While governments struggle to come up with effective ways of countering extremism, the British government's policy of choice appears to be the Prevent programme which has been placed on a statutory footing by the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. From July 2015 every local authority has a legal duty to "prevent people from being drawn into terrorism". This tightening of the government’s noose around ‘terrorists’, ‘non-violent extremists’ and ‘radicals’ places secular feminists in a dilemma. It squeezes us into a space the size of a postage stamp, in terms of our room for manoeuvre. The noose is simultaneously too tight and too loose. It’s a kind of saturation policing which does nothing to make us safer, whilst being a brutal assault on the civil liberties of Muslim minorities as well as an assault on the rights of all those forced to help deliver the programme on pain of prison or fines.
I have written at length on openDemocracy 50.50 about the earlier phase of Prevent, also known as Preventing Violent Extremism, which was introduced by the Labour government in 2008 as a response to the attack on 7/7. In this phase of Prevent, money was disbursed through local authorities mainly to mosques, women’s groups and youth groups to try and identify those vulnerable to extremism and to steer them away. However, many groups were unhappy with a programme which appeared to be funding them to spy on their communities. Teachers, community workers and voluntary sector organisations were unhappy at having to share information with the police, believing it to be a breach of confidentiality, and often refused to co-operate.
