Sadiq: This Is How We Stop Home-Grown Terrorism
23 September 2016, 09:52 | Updated: 23 September 2016, 10:57
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has told LBC that young people born in this country must be more resilliant to stop being radicalised.
- Speak To Sadiq: Watch In Full
Sadiq Khan says he wants them to challenge the views of extremist charasmatic preachers.
Speaking to Nick Ferrari on Speak To Sadiq, he said: "People born and raised in London, Paris, New York and other parts of the Western world try to blow us up and destroy our way of life.
"It's really important we tackle that because it's not people coming from overseas, it's people born or raised here.
"There's a number of things we've got to do. Firstly, we've got to make sure youngsters have resilience.
"So when a charismatic preacher of hate comes along and says there a Jewish conspiracy or the West hates you or you can't get on with people of different faiths, the person is resilient enough to say "What are you talking about? You're talking rubbish. One of my best mates is of Christian faith. I work with Jewish people. It's not true there's a Western conspiracy against us."
And that resilience will make sure that young people aren't being radicalised and turned into extremists."
He also said it's important the public helps the police to protect us, adding: "Our police can only keep us safe if the public has confidence to report crime, to report things suspicious, to tell about people who are acting in a suspicious way, buying fertiliser, changing their behavior, acting erratically and we can do this together.
"I was in New York when the explosion went off few days ago. Like the Mayor of New York Bill de Blasio, I myself was obviously worried about the explosion, bearing in mind in London, we also are a potential target for these terrorists.
"And I think it's important we recognise that- and Bernard Hogan-Howe articulated this really well - it's not a question of if, it's a question of when, which is why we've got to work our socks off to make sure we are vigilant, we're not complacent and we keep ourselves safe."
