Great debate organised by The Society Of Asian Lawyers at The Law Society last night. My initial statement copied in full below.At the time of the alleged Trojan Horse plot in Birmingham the Muslim children who I taught in Tower Hamlets stopped engaging in political debate. My concerns for the impact that this might be having on school children led me to develop an academic interest in this area when it became clear that the students had withdrawn from debate for fear of being reported under the PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy.
My concerns led me to contribute to the Rights Watch report into PREVENT, were reported in the media and led to me becoming a member of the Tower Hamlets Overview &Scrutiny committee into PREVENT. Ultimately, this resulted in students feeling empowered to speak to me about their concerns that they were being targeted by an overzealous and racist state surveillance policy, concerns that they told me they did not discuss with other adults for fear that they would be reported due to PREVENT if they did so. This placed me in a privileged position as I found myself the confidant to children who were, according to them, experiencing alarming levels of fear and alienation. I will illustrate this with a few examples of how PREVENT has impacted children who I have worked with, all of these examples are representative of others that I have heard in focus groups that I have run with children from across Tower Hamlets, from formal interviews with children and from my ongoing conversations with pupils past and present who have come to me with their concerns.
Children who I worked with explained that they were now scared to practice their religion for they feared a PREVENT referral if they did and I was told by many that they did not speak openly with adults for they feared that the adults would be obliged to report them under PREVENT.
Online Propaganda
A student who would often engage me in theological discussions expressed his concern that PREVENT had prevented him from seeking the support of adults when he became concerned for the safety of one of his peers. The situation involved a 15 year old friend of his who he worried was spending too much time playing violent video games and who he feared was being drawn into the support of Islamic State by exposure to online propaganda that shared the aesthetic of the video games. To provide support, my student and a group of his peers arranged to spend more time with their vulnerable friend, devising a rota to ensure that someone was spending time with him on every day of the week after school. By the time my student discussed the situation with me, he reported that the friend was less socially isolated and that he was no longer concerned by his activity online or that he might be supporting dangerous views and opinion. During this child-led intervention, in spite of his concerns for his friend’s continued isolation and safety, my 15 year old student did not seek help from any adults. He did not seek help as he feared that PREVENT made it their duty to report the situation to the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism and he was concerned that the intervention of government counter-terrorism workers in this sensitive situation would undermine his own successful efforts to help his friend.
Resisting calls for a caliphate
Another student who was also theologically literate explained how PREVENT was preventing him challenging the views of people who he perceived to be extreme and potentially dangerous. He explained that on a number of occasions he had been approached by people who were calling for the support of a caliphate and who he felt were misrepresenting the teachings of Islam by their lack of respect and pragmatism with regards to the laws of their home country. However, on every occasion that he was approached by these people, rather than challenging them with his astute and pragmatic views on Islam, he had turned his back and refused to talk to them. He refused to talk to them as he feared that association with these people was likely to result in a referral under PREVENT and that this would result in the security services intervening in his life. As a result of this, he did not engage his extensive theological knowledge to challenge views that he perceived to be extreme and dangerous. PREVENT was preventing this student from challenging the views of other Muslims that he perceived to be ‘extreme’.
Whether real or imagined, the knowledge of PREVENT was undermining the mediation of and safeguarding from extreme views in these children’s lives.
Situations like these increased my concerns and led to me carrying out research into PREVENT at The UCL Institute of Education. My interest is specifically in the language of counter-terrorism which reveals significant changes in focus since 9/11. Firstly, you will not find ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ used in contemporary explanations of the attacks on the twin towers or for other acts of terrorist violence at the time. The terms, ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’, start to come into the lexicon of counter-terrorism over the next few years and there is no better example of this than the earlier version of PREVENT that was published in 2008; in this document, ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ are only used alongside references to violence or terrorism, for example in phrases like ‘preventing violent extremism’. By always using them alongside references to violence, ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ are associated with but distinct from violence; were they synonymous with violence, both references would not be required. In the later strategy from 2011 that we now follow, ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ have become synonymous with violence. This not only justifies PREVENT’s focus on ‘radical’ and ‘extreme’ views but also provides a mechanism by which violent identities can be catalysed.
These later changes have happened since counter-terrorism moved from being a military matter, which focused on preventing violence, and into the Civil Service with the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism’s formation and their focus on challenging ideology rather than just violence.
The recent focus on ideology by the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism has been based on demonstrably flawed research that took common factors identified in a small number of convicted terrorists, the authors have since recognised that it was an error to omit political grievance in these factors and they failed to theorise the real causes of terrorism. This means that the factors identified and that justify counter-terrorism’s focus on so-called ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ do not describe causes of terrorism and are a correlation at best; though the validity of even this assertion is questionable.
These factors are then used to describe a different population, the children in my classroom, and this means that not only are the real causes of terrorism hidden but that counter-terrorism resources are focused on the wrong areas, seeking out the self-fulfilling effects of policy rather than the underlying real causes of terrorism.
This is why I noticed that the application of PREVENT in my classroom, casting me as an informant, was not addressing terrorism. Rather, it was undermining the mechanisms by which we all become less extreme to each other in a democracy.
PREVENT reveals an aspiration to a politics of consent. It’s almost needless to point out that rhetoric that casts radical or extreme views as pathologically violent presumes that it’s own stance is unassailable. An aspiration to consent might at first appear to be a noble aim but political theorists have pointed out how this undermines democracy and is likely to result in the inadvertent promotion of violence.
Belgian political theorist, Chantalle Mouffe has written that ‘it is undeniable that it [violence] tends to flourish in circumstances in which there are no legitimate political channels for the expression of grievances’ (2005: 81). She describes the shutting down of discourse in a democracy as ‘letting death in’. Similarly, Jacques Derrida, has described the autoimmunity of liberalism and how this aspiration to consensual politics results in violence (Borradori 2003). And, Przeworski (1991) also suggests that a failure to be represented by the democratic process might leave violence as the only option for those excluded.
The application of the PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy in schools casts teachers as informants. Under these new conditions my pupils and pupils across the country have stopped engaging in the political debate that is vital for peace in a democracy. The aligning of political opposition with violence adds a catalyst to this already dangerous situation.
Ironically, children who I have spoken to from schools with a religious ethos said that they felt more empowered to resist the propaganda of Islamic State than those in purely secular schools. ‘Ironic’ as it was criticism of religious ethos in schools during the Trojan Horse debacle that led to PREVENT being forced into schools in the first place.
PREVENT stops people from being heard and targets the exact institutions that help people air their grievances. As long as counter-terrorism is used to cast teachers, doctors and social workers as informants it will shut down debate and promote violence. Conflating diverse political ideology with violence adds fuel to this fire.
The answer to this is not PREVENT’s recent shift in focus onto the Far Right, a move that deflects accusations of racism. The answer is the abandoning of counter-terrorism that focuses on ideology rather than violence. Until this happens, the UK’s extensive counter-terrorism resources will not be focused on the real causes of terrorist violence
