Islamophobia, Know Your Rights, Prevent, Prevent, Projects

The PREVENT Strategy: Campaign Resources

21 June 2015

The following resource has been compiled to allow you to get a better understanding of Prevent, its historical context as well as its current impact on the Muslim community. We hope to update this page regularly. If you feel there is any article or document that would be useful, please send a link to lena@ihrc.org

Browse:

Legislation & Guidance

PREVENT in action: stories/testimonials

The PREVENT Diaries

Detailed Event Report from the ‘Preventing Violent Extremism?’ Conference

Campaigners launch ‘Together Against Prevent’

Download our Know Your Rights/PREVENT leaflet

LEGISLATION & GUIDANCE

Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015

Policy paper: Counter-terrorism Bill: overarching documents

Home Office guidance: Prevent Duty Guidance 2015

Home Office guidance: CONTEST

Home Office guidance: Channel Guidance 2015

Channel: Vulnerability assessment framework

Home Office guidance: Delivering the Prevent Strategy: An Updated Guide for Local Partners (2009)

Home Office guidance: Channel: Supporting individuals vulnerable to recruitment by violent extremists (2010)

The Prevent duty in further education and skills providers

Joint Committee on Human Rights report on Counter-Extremism. To see their discussion about the problems with defining extremism please see pp.24-26.

Legal challenge to Prevent: Butt v Secretary of State for the Home Department: I and II

HOW TO FIGHT BACK?

If you have been approached by a PREVENT officer or feel that you will be referred to one based on questions asked by your teacher / lecturer/ GP / social worker etc contact us for advice and support.

We have Advocates who can support people who have been targeted by PREVENT.
We can help you respond to their Islamophobic questions, explain your rights and explore options to challenge them if they try to refer you to Channel.
We offer training to groups / organisations to raise awareness about PREVENT with a view to empowering individuals / communities to challenge PREVENT.
We can signpost you to a law firm to challenge PREVENT.

If you would like advice, support or more information please contact us on 020 8904 4222 or info@ihrc.org.

#StudentsNotSuspects – we must make Prevent unworkable

Model Motion – Boycott Prevent– A model motion for students’ unions to campaign against Prevent

Challenging the Prevent Agenda

Standing Together Against Prevent

Download the Preventing PREVENT Handbook by the NUS

Resisting Prevent: an activist’s guide by Netpol

BRIEFINGS

Preventing Education: Human Rights and UK Counter-Terrorism Policy in Schools – Rights Watch UK.

The report brings to light a number of case studies never before reported and uncovers a range of human rights violations perpetrated against children in the United Kingdom in the name of national security.

Spooked – Arun Kundnani

The central problem with this ‘battle of minds’ strategy is that, despite all its efforts to map and survey Muslims in Britain, it ends up creating a false image of Britain’s Muslim citizens.The dichotomy between ‘moderate’ and ‘extremist’ does not correspond to the ways in which Muslims actually live their lives and the extent to which ordinary Muslims are caught up in an ideological struggle between competing versions of Islam is hugely overstated.An al Qaida-type ideology does not constitute a viable alternative belief system for all but a tiny number of individuals in Britain.To believe otherwise is to conceive of Muslims as living in a moral universe that is separate from the rest of the population. Not only is this inaccurate but it also stigmatises Muslims as morally retrograde.

A Decade Lost: Rethinking Radicalisation and Extremism – Arun Kundnani

Combining its new counter-terrorism powers and the Channel project, the government would have a set of powers that could be used to prevent certain opinions from being expressed, without the need for scrutiny of those powers in a criminal court. Together with the criminalisation of the ownership of books and strongly worded social media comments, the government is in danger of generating a mood of political self-censorship among Muslims that would be both counter-productive and damaging to democracy.

Preventing far right extremism? Schools in EDL and BNP heartland only monitoring ethnic minority pupils – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

The document relates to the government’s Prevent counter-extremism strategy, which requires schools to protect children from being drawn into all strands of radicalised ideas, including from the far-right.

Each of the schools’ assessments say that white pupils are at low risk of radicalisation on account of their skin colour and because many families have links to the Armed Forces.

IHRC Reports and briefings on Counter terrorism measures / Prevent

Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) and PREVENT – An-Nisa Society

THE PREVENT STRATEGY: A CRADLE TO GRAVE POLICE-STATE – CAGE

Building Distrust: Ethnic Profiling in Primary Schools – Adam Belaon

A critical analysis of the Prevent counter-radicalisation model implemented in primary schools.

Prevent and the Children’s Rights Convention – Institute of Race Relations

ARTICLES

British values? Drinking tea and getting rid of immigrants, ethnic minority pupils say – TES

How the UK bypassed justice to become a counter-terrorism state – NewStatesman

MI5 report challenges views on terrorism in Britain – The Guardian

The sophisticated analysis, based on hundreds of case studies by the security service, says there is no single pathway to violent extremism.

It concludes that it is not possible to draw up a typical profile of the “British terrorist” as most are “demographically unremarkable” and simply reflect the communities in which they live…

Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could actually be regarded as religious novices. Very few have been brought up in strongly religious households, and there is a higher than average proportion of converts. Some are involved in drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes. MI5 says there is evidence that a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation.

