David Miliband, together with Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, and John Denham, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, were joined by members of the Muslim community for an Eid reception at the FCO on Monday 13 October.

David Miliband said:  
Tonight is about who we are as a country that is a mirror to the world in many ways, a country of many Muslim communities as well as many faith communities of all kinds and stripes.  It is an enormous advantage as well as privilege to be the Foreign Secretary of a country, knowing that wherever I go there is a community in Britain from that country, a diaspora community, concerned, engaged, passionately supportive of British engagement with that country.
It’s also about our values.  If I understand rightly the values of Ramadan are the values of responsibility, of social justice, of compassion and values that say there is something more important than ourselves, and those are important values that we should celebrate as a country, not just as a community here tonight.
But the third thing is that for those of you who are British citizens, each and every one of you is an ambassador for the best of what Britain can be.  And I’ve spoken to people tonight who’ve been on Foreign Office missions to Bangladesh, people who are passionately engaged on issues of Darfur, people who care deeply about the plight of the Palestinians, people who are concerned about human rights in Sri Lanka...  And I think it’s important to say very clearly and very loudly that the sort of engagement we are beginning to develop from Britain’s Muslim communities to Muslim communities around the world, talking about the sort of Britain we want to see as well as the sort of world that we want to see, that is a huge new dimension to our diplomacy and one that I think gives us the potential to be an even stronger diplomatic power in the years ahead...
And I know from talking and speaking at the Bradford mosques, which was an enormous privilege for me, from the meetings I’ve had, not just in England but also in Scotland and in Wales, that we have Muslim communities who are immensely proud of their faith but are also immensely proud of being British, and that is I think an important point of unity tonight.  
And if tonight can be part of that process of bringing people together, of sharing what we have in common and debating where we have differences, and of committing together to be an outward looking force for our country, then we will not just be celebrating marking an important part of the holy calendar, we will also be contributing to the strength of this country.

Alan Johnson, Home Secretary, said:  
Tonight we are celebrating a relationship that’s exemplified by the contribution that Muslims make to every aspect to British life, in politics, academia, law, sport, the arts, health care, humanitarian aid; can I just mention the huge contribution of Islamic relief who during the month of Ramadan have raised six million pounds by the UK Muslim community.  I think that’s a tremendous achievement that we should all applaud...
The key principles of Islam, the right to life, the right to worship, justice, freedom and equality of opportunity, are universal.  They apply to every nation, every faith group and every race.  They are integral to every community and every democracy, they unite both Muslims and non Muslims, people of all faiths and of no faith.
What also unites us is our collective determination to uphold and protect these values.  Last week I stood shoulder to shoulder with Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik in, in Islamabad following the attack on the UN World Food Programme to make clear our joint condemnation of religious extremists, not because of their religion but because of their extremism.  The biggest threat to these extremists is the resilience and confidence of the communities they claim to represent, the ability of these communities to challenge those who perpetuate hatred and intolerance.  
I know that there have been some ill informed criticisms of our Prevent strategy recently, that it’s simply about intelligence gathering and that its only objective is to stigmatise the Muslim community.  But this is nonsense.  We would make no headway at all in tackling violent extremism if it were true.  Prevent is about empowering British Muslims to be at the forefront in challenging and undermining those who seek to distort Islam in order to justify terrorism.  Such joint efforts do not by any means define the relationship between Government and Muslim communities, nor does it mean that the responsibility for tackling violent extremism lies only with the Muslim community.  Like the threat from Far Right racists it affects as all and it requires a united response.
There is a responsibility on Government to tackle social exclusion, deprivation and discrimination in all its forms.  We know that in our schools and universities only a fraction of the potential of young Pakistanis and Bangladeshis is being realised, despite significant improvements in recent years.  And we know that there are Muslim communities in the UK which are disproportionately affected by poverty and unemployment or face discrimination and harassment because of their faith or race.
Tonight is a celebration of the extraordinary contribution of Muslim communities to this country but it’s also a time to acknowledge that there are challenges that we have to address.  The, when the Declaration of Human Rights refers to equal opportunity, safety, security and equal access to public services the implication is not that these are lofty ideals that we should simply aspire to, our collective aim is to give these ideals a physical form so they are reflected in the experience of every citizen in our society, irrespective of ethnicity or religion.

John Denham, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, said:  
My part is another aspect of home or domestic policy and it is the work that we do together to build strong and cohesive and confident communities, because it is strong, confident and cohesive communities that will provide the best opportunities for all of our young people, will make us as a country more likely to succeed in the global world that we now live in.
And one part of building those strong, cohesive communities is the thorny, sometimes slippery, issue of identity and who we are...  
But of course the truth is that we don’t discover a national identity, we make a national identity in every generation of all the people who see themselves as British, working together, bringing those values we share together to say this is what makes us British in the Twenty First Century.  And I make that point because I know that every single person in this room in one way or another is helping to shape the British identity that will make us a strong country in the Twenty First Century.  Some of you do it in national organisations, some of you in local organisations, some in the media, some with your neighbours, some through faith, some through secular activities; it doesn’t matter.  It is the joint contribution that everybody makes which is important.

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