The Islamic Human Rights Commission said the “awareness week” would fail.

The Chair of the commission, Massoud Shadjareh, said the initiative was “ill thought-out and will only serve to further alienate Muslims”.

He said that the government’s anti-terrorism policy was in “total disarray” and governed by the needs of “foreign policy rather than the aim of preventing terrorism”.

He added the government was adopting the same methods that were actually responsible for driving more people into extremist violence.

Shadjareh said: “With the news that British non-Muslim men have traveled to Syria to join Kurdish fighters take on the ISIL, the fact that British non-Muslim fighters are now publicly known to be fighting in Syria without any apparent risk of being prosecuted under anti-terrorism laws on their return shows just how discriminatory their application is vis-a-vis the Muslim community.”

Read the full article published on 25 November 2014 on World Bulletin