Showing posts with label Muslim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muslim. Show all posts

Wednesday 25 October 2017

Bob Blackman accused of hosting Islamophobic speaker at House of Commons event

Tapan Ghosh and Bob Blackman at the House of Commons meeting

Bob Blackman, Conservative MP for Harrow East and former leader of Brent Conservatives has been accused of hosting an Islamophobic speaker at a House of Commons meeting.

Blackman courted controversy at the General Election by supporting Hindu nationalist opposition to making discrimination against Dalots ('untouchables') unlawful under the Equalities Act. LINK

The Zelo Street blog LINK commenting on Tapan Ghosh claims:
Tapan Ghosh frightens his supporters by repeatedly talking about the Muslim “reproduction rate” - the same tactics as those talking about “breeding”. For him, “moderate” Muslims are “really very small in number”. He endorses wacko fringe websites, which naturally includes Breitbart, Voice of Europe, and of course anything from Hindus who share his worldview. He has endorsed Stephen Yaxley Lennon’s Islamophobic agenda.



All of this is not difficult to discover. Yet Blackman has been happy to host Tapan Ghosh, who dressed up his bigotry in his talk “Tolerating the intolerant” as “800 years of defending human rights”. And that is not all: this talk not only took aim at “800 years of Arabic Islamic aggression” (Muslims in Bengal are not Arabs), but also “200 years of European Christian aggression”. Tapan Ghosh is as anti-Christian as he is anti-Islam.
A few days after the House of Commons meeting, according to Buzz Feed's Aisha Gani LINK, Ghosh met up with Tommy Robinson, former leader of the English Defence League and tweeted:

Other Tories at the meeting included Amber Rudd, Damien Green, Priti Patel and Sajid Javid. They might argue that they did not know Ghosh's reputation and their attendance did not mean they endorsed his views and that it was a wider event to celebrate Diwali but Blackman has no such excuse.

This compilation of tweets demonstrates Ghosh's beliefs:

Click to enlarge
This is much more serious than some of the current controversies surrounding other Members of Parliament.

Thursday 24 December 2015

Unintended consequences of counter-terrorism legislation

Thanks to Robin Richardson for forwarding the following extract which I think contributes to our discussion on this blog about the Prevent Strategy and its impact in Brent.

 
Unintended consequences of counter-terrorism legislation
Extract from Living with Difference: diversity, community and the common good, the report of the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life, published on 7 December 2015.
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8.22      Counter-terrorism legislation and strategies are a proper responsibility for all governments and have rightly been a priority in Britain and other western countries since the outrages in New York (2001), Madrid (2004) and London (2005). More recently, major atrocities have included murders in Woolwich (2013), Paris (2015) and Tunisia (2015). Governments have a clear responsibility to prevent such outrages. Also, as with the whole spectrum of crime and disorder, they have leadership tasks in relation to fear of terrorism, and to fostering security not only as objective fact but also as subjective feeling. According to the Pew Research Center, between 2011 and 2015 the percentage saying they are very concerned about Islam-related extremism in their country increased by 38 percentage points in France, 29 points in Spain, 21 points in the United Kingdom, 20 points in Germany and 17 points in the United States.[1] Within the overall pattern of public opinion in Britain it has been found that fear of Islam-related terrorism is higher amongst older people and people living outside London, and in particular parts of the electorate.[2]
8.23     The ways in which anti-terrorism policies operate in practice can have, however, unintended consequences. In particular, significant numbers of citizens may come to feel they are viewed as Other, namely as people who do not truly belong and cannot be trusted, 'them' rather than 'us', suspects or potential suspects, not ordinary citizens with the same values as everyone else. Counter-terrorism policies and measures may then not only fail to achieve their objectives but actually may make matters worse, such that both terrorism and the fear of terrorism increase, and both security and sense of security are diminished.[3] At the present time it is Muslim communities in Britain that are most directly and obviously affected. All people, however, are of course affected by increases in fear and feelings of insecurity, as also all people in a society are affected by the ways in which majorities and minorities see and approach each other.
8.24     To decrease the danger of unintended harmful consequences in counter-terrorism measures against Islam-related terrorism, the following five points need to be carefully considered:
a)      The government needs to engage with a wide range of academic theory, research and scholarship about the nature and causes of terrorism. Amongst other things, this means it should encourage and promote, not seek to limit, freedom of enquiry, speech and expression, and should not loosely use words and concepts which scholarship shows to be controversial and unclear. Such words and concepts include 'ideology', 'radicalisation', 'extremism' and 'Islamism'.[4] 

