I am of the opinion that it is these Muslims, let's call them the Muslim middle class, who set the agenda, whether this is traditionalist, secularist, modernist, extremist, Islamist, liberal, conservative and so on. It is they to whom the media turns and gives voice to. I certainly believe that the views espoused by the likes of Choudary should be challenged, and in that sense projects like The Radical Middle Way are excellent efforts which I support in what way I can (for example, I try and whip up some interest amongst people I know; and not just Muslims).

However, often it seems to me that these people are taking in a bubble, divorced from the social reality in which many Muslims live. Indeed, it was telling that a presentation on Islam (at that same event with Umar Faruq Abd-Allah) by Peter Sanders, a renowned photographer and a Muslim, admitted that he struggled to find an image of Islam in Britain on his tour of Muslims around the world; the images of British Muslims he ended up showing us included a group of Etonian Muslim students, an Oxford Muslim boys choir and a graduate of a fashion school. What happened to those Muslims living in the estates of Tower Hamlets and the mill towns of the North? Where was the urban subculture which many young Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, for example, are part of? What about the kids hanging out around street corners and in halal chicken places, or kicking the ball about the street? These many not ideally 'Islamic' or good adverts for Muslim Britain, but these people also form part of the narrative of Islam in these Isles for better or for worse. I felt they were being excluded; out of forgetfulness or out of malice I cannot say.

I fear that all this talk of 'making culture' will end up a class-based enterprise, and all this attention on fighting extremism means we end up ignoring people who need our help. I am talking here of the young Muslims, largely Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Somali boys, who grow up in low-income families, who tend to finish bottom of the school league tables, and who can find themselves battling against, or "integrated" into, a life of crime and drugs. This is a perpetual cycle, and although as social conservatives it would be fair to say Muslims should accept that moral education and responsibility for their children begins and ends in the home, in a country where state education is compulsory there needs to be some support from the wider community. We should appreciate that extremism is not responsible for young Pakistani and Bangladeshi boys leaving school with little or no qualifications; groups like Hizb al-Tahrir are not responsible for the poverty in which many Muslims find themselves living; Abu Hamza al-Misri wasn't responsible for the growing Muslim prison population; Omar Bakri Mohammad has nothing to do with the rising drugs problem in our communities. People might knock the Salafi da'wah, but they're out there and in the prisons; they talk not only to Muslims, but others too, offering them a salvational discourse which gives their lives meaning.

My point is that projects like The Radical Middle Way, and the various shukyh who speak publically, need to do more than speak at SOAS to Muslim doctors, lawyers and artists. They need to get out into the 'ghettoes', as it were. A degraded form of masculinity has emerged amongst these young Muslim men, to whom tribal identity, crass materialism, and gang violence are important (consider the brutal racially-motivated torture and murder of a 15-year old white boy by a group of Pakistani-Scots). This has serious implications for future generations as these boys will grow up to have children of their own. We can wave our hands at them, and dismiss them as 'thugs' and 'scum', but then we're in real danger of losing a whole generation of Muslims, because these people become role models and sources of moral guidance to those around them. Young Muslims rarely turn to mosques for help or guidance, or to get a sense of belonging. They turn to their peers like any other young people.

Fighting the pseudo-Islam of the neo-Kharijites should only a smaller part of a larger project. We should avoid the firefighting mentality, where we're only ever bumbling from one blaze to the next. What is needed is an inclusive social vision that addresses broader issues. They need to appreciate that everyday concerns like housing are a threat to social cohesion as much as the prattle from Professional Muslim Extremists. This is what 'making culture' should mean. This is why I am generally supportive of attempts like the New Generation Network, despite valid criticisms that, much like the Muslim-focused projects I am discussing, they end up being validated by those who are already converted to the idea. They don't talk to the those outside or try and win converts. But at least the New Generation Network is trying to move the discourse onto different territory from the one traditionally occupied by religious organisations, especially Muslim ones. This is something that Yahya Birt also notes in his measured response to the New Generation Network when he says that religious organisations, usually headed by conservatives, fail to be more inclusive and articulate a broader vision:

"By and large, [minority religious organisations in Britain] have no worked-out vision of multiculturalism or Britain's future. They don't engage seriously in generic issues affecting all Britons. They don't work to protect the rights of many other marginalised minorities and groups. To quote a friend and academic, they have to move from 'identity politics' to a form of 'religious humanism' that would allow them to mainstream their communities and to express their concerns in genuinely universal terms."