Battling radicalism

The majority of referrals to UK's Prevent programme are coming from agencies which many Muslims in UK may not trust

However the semantics of the phenomenon are packaged, be it ‘radicalism’ or ‘extremism’ or any permutation thereof, it is a phenomenon of the age and presents previously unperceived challenges to governments the world over. Constructing a counter-narrative to those who promote an extreme or radical position is risky — get it right and it may, but only may, be a problem solved. Get it wrong in whole or part and there is the risk of compounding, acting as a force multiplier, for the very phenomenon that was the original target. It may well be that this is what is happening in the UK with the latest government anti-terror scheme.

The threats posed by radicals in the UK are unquantifiable but equally undeniable, and to counter this, the British government has devised the Prevent programme, which is part of the wider counterterrorism strategy dubbed Contest. Prevent is designed to help police and security agencies identify those individuals and groups that are at risk of radicalisation, and the strategy is not aimed only at the Muslim community. The UK has radicals on the far-right that are potentially no less of a threat to public order. A mere fraction of the referrals to Prevent are coming from within the Muslim community where there is widespread suspicion and outright antipathy to the initiative. The majority of referrals to Prevent are coming from agencies which many Muslims in the UK may not trust. This state of affairs provides a potent breeding ground for distrust to say nothing of disillusionment in Muslim communities, some of which are now advocating a boycott of Prevent, fearing that their children may be targeted, having been identified as being ‘at risk’. This is a not unjustifiable fear, and it is hardly surprising that there is a backlash from a community that is already feeling embattled in some instances, and marginalised in others. There is no quick-fix for the countering of radicalism in the UK or anywhere else for that matter, but it has to be said that this outcome was predictable. And it may be too late for a rethink.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 28^th, 2015.

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