b)      The government needs to meet and engage with a wide range of Muslim groups and organisations, and to show that it understands, even if it does not agree with, the views about the nature and causes of terrorism that they hold. It cannot otherwise gain the trust and confidence of significant opinion leaders, and therefore cannot otherwise rely on their support and assistance. Their support and assistance are essential, however, if counter-terrorism strategies are to be successful. In its selection of organisations with which to engage the government must guard against the perception that it is operating with a simplistic good Muslims/bad Muslims distinction, or between ‘mainstream moderates’ and ‘violent or non-violent extremists’.

c)       There is no causal or inevitable link between conservative or orthodox theological and moral views on the one hand and propensity to violent and criminal behaviour on the other. Nor, more fundamentally, is there a simple, one-way causal link between a worldview, ideology or narrative on the one hand and specific actions and behaviours on the other.[5]

d)      There is no simplistic us/them distinction or clash between western or Enlightenment values on the one hand and the values of other cultures, countries and civilisations on the other, nor between Christian values and those of other religions.

e)      Political leaders should seek not only to promote debate and deliberation about the causes of terrorism but also to challenge misunderstandings and negative stereotypes in the population at large and in mass-circulation newspapers – they have a duty to lead public opinion, and not only to reduce fear and insecurity in the majority population but also to give principled reassurance and moral support to groups and communities which feel vulnerable to violence or discrimination.

8.25     These concerns were well summarised in the September 2015 report of Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. The report listed 15 issues raised by the government’s new measures on countering extremism and commented that the issues matter because ‘they concern the scope of UK discrimination, hate speech and public order laws, the limits that the state may place on some of our most basic freedoms, the proper limits of surveillance, and the acceptability of imposing suppressive measures without the protections of the criminal law’. The report then issued the very important warning that ‘if the wrong decisions are taken, the new law risks provoking a backlash in affected communities, hardening perceptions of an illiberal or Islamophobic approach, alienating those whose integration into British society is already fragile and playing into the hands of those who, by peddling a grievance agenda, seek to drive people further towards extremism and terrorism’.[6] There is a severe danger, to put the same point in different words, that the vision of a society at ease with itself, sketched at the start of chapter 3 of this report, and frequently referred to throughout the following chapters, will be harmed not helped by government action. It could be harder not easier, as a consequence of government action, for the citizens of the UK to live with their differences. It is essential that forthcoming proposals on countering extremism should be scrutinised with the maximum possible care and amended accordingly if appropriate, and that subsequent operations when they are enacted should be monitored with a very high degree of diligence.
Bibliography
Anderson, David (2015) The Terrorism Acts in 2014: report of the Independent Reviewer on the operation of the Terrorism Act 2000 and Part 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006. London: Williams Lea Group.

Choudhury, Tufyal and Helen Fenwick (2011) The impact of counter-terrorism measures on Muslim communities. EHRC Research Report no. 72. Manchester: Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Christmann, Kris (2012) Preventing Religious Radicalisation and Violent Extremism: a systematic review of the research evidence. London: Youth Justice Board for England and Wales.

