The politics of fear: how to counter extremism
William Shawcross, Michael Gove and Extremism.
The Government has just updated the official definition of extremism. As a former counter-extremism coordinator, I can affirm that it was not the definition of extremism that frustrated our ability to enable change, but the politics of fear. There was and is fear around tackling Islamism, a fear of threatening behaviour, a fear of being branded racist and a fear of losing votes.
Islamists have persuaded far too many that to tackle a bad idea is to tackle a whole community. It is resolutely not — tackling bad ideas is the very essence of progress. Islamism, which is not synonymous with Islam, is a very, very bad idea. Islamist lobby groups have been given too great a media platform, afforded charitable status, and even government funds. As a result they have attained dangerous levels of political influence.
No new definition would have got the local authority I worked for to have risked losing votes. When confronted with discrimination from Islamists towards the Ahmadiyya Muslim minority sect, they asked me to disengage with the Ahmadiyya and took the side of the Muslim Council of Britain, which has links with the Muslim Brotherhood. Why? Because there were more MCB supporters in the borough than Ahmadis.
When advocating that we dissuade venues from hosting an organisation flagged to us by the Home Office as extremist, one whose leadership had called Jihadi John a beautiful young man, I was told to “box clever”. Events then went ahead unchallenged. No new definition will change the fear the Home Office has of inspiring community outrage, protests and cries of “Islamophobia”.
No new definition would have prevented a colleague with sympathies for extremist organisations from claiming I had an unhealthy obsession with extremism. Why? Because the Home Office’s recruitment process had people shifted in from other sectors within local authorities. They had no deep knowledge of Islamist movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami, their influence in the UK and their harms. Indeed I was one of the few with the very obsession needed to actually do the job.
Changing the culture in the Home Office and safeguarding the work from political influences will be the government’s steepest challenge. Where the new definition can be welcomed is that it is in fact a pretty darn good one. It allows for one clear change that saw the counter extremism strategy humiliated. By including “intentionally creating a permissive environment for others to promote an environment of hate”, organisations who engage in fearmongering, using a pumped-up notion of Islamophobia in Britain, and promote divisive “us versus them” and “East versus West” narratives, will no longer be able to access government funds and perhaps, in time, even charitable status. This aim will be made more possible by a soon-to-be-shared published list of organisations that fit the bill. No longer will money be handed out to extremist organisations and perhaps money will once again flow into those groups that are engaged in tackling extremism. However, there is still a backlog of practical recommendations left to implement from a whole host of relevant reports published last year, mine and that of William Shawcross included.
We need to assemble a hate preacher monitoring unit. This would ensure that these extremist clerics do not gain access to this country to engage in preaching tours. I have recorded nine entries of preachers who call for the death of blasphemers gaining entry to preach since 2016. The Charities Commission must expedite investigations into charities that have been accused of espousing hate and even sympathising with terrorism. Months of investigations are months during which the charity continues to engage in spreading sympathy for terror. We must ensure bold and timely support to schools when they face ideological protest, prioritising the need for a secular teaching environment. And we should train schools and relevant organisations on the extreme anti-blasphemy ideology, so that they can identify it, challenge it and know its risks.
Whilst I may welcome the new, narrower and perhaps more practically applicable definition, the Government needs to get real on implementation first. If Shawcross holds that the UK is more at risk from Islamism today for lack of full implementation of his recommendations, then this is where the Government’s focus needs to be. But real change is not the aim of the game here: elections are the fixation. If Rishi Sunak has any genuine gumption to tackle this issue and make the UK a safe place for Jews, for Ahmadiyya Muslims, for LGBT Muslims, for ethnic minorities, then he needs to focus less on rhetoric and more on changing the culture. He should start by implementing the wealth of painstakingly researched and prepared recommendations already before him,
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