Shahid Malik and David Hanson: Prevent is here to protect, not spy

Shahid Malik MP, minister at the Department for Communities and Local Government, and David Hanson MP, minister for policing, crime and counter-terrorism (both pictured), contribute an article to the Guardian’s Comment is Free.

They tackle criticisms of the Government’s Prevent strategy that have surfaced in recent days in articles by Vikram Dodd, Jonathan Githens-Mazer and Robert Lambert, Seumas Milne and Arun Kundnani. 

Malik and Hanson reaffirm the emphasis the Government places on a partnership approach to Prevent (reiterated by the Home Secretary at the RSA yesterday) and the damage done to these partnerships by suggestions that Prevent involves spying on innocent British Muslims.

They restate comments made earlier by the Home Secretary that,

‘Prevent is not about spying on innocent people. Nor is Prevent about criminalising free speech. Recent comments have claimed that the focus of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy, Contest, is nonviolent extremism. This is not the case.

‘The Prevent programme depends upon a unique and ground-breaking range of partnerships and is based on the support of communities and community organisations to help stop people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism.’

‘We are keen to keep on learning. Informed and thoughtful comment is the key to this. But the repetition of factually incorrect and potentially damaging rumours is anything but constructive.’

Malik and Hanson go on to state that Muslim organisations doing important preventative work are in danger of having their reputations blemished by the allegations of spying and intelligence-gathering and that information sharing is an indispensable facet of preventing criminal activity which extends to other areas of work and is not exclusive to counter-terrorism and Prevent.

The questions Malik and Hanson don’t address however, and which have contributed to the breakdown of trust between British Muslims and the Government, is whether those agencies tasked with Prevent recognize the damage done to the relationship between Muslims and Government by the perception of counter-subversion masquerading as counter-terrorism strategy?

Githens-Mazer and Lambert write:

‘Kundnani’s [report] compellingly demonstrates that Contest’s transformation was more than political posturing. A previously domestically focused counter-terrorist policy suddenly became an all encompassing policy of counter-radicalisation, counter-extremism, and counter-insurgency.

‘…the shift to a counter-insurgency and counter-subversion strategy has left [Muslims] feeling betrayed and isolated….Communities feel betrayed; projects that follow the Quilliam model have been about counter-subversion rather than mutual respect.‘

The Government’s generous support for the Quilliam Foundation has long been viewed as the Achilles heel of the partnership approach to Prevent, which Githens-Mazer and Lambert so cogently argue in ‘Reshaping Prevent’.

Malik and Hanson assert that:

‘The Quilliam Foundation does not speak for the government on this or any other issue, and the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism in the Home Office has written to them to make clear that we strongly disagree with their remarks.’

The question now remains whether the government will distance itself from the damage wreaked by its support for the QF in other matters?