Francis, Matthew (2012) ‘What causes radicalisation? Main lines of consensus in recent research’, Radicalisation Research, 24 January. http://www.radicalisationresearch.org/guides/francis-2012-causes-2/

Hickman, Mary J, Lyn Thomas, Henri C. Nickels and Sara Silvestri (2012) 'Social cohesion and the notion of suspect communities: a study of the experiences and impacts of being suspect for Irish communities and Muslim communities in Britain', Critical Studies on Terrorism, 5/ 1, 89-106.

Home Office (2015) Counter-Extremism Strategy. London: Home Office.

King, Michael and Donald M. Taylor (2011) ‘The Radicalization of Homegrown Jihadists: A Review of Theoretical Models and Social Psychological Evidence’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 23/4, 602-622.

Poushter, Jacob (2015) Extremism Concerns Growing in West and Predominantly Muslim Countries: Worries Especially Widespread in Western Europe and the U.S. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.


Notes and references  


[1] Poushter (2015), p. 2.

[2] A 2014 survey of 2,083 British adults found that 79 per cent of respondents deemed Islamic terrorism to pose an important threat to the country (rising to over 90 per cent of Conservative and UKIP supporters and those over age 60). 46 per cent of respondents thought the threat posed was critical. YouGov (2014).

[3] See, for example, Mohammed (2015); Hamid (2015).

[4] See Harris, Bisset and Weller (2015).

[5] For reviews of various proposed models of radicalisation which highlight the multiplicity of factors that can be involved, see, for example, Francis (2012); Christmann (2012); King and Taylor (2011). The Radicalisation Research website produces and collates research on these issues, http://www.radicalisationresearch.org/.

[6] Anderson (2015), p. 65.

 

Monday 30 November 2015

Updated: No support for bombing Syria at Barry Gardiner's meeting with constituents

Barry Gardiner with Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday's Climate March
In a 20 minute cogent presentation in a North Wembley church hall last night, Barry Gardiner set out his thinking on the Syria air strikes issue. He said that he was not a pacifist and that sometimes military action was justified. He had voted for the Iraq war but later went on to criticise the lack of an exit strategy, was one of only 13 MPs who opposed the bombing of Libya, and had helped persuade a change of policy by Ed Miliband's Labour Shadow Cabinet on the earlier Syria intervention mandate.

Gardiner said that he had a duty to constituents to consider whether an extension of existing UK military intervention would be counterproductive.  He considered the legal basis for intervention on the basis of a request by a state to intervene in their defence. Assad had not made such a request. The British Government had recognised the opposition as the sole representative of the Syrian people.

He discussed whether the  'Self Defence' criterion under Section 51 of the UN Convention was met. Action has to be necessary and proportionate and demonstrated by the 'overwhelming  necessity' for force to be used.

Finally in discussing UN Security Council Resolution 2249 which states that ISIS 'a global and unprecedented threat' to global security' and calls on member states who have the capacity to take action against them, he concluded that it was not credible to argue that there is no legal basis for UK government action. However, the question was whether it was right to do so.

Countering David Cameron's argument that air strikes on Syria would add capacity to the campaign against ISIS , Gardiner said that the same amount of assets would be deployed but now deployed in Syria as well.  It would not amount to a 'significant' military contribution and according to experts was not a 'war winning campaign' by any stretch of the imagination.

British expansion of the existing intervention in the region may feed radicalisation and do more harm than good.

Explaining that he preferred to use the term Daesh LINK rather than Islamic State, as the latter gave the organisation credibility as a 'state' and illegitimately appropriated Islam as a whole, he suggested that bombing bombing might kill many innocent people without significantly harming Daesh.

A cartoon shared widely over the weekend
Gardiner argued that without ground forces the Government's position was one of 'more hope than intent'. Discussing the current forces on the ground in Syria he said that the US had given up trying to train them and were now concentrating on supplying weapons and ammunition. 'A foolish approach' considering the disparate forces involved.

Cameron's suggestion that there was a 'moderate opposition' numbering thousands was a 'falsification of facts'. There were thousands of fighting forces under arms with different aims and rapidly shifting
alliances.  According the the Select Committee Report  so called 'moderates' had been squeezed out.

