’s understood, that the opportunities are there.”

During the visit he went to one of the city’s leading Indian restaurants and met with young professional Muslims who outlined their concerns about issues they want the government to take action on.

“It’s been a pretty candid couple of conversations that I’ve had and they’ve put some very difficulty questions to me, the impression I get is there’s a lot of resentment about the way society in general regards some Muslim communities and that’s something we have to contemplate and try to discuss how to heal those differences.”

Bradford has one of the largest Muslim populations in the UK and over fifty different languages are spoken in the city.

Dr Howells was later welcomed by local Muslim women, where he was keen to find out why so many are not achieving full potential in education.

“I want to find out why it is, in so many places young Muslim women, young Muslim girls, are not achieving their full potential, they’re not aiming for the sky as they should do, if it’s a social problem, a cultural problem, we’ve got to find out what it is, because in this country every child should have the opportunity to realise their full potential, regardless of their sex and regardless of their ethnicity.”

His final stop was to the Khidmat Centre where he met with local imams to discuss their role in guiding young people. This type of visit and dialogue with the Muslim community shows how the UK government is keen to emphasise the need for inclusion of all sectors of society in today’s diverse multicultural Britain.