Think Tank report challenges effectiveness of Prevent strategy
On March 9, 2009, the independent think tank, The Policy Exchange, published a report entitled Choosing our friends wisely: Criteria for engagement with Muslim groups. This report seeks to challenge the theory underpinning Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE), a key strand of the Governments counter-terrorism strategy.
On March 9, 2009, the independent think tank, The Policy Exchange, published a report entitled Choosing our friends wisely: Criteria for engagement with Muslim groups. This report seeks to challenge the theory underpinning Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE), a key strand of the Governments counter-terrorism strategy.
The report argues that the Governments strategy for dealing with the Islamist challenge inside Britain, the Prevent strategy, is aimed only at preventing violent extremism and it is for this reason, the authors claim, that it has done little to counter extremism and in a number of cases actually empowered extremists.
Its report states: PVE is thus underwriting the very Islamist ideology which spawns an illiberal, intolerant and anti-western world view. Political and theological extremists, acting with the authority conferred by official recognition, are indoctrinating young people with an ideology of hostility to western values.
This strategic error on the part of officialdom is born of a poverty of aspiration: the belief of the authorities that they cannot reasonably ask angry Muslims for much more than a pledge not to use violence in Britain. The effect has been to empower reactionaries within Muslim communities and to marginalise genuine moderates, thus increasing inter-community tensions and envenoming the public space.
The focus of PVE, it argues is characterised by an excessive veneration of the local and is according to the report, leading to a lack of central oversight which often results in the authorities flying blind at grassroots level.
The report argues that to tackle violent extremism effectively requires dealing with the extremist ideology that leads people to commit acts of violence. To view anyone who stops short of advocating attacks inside Britain as someone we can do business with would be to repeat the whole covenant of security mistakes of the 1980s and 1990s. There are ten recommendations made in the report and it also sets out their new criteria for effective government engagement.
The full report, Choosing our friends wisely: Criteria for engagement with Muslim groups, can be found at http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/pdfs/Choosing_Our_Friends_Wisely.pdf