 Gardiner suggested that British troops could join a multi-national ground force co-ordinated by thw UN but only in tandem with a diplomatic strategy.

Rather than extending existing action the Government should be contributing to a diplomatic resolution of the conflict through the Vienna Conference.

In discussion, although recognising the legacy of Colonialism and Imperialism, Gardiner denounced as 'infantalism' the argument that history justified Daesh's murderous actions.  Challenged on whether, if the Government came up with a more plausible strategy, he would come back to consult constituents in another meeting, Gardiner said that an MP was not a delegate, and a church hall of people was not necessarily representative of all constituents.  He would read all the reports that constituents were unlikely to have time to read, weight the evidence and reach a judgement which he felt was in all constituents best interests.

On the question of whipping Gardiner said that he would not deserve to be MP for Brent North if he did not follow his conscience on such an important issue rather than the party line.

Responding to a question on the funding and arming of Daesh, Barry Gardiner said that the UK's relationship with Saudi Arabia needed to be rethought in the context of its export of its philosophy throughout the region. He said that Britain's involvement in the arms trade was a continuing problem, complicated by the fact that many jobs depended on it, but also needing to be tackled.

When discussion turned to what happened in Brent, Gardiner said that many in the Muslim community felt threatened by media coverage of the conflict. Leading figures in that community who spoke out powerfully against Daesh should be supported. We were fortunate that Brent is such a mixed community that no one group feels they can dominate.  He said that Labour had been critical of the Government's Prevent programme. It was a top down model rather than the bottom up approach that could harness forces at a community level. The thought that adolescent youth, at a stage in life when they were searching for their own identity,  could be inculcated with 'British values' was laughable. He was unable to attend the December 10th Prevent: Protectng Our Liberty?  meeting at the Interfaith Centre in Queen's Park because he would still be in Paris for the climate talks, but he welcomed the initiative.

No one at the meeting spoke in favour of the Government policy, or the approach of some in the Shadow Cabinet.  One woman who had been worried about what the 'French and Belgians would think of us if we did not support them' said that she had changed her mind during the course of the discussion.

The most moving speech of the evening was from an 8 year old girl who spoke eloquently about the bombing killing innocent people: 'It isn't right that some innocent people will be killed because of some bad people.'

Radio 4 Today report on the meeting is at 1.50 here LINK

Full transcript of Barry Gardiner's presenattion at the meeting HERE

Monday 26 October 2015

Challenging the Prevent Strategy: an outline of the concerns

A number of local groups are working together to hold a meeting on Prevent in Brent on Thursday December 10th. The Prevent Strategy raises a number of important issues and these will be covered by a panel of speakers. Bill Bolloten who wrote the piece below will one of the panel. Many thanks to Bill and the Institute of Race Relations LINK  , who first published this piece,  for permission to republish as a guest blog.

Bill BollotenAn edited version of a speech given by one of the UK’s most respected independent educational consultants at the joint IRR/CCIF seminar ‘Securitisation, Schools and Preventing Extremism’.

First, thanks to the IRR and the Collective Against Islamophobia in France for convening this meeting and providing a valuable opportunity for colleagues working in education, as well as others, to discuss our concerns about the Prevent duty.

I am a teacher and independent education consultant. I work with schools, school governors and children’s services on equality and diversity, and also on SMSC – the requirement for schools to promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. In case you didn’t know, that is the framework through which the government and Ofsted now require schools to actively promote so-called ‘fundamental British values’.

I am active in #EducationNotSurveillance, a network of parents, teachers, educationalists, activists and academics, who argue that the new statutory Prevent duty is misguided, counter-productive and damaging to both pupils and schools. We have come together to challenge Prevent and how it is being implemented in schools and early education settings.

