It would be an understatement to say the Muslim Council of Britain and journalist Martin Bright are not exactly the best of friends.

The latter, political editor of New Statesman magazine, will be presenting a documentary on Channel 4 next week arguing that the government is appeasing Muslim radicals in the UK and abroad, and failing to tackle extremism.

He tells AIM magazine that the government is being very "short-sighted" and failing to adequately represent the huge diversity of opinion within the British Muslim community.

Martin Bright was himself the target of criticism last year when, as home affairs editor, he wrote a lengthy article in the Observer on the MCB's links to radical organisations in Pakistan.

"Far from representing the more progressive or spiritual traditions within Islam, the leadership of the Muslim Council of Britain and some of its affiliates sympathise with and have links to conservative Islamist movements in the Muslim world and in particular Pakistan's Jamaat-i-Islami, a radical party committed to the establishment of an Islamic state in Pakistan ruled by sharia law," his report said.

In reply the MCB said he was seeking "to vilify" the organisation and accused him of "unsubstantiated assertions".

When asked his thoughts on whispered accusations of him being Islamophobic, he says he finds the idea "laughable".

"I've got the deepest respect for the various Muslim communities in Britain," he says. "If anyone is doing damage to the cohesion of the Muslim community, it is the organisations that are mis-representing Muslim views. A picture of British Islam that is skewed is being presented to the government and my film is an attempt to redress the balance really."

In 'Who speaks for British Muslims' next week, Bright says that rather than tackling the ideology that breeds extremism, Whitehall has instead embraced it, promoting a narrow, austere version of Islam.

He told AIM magazine that a series of leaks from the Foreign Office showed the government was very open in their strategy of reaching out to organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic radicals abroad.

"There is a theory in government circles that we have to bring people on the fringes of extremism away from extremism and back on the path of non-violent democractic politics," he said.

But that ignores the "huge diversity of people from the Muslim community" the government can deal with he adds, and instead focuses on representing a narrow ideology.

"They've had a rather limited strategy of dealing particularly with the MCB and organisations connected to them. I think they need to have more imaginative engagement and look further."

Bright thinks the government is also missing a trick by ignoring national differences.

"The Pakistani community, the Bangladeshi community, the Middle Eastern clerics - they all have their own issues. For example, dealing with the extremely rich Arabs of Edgware road is very different to the deprived pockets of the Pakistani community. I don't see how this one-size-fits-all policy works really," he says.

So what should the government be doing? Talk to a wider range of people for a start. And re-thinking its approach on policy level, he says.

"You have to have to have a special unit set up within say, the cabinet office, to deal with that. I know the government is very keen to distance the issues of community cohesion from the issues of counter-terrorism but it has to bite the bullet and have a high-powered department dealing with this problem."

The documentary is not an attack on the Muslim communities or their representatives, he says. He says the problem is rather a "symptom of the general short-sightedness on part of the government".

Who Speaks for British Muslims? will be on Channel 4, 7:30pm, Friday 14th July.

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(picture from Channel 4's Shariah TV)