Resisting ‘Prevent’ and the War on Dissent – Netpol

Are you an extremist? Take the quiz – The Independent

17 Signs You’re A Young Person Ripe For Radicalisation – The Huffington Post

Education: the new battleground for Muslim assimilation

Education, it seems, has become the latest battleground in the government’s relentless attempts to shape a brand of Islam it deems acceptable in modern Britain – liberal, secular and above all state-friendly.

Prevent Guidance for Scotland and Respect for Anti-war Campaigning

It is unacceptable that any of these views should be linked to extremism as a matter of government policy, and outrageous that it should be done as part of a document that has statutory force. It is no business of the Government, or of universities or the NHS, to prescribe the political perspective that anti-war campaigners may hold.

Debunking Radicalisation Myths

The Russian writer Masha Gessen argues there no such thing as radicalisation, and that terrorism scholars say that radicalism is NOT a predictor of terrorism.

She argues that social and political causes appear to be the main drivers, which clearly undermines the ‘conveyor belt’ theory that most flawed policy is built upon, and is an inconvenient truth for those who prefer to deflect attention away from the real drivers.

Schools should offer anti-extremist education for all, not spy on those at risk

Radicalisation on campus: why new counter-terror duties for universities will not work

Cage publishes leaked prevent training dvd

Spies, surveillance and stakeouts: monitoring Muslim moves in British state schools – Katy Sian

This article will provide a critique of the PVE initiative and its implementation within the context of primary education following the events of 9/11, the 2001 riots and 7/7. Drawing upon empirical data I will argue that the monitoring of young Muslims and ‘extremism’ is problematic and reinforces the logics of Islamophobia through practices of governmentality. Moreover I will examine how whilst the monitoring of extremism is prioritized in many schools, training for teachers on race equality, tolerance and accepting difference is weak if not absent. This, I suggest, demonstrates a clear manifestation of contemporary hegemonic post-racial politics which increasingly silences the critique of institu- tional racism. Additionally this article will explore how Muslims in the sphere of education have been implicated and problematised against the backdrop of a ‘muscular liberalism’ intent on the return of assimilation- ist discourses.

City of London police put Occupy London on counter-terrorism presentation with al-Qaida

Following resources taken from list complied by Instead consultancy

Ahmed, F. (2015) ‘Muslim education: should teachers be storm troopers or facilitators of debate and intercultural understanding?’ Institute of Education London Blog, 28 April

Ahmed, N. (2013) ‘UK’s flawed counter-terrorism strategy’, Monde Diplomatique, 13 December

Akram, J. and R. Richardson (2009) ‘Citizenship education for all or preventing violent extremism for some? – choices and challenges for schools’, Race Equality Teaching 27 (3), pp.49–55

Birt, Y. (2015) ‘Safeguarding Little Abdul: Prevent, Muslim schoolchildren and the lack of parental consent’, 4 June

Bunglawala, S. (2014) ‘How do we prevent radicalisation?’, Theos Team Blog, 29 September,

Carr, M. (2015) ‘After Cage: ten steps to prevent radicalisation’, Infernal Machine, 9 March

Grossman, M. (2014) ‘Tough is not enough: ten smarter ways to counter terrorism’, The Conversation, 23 October,

Kundnani, A. (2015) ‘Counter-terrorism policy and re-analysing extremism’, Institute of Race Relations Bulletin, 12 February,

Milne, S. (2014) ‘Michael Gove’s toxic assault on schools is based on naked discrimination’, Guardian, 11 June

Mumisa, M. (2014) ‘It is the Government’s Prevent programmes and religious quietism, not radicalism, which have been driving young British Muslims into the hands of extremists‘, Huffington Post, 24 September

Rosenhead, J. (2015) ‘Prevent education?’, Open Democracy, 9 February

Tahiri, H. and Grossman, M. (2014) Community and Radicalisation: an examination of perceptions, ideas, beliefs and solutions, Victoria University

Thomas, P. and Cantle, T. (2014) Extremism and Prevent: the need to trust in education, Open Democracy, 10 December

Versi, M. (2015) Response to the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, Muslim Council of Britain

Woodhead, L. (2014) ‘Drain the swamps or concentrate on the crocodiles?’ Westminster Faith Debates, 5 June

Press digest:
List of articles and reports on Prevent collated by Bill Bolloten and Rob Faurewalker

We thought you’d be interested in better understanding the strategy and mentality of those who are promoting and implementing PREVENT:

WRAP: promotional material briefly explaining PREVENT training for schools

Institute For Strategic Dialogue

Learning together to be safe – Government guidance on signs of extremism includes: If you want some street cred, if you fight with your family or if you’re a bit of a rebel.

Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation – Safeguarding in schools

Channel General Awareness course

PREVENT IN ACTION: STORIES/TESTIMONIALS

Wording on boy’s t-shirt prompts radicalisation referral to social workers

Operating in a pre-criminal space: PREVENT, and the strange war on vulnerability

Large proportion of those referred to UK deradicalisation scheme are under 18

Keyword warning software in schools raises red flag

Teachers’ extremist fears over boy, 10, after he complains about lack of prayer room

Dinnerlady reports boy to Prevent for asking if food was from Israel

City of London police put Occupy London on counter-terrorism presentation with al-Qaida

School questioned Muslim pupil about Isis after discussion on eco-activism

Student accused of being a terrorist for reading book on terrorism