We will shortly be launching the #EducationNotSurveillance website, aimed primarily at school leaders, teachers, parents, early education practitioners as well as teachers’ professional associations. We are developing a statement that we want people to get behind, and we aim to provide information, analysis and arguments explaining the consequences of the Prevent duty.

As part of our opposition and challenge to Prevent we also want to give out a clear and positive message that we believe in education that is inspirational, that develops pupils’ critical thinking, celebrates cultural diversity, promotes equality and fosters the trust and goodwill needed to explore sensitive and difficult issues.

New duties, flawed concepts

On 1 July 2015, the new legal duty was placed on schools and early years and childcare providers to have ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. The revised statutory guidance stipulates that ‘being drawn into terrorism includes not just violent extremism but also non-violent extremism, which can create an atmosphere conducive to terrorism and can popularise views which terrorists then exploit.’

Schools and early years providers are now assessed by Ofsted to check that they are implementing Prevent. You will also be aware that Prevent has been through different phases since its inception but currently its most important dimension is Channel, a referral, multi-agency assessment and intervention process meant to protect people at risk of ‘radicalisation’. Channel is driven by multi-agency panels in which the police play a leading role.

I want to identify some of the key concerns about the Prevent duty as well as suggest some positive alternative approaches. And I will end by discussing some of the challenges we face in organising against Prevent in partnership with teachers as well as the pupils, parents and communities that Prevent is impacting on.

Firstly, the model that underpins the government’s concept of ‘radicalisation’, and which is central to Prevent, is informed by notion of ‘psychological vulnerability’; that individuals must have certain vulnerabilities that make them more likely to engage in terrorism.

This means schools should be identifying signs of such vulnerabilities to then be able to halt the process of ‘radicalisation’. It is interesting that leaked guidance provided to the Cabinet’s home affairs committee stated that it was wrong ‘to regard radicalisation as a linear “conveyor belt” moving from grievance, through radicalisation, to violence’.

Secondly, the Prevent strategy and the new duty are fixated on ‘extremist ideology’; the view that people are drawn into terrorism almost exclusively through ideology. Yet research suggests that social, economic and political factors, as well as social exclusion, play a more central role in driving political violence than ideology.

In the UK therefore, but also in the USA and Australia, training for teachers, often delivered by police officers, urges teachers to report signs of radicalisation among their pupils, despite there being simply no empirical evidence at all to support the idea that terrorism can be correlated with factors to do with family, identity and emotional wellbeing.

One writer described this as ‘orientalist pseudoscience’. Beneath the jargon on ‘risks’, ‘vulnerabilities’, ‘engagement factors’ and ‘psychological hooks’, is an invitation to limitless racial and religious profiling in which normal teenage behaviours, or a young person’s beliefs, can be seen as indicators of being on the pathway to violent extremism. In fact, again, studies show that there is no direct link at all between religious observance, radical ideas, emotional wellbeing and violent acts.
But this is how Prevent operates in schools: identifying threats before they emerge in the so-called ‘pre-crime space’.

You might remember that a senior British police officer, Scotland Yard commander Mak Chishty, recently called for a move into the ‘private space of Muslims’ and offered specific advice: if a teenager stops shopping at Marks and Spencer, it could be because they had been radicalised. He also suggested watching for subtle unexplained changes such as sudden negative attitudes towards alcohol and western clothing.

A huge concern is therefore the tremendous risk of abuse and mistake in any approach that tries to predict future criminal activity, including terrorism.

By requiring schools and teachers to put pupils under surveillance, casting particular suspicion on Muslim pupils, and profiling them for behaviours that have no real connection to criminal behaviour, Prevent confuses the different professional roles of teachers and the police, and draws educational practitioners into becoming the eyes and ears of the counter-terrorism system.

An example of this is that there are now several private companies selling anti-radicalisation software to schools. If school pupils search for words such as ‘caliphate’ or ‘jihad’, or the names of Muslim political activists on classroom computers they risk being flagged as potential supporters of terrorism. A really sinister feature of the software being marketed by the company called Impero, is a ‘confide button’ allowing pupils to report on classmates anonymously.

