The Foreign Secretary will today underline the UK’s commitment to
stand shoulder to shoulder with our Global partners and
European allies in the fight against terrorism.
In a keynote speech the Foreign Secretary will say how the
United Kingdom can, by working with our allies and the Muslim
world, overcome Islamist terrorism.
He will say:
“Every day around the world I can tell you that British
serving men and women are putting their lives at risk to roll up
terrorist networks, to expose what they are doing, to thwart them
and bring them to justice.
“They are making good on what the Prime Minister has rightly
called the Unconditional Commitment of the British people to the
security of our European friends – not just in this continent but
beyond.”
In a wide ranging speech, the Foreign Secretary will go on to say
that repressive states breed terrorism, not Western foreign
policy. He will argue that blaming Western intervention for the
rise of Islamist extremism only plays into the jihadi narrative,
noting that Islamist jihadism can have the “addictive
power of crack cocaine”.
He will say:
“To assert, as people often
do, that the terrorism we see on the streets of Britain and
America is some kind of punishment for adventurism and folly in
the Middle East is to ignore that these so-called punishments are
visited on peoples – Swedes, Belgians, Finns or the Japanese
hostages murdered by Daesh” - with no such history in the
region.”
The Foreign Secretary will stress the need for more engagement
with the Muslim world, arguing that a stronger sense of
national identity, women’s empowerment and reform are keys to
restoring peace and prosperity in the Muslim world and
concluding:
“British foreign policy is not the problem; it is part of the
solution.
“And above all we will win when we understand that
“we” means not just us in the West but the hundreds
of millions of Muslims around the world who share the same hopes
and dreams, who have the same anxieties and goals for their
families, who are equally engaged with the world and all its
excitements and possibilities, who are equally determined to beat
this plague.”