Destroying trust, fostering discrimination

Expecting teachers and childcare professionals to identify potential extremists undermines trust and positive relationships.

We argue that mutual respect and trust between teachers and pupils is essential for learning environments where everyone feels safe and valued.

The constant monitoring of Muslim students will destroy trust and encourage discrimination against them.

How much confidence can Muslim communities have in Prevent in schools when many serious abuses are being reported already?

You will have seen many examples in the media. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) also submitted a series of case studies to David Anderson QC, the UK’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, and these were included in an annex in his recently published annual report.

These cases confirm the worst fears we had about the statutory Prevent duty in schools. We are seeing the duty being implemented naïvely in some schools, but also in crude, damaging and discriminatory ways in others. These are often schools where teachers have attended the ‘official’ Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent (WRAP) training.

Here are some examples:
  • A fifteen-year-old was questioned by police at home about his views on Syria and Daesh because he wore a ‘Free Palestine’ badge to school and handed out some leaflets promoting the boycotts, divestments and sanctions movement. Al Jazeera subsequently reported the conversation between the student and police officer: ‘I explained to him my views about freedom and justice and that I supported Palestine. I said I thought Israel should have tough sanctions put upon it and he said these could be radical beliefs,’ the boy said. ‘He said these are terrorist-like beliefs that you have. He explicitly said you cannot speak about this conflict at school with your friends,’ the boy said.
  • In another case, a fourteen-year-old was referred to Prevent without his parents’ consent for not engaging in a music lesson.
  • A schoolchild mentioned the ‘history of the Caliphate’ in a piece of homework about British foreign policy and was referred to social services for signs of radicalisation.
  • A teacher decided to call in the parents of a student after they used the Arabic term for ‘praise be to God’.
  • A Muslim schoolboy was questioned about Islamic State after a classroom discussion about environmental activism. He was left ‘scared and nervous’ by his experience, and afterwards was reluctant to join in class discussions for fear of being suspected of extremism.
Prevent is clearly leading to negative stereotyping of Muslim children and young people, and racial and religious profiling.

As Muslim pupils are now monitored and scrutinised through a securitised lens there is now little doubt that those who fit the profile set out in the Channel Vulnerability Assessment Framework will increasingly find themselves unfairly targeted.

New York Lawyer Sergio De La Pava, reflecting on police brutality towards minority communities in the US, recently commented: ‘Being targeted is horrid, but nothing breeds enmity quite like being unfairly targeted.’

We argue then that the Prevent duty is institutionalising anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia in schools.

We also believe that Prevent is undermining the duties of the schools under the Equality Act 2010 to ensure that direct and indirect unlawful discrimination is taken seriously, and that individuals or groups of students should not be treated unfairly or put at a disadvantage.

Making schools less safe

Prevent is making discussion of sensitive and controversial issues much more difficult in schools. Pupils with political opinions or who take part in protests are also coming under increasing surveillance. If the safe space that schools provide for discussion is restricted, and pupils feel that they can’t share their opinions without being reported, there is a risk that they may seek out spaces that are less safe.

Children and young people need to be able to speak openly with teachers about the issues they feel strongly about, including sensitive and controversial ones, without the fear that they will be profiled or put under suspicion.

The MCB has particularly expressed concern that Muslims are being treated differently to others, and that some parents are therefore training their children to restrict their speech.

It is perfectly legitimate, for example, for young people to criticise government foreign policy; to oppose the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan; to express support for Palestinian rights or to express either support for or opposition to the Israeli government. One may agree or disagree with such views, however they form part of legitimate discussion and debate.

Undermining the Children’s Convention

As a result of this, the Prevent duty presents a number of specific threats to the rights of children and young people. Despite the UK government being a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a legally binding international agreement, there appears to have been no consideration at all given to the Convention as the Prevent duty was drafted. Apart from the key articles that ensure rights apply to all children without discrimination (Article 2), and the principle that governments must act in children’s best interests (Article 3), I think there are very specific concerns in relation to Article 13 which outlines how every child has the right to freedom of expression and ideas.

As Arun Kundnani recently commented: ‘The great risk is creating an atmosphere of self-censorship – where young people don’t feel free to express themselves in schools, or youth clubs or at the mosque. If they feel angry or have a sense of injustice but nowhere to engage in a democratic process and in a peaceful way, then that’s the worst climate to create for terrorist recruitment.’
Schools are now required to actively promote ‘fundamental British values’, including ‘democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.’

By branding opposition to British values as ‘extremist’, the government are engaged in a similar process as can be seen in France: a crude attempt to create a forced consensus, in the same the way the French secular principle of laïcité has become a tool to reinforce narrow judgements about French identity and discriminate against minorities.

The challenges ahead

I will end by outlining some key questions and challenges:

1. What will the cost of Prevent be for the dignity, confidence and sense of belonging of Muslim children?

In a powerful piece earlier this year, Safeguarding little Abdul, Prevent Muslim schoolchildren and the lack of parental consent, Yahya Birt asked his readers to imagine Abdul, a 12-year-old pupil:
‘Abdul deserves a better future. One in which he is treated a citizen rather than as a suspect. Where he can disagree, sometimes even be bold and radical in disagreeing if he chooses to do so, without being labelled an extremist. Where he can be proud rather than be ashamed of being a Muslim. He deserves to be inspired at school, opened up to new possibilities, for his autonomy to be nurtured and respected. This is the kind of schooling and the kind of country that we need to fight for.’

2. What will be the short and long-term impact of Prevent on schools and teachers?

Already, in many schools, Prevent is causing significant nervousness and confusion among teachers. There is increasing evidence that teachers identify it as counter-productive and dangerous.
The new duty risks closing down the very opportunities where the classroom can be used to develop an inclusive curriculum that fosters democratic skills and explores human rights.

A teacher, who did not want to be identified, told a Guardian journalist that her Muslim pupils had become more careful about what they talked about for fear of being referred through Prevent. She added that assessment by Ofsted on how schools were protecting children from radicalisation added an extra pressure on teachers.

3. What do we need to do next to challenge Prevent and thinking behind it, and work towards its repeal?

The National Union of Teachers statement on the Prevent duty was welcome and encouraging:
‘Teachers need opportunities to work together, and with local schools, to develop proportionate and sensible ways for schools to respond to the different risks young people face – one of which, for a comparatively small number of young people, might be exposure to individuals advocating violence.’

The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWTunion moved a motion, unanimously passed at September’s TUC Congress in Brighton, arguing that Prevent ‘could destroy relationships between teachers and learners’. Requiring teachers to spy on and report pupils would ‘close down space for open discussion in a safe and secure environment and smother the legitimate expression of political opinion.’

However other professional associations such as the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) are leading training in partnership with advocates for Prevent such as the founder of Inspire, Sara Khan and Birmingham headteacher Kanal Hanif. They also recommend to schools the ‘official’ workshop to raise awareness of Prevent (WRAP) training sessions.

We must work towards repeal of the Prevent duty on schools, but we need more discussion on what we need to do to achieve that.

I suggest that this must involve engagement with school leaders, teachers and governing bodies, as well as working with the NUT, NASUWT and other professional associations.

We also need to develop close partnerships with the communities, pupils and families who Prevent is targeting, and ensure that as well as playing a leading role in campaigning, they can also access expert advice, support and advocacy.

We also need more expert research and analysis that can inform us of what is happening locally and nationally. There is a key role here for committed journalists, academics and human rights organisations. In particular, the way that Prevent is being driven into schools as part of ‘safeguarding’ needs to be more thoroughly analysed and critiqued so teachers, school leaders and others have the confidence, the evidence and the arguments they need.

Related links

Read Yasser Louati’s speech ‘A French perspective on a British debate’, here
Read the IRR’s press release: ‘Prevent duty “heavy handed and discriminatory“‘
IRR News story: Will the government’s counter-extremism programme criminalise dissent?
IRR News story: The Great British Values Disaster – education, security and vitriolic hate

 A Facebook page, 'Monitoring Prevent in Brent', has been set up HERE

Thursday 18 June 2015

Ramadan message from the Green Party


With Ramadan starting today the Green Party would like to wish Britain's Muslim Community Ramadan Kareem. With the long hot days ahead of us we’re keenly aware this year will be a harder Ramadan than years previous and we wish every Muslim fasting good health and a rewarding and spiritual month.

At this time we firstly want to celebrate the contribution that the Muslim community make to Britain. Ramadan is a time of contemplating and recognising the privilege many of us have in life, whilst remembering and empathising with those who have less. These are values I think every Green Party member can keenly associate with.

Equally over this Ramadan we are minded to think about the countless communities that face unrest and violence for the coming month. Ramadan should be a time of quiet spiritual contemplation but too many communities in Syria, Yemen and Nigeria face violence and unrest. Real international action is needed to build lasting peace, and we hope this month can catalyse a change. As an international movement of Green Parties we will continue to strive for real meaningful diplomacy and peacebuilding.

Ramadan Kareem to all those fasting this month

Benali Hamdache
Green Party Equalities Spokesperson

Thursday 6 June 2013

Vigil tonight following attack on Islamic Community Centre


Unite Against Fascism has called a vigil after the letters ‘EDL’ – the initials of the English Defence League – were allegedly found graffitied on the Bravanese Centre in Coppetts Road, Muswell Hill, North London. The Islamic community centre was destroyed in a suspicious fire in the early hours of yesterday
Counter-terrorism officers with the Metropolitan Police are treating the fire as suspicious and investigating whether the attack was started deliberately in a racist attack.
At this stage it is not clear if the fire is linked to the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich two weeks ago but there has been a significant increase in reports of attacks against Muslims since his death
.
Unite Against Fascism says:
We are deeply concerned about the fire of the Bravanese Centre and the reported EDL graffiti. Our thoughts are with the Somali, Muslim and indeed all the communities in the area that have been affected by this incident. We ask people to join us at the vigil.
UAF launched the Don’t let the racists divide us campaign in response to the stepped up activities of the English Defence League (EDL), the British National Party (BNP) and other racist and far right groups in the aftermath of the murder, which have cynically attempted to exploit the murder of Lee Rigby to pursue their own agenda directed against Black, Asian and especially Muslim communities.
This has already led to a spike in Islamophobic attacks and a wave of assaults on Mosques. Muslim communities are experiencing verbal abuse, women’s headscarves have been torn off as well as more serious threats and violent attacks. Racists are simply stepping up their campaign. So too must the anti-racist and anti-fascist movement in response to this hate agenda.
DON’T LET THE RACISTS DIVIDE US VIGIL
THURDAY 6 JUNE, 6-7PM
BRAVANESE CENTRE
116 COPPETTS ROAD, MUSWELL HILL N10 1JS

Thursday 23 May 2013

Muhammed Butt urges mutual respect and support after Woolwich

Muhammed Butt, leader of  Brent Council has issued the following statement after yesterday's killing in Woolwich:
On behalf of Brent Council and Brent residents I would like to express the dismay felt by all at the brutal murder that took place yesterday in Woolwich.

As a Muslim I know that there is no basis in Islam for this kind of barbaric action and my thoughts and prayers, as I know yours are as well, are with the family and friends of the young soldier who died yesterday.
Here in Brent we have strong communities that come together every day to live and work, and I urge all of us to continue to respect and support each other during this time of unease.