|
UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 65-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE
Monday 14 December 2009 MR GUY WILKINSON, MR MICHAEL WHINE, DR INDARJIT SINGH, and MR BRIJ-MOHAN GUPTA
MR SULEMAN NAGDI, and MR FAHAD MOHAMED Evidence heard in Public Questions 62 -145 USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Communities and Local Government Committee on Monday 14 December 2009 Members present Dr Phyllis Starkey, in the Chair Mr Clive Betts John Cummings Alison Seabeck Mr Andy Slaughter ________________ Witnesses: Mr Guy Wilkinson, National Inter-Religious Affairs Adviser and Secretary for Inter-Religious Affairs to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Church of England, Mr Michael Whine, Director, Defence and Group Relations, Board of Deputies of British Jews, Dr Indarjit Singh, OBE, Network of Sikh Organisations, and Mr Brij-Mohan Gupta, General Secretary, Hindu Council UK, gave evidence. Q62 Chair: Could I welcome you to the second evidence session on preventing violent extremism and just repeat what I said last time, which is that the eventual report will be informed by the written evidence as well as the oral evidence so we do not have to repeat everything in this oral session that has been said in your various written submissions. What we will be seeking to do is to explore some particular aspects of the issues that are before us. Perhaps I could start by asking each of your views on whether you think that the role of religion has been overplayed as a driver for radicalisation in the Prevent programme. Mr Whine: No, I do not think it has. I think the Prevent programme is very clearly focused on preventing crime and on preventing radicalisation. It does not speak of religion and indeed the whole counterterrorism programme is not focused on religion; rather on violent extremism, wherever it comes from. Mr Wilkinson: Certainly that is the intention of the programme but I think that the law of unintended consequences has played its part. De facto the Prevent programme or the preventing violent extremism programme has actually had a major impact on religious communities. One of the negative impacts has been on distorting the relationships between different communities. I can expand on that, if that is helpful, later on. Q63 Chair: Would you like to expand on that slightly now, briefly? Mr Wilkinson: Yes. Because of the way in which the Prevent programme has worked, both institutionally and in the resourcing and funding of the Prevent programme, other faith communities have extensively felt that they have been either sidelined or excluded from the issues which are of importance to the whole community. In that sense, it has created a set of tensions between, on the one hand, our Muslim communities and, on the other hand, most of the other communities. Dr Singh: I very much echo the view expressed by Guy that religion has been brought into it and there are constant references to Islam. Islam is often portrayed as a recipient of great amounts of funding and also the unintended consequence of being targeted and made a scapegoat for everything that goes wrong. Again, the impact on other communities is quite considerable. They are ignored or the feeling is that they are being ignored and there is some confusion between community cohesion, service delivery and the Prevent programme. Mr Gupta: I fully endorse the sentiments and feelings expressed by my colleagues but I have to add on religion that, if I am a true follower of a religion, as Lord Krishna said in Gita, "The whole universe is mine." Where on earth are we different? We have one universal God and we should follow what he has asked us to follow in every day life. If that is so, I think religion does not ask or preach to any follower of his to follow differently and go astray from what religion says to live in a harmonious society. Mr Whine: My response was focused on what the Prevent strategy was intended to be. I do not disagree with Guy Wilkinson that there are some unintended consequences and indeed with Dr Indarjit Singh, but I took it to mean that you wanted to know what it was we understood by Prevent. Q64 Chair: We do. Do you think that there are other drivers of radicalisation that should be being included within Prevent? Mr Whine: Radicalisation is promoted by a whole range of things and there are many, many studies into what puts people onto the conveyor belt that begins with radicalisation and ends possibly with violent extremism. Certainly a distorted view of religion is one of them, but there are many other things. It may be that there have been some traumatic episodes in a person's life that have turned them away from society. It may be a reaction to things going on in society. Religion really is only one thing, but what happens of course is that people who are the radicalisers use their distorted view of religion to radicalise people and send them further along that conveyor belt. Q65 Chair: The question I was trying to get at was whether there are not some forms of violent extremism which are nothing to do with religion at all and whether they ought also to be within the Prevent programme. Mr Whine: Yes. People use religion as an excuse but in fact I think violent extremism has much more to do with a lot of other things as well. Mr Wilkinson: Perhaps I could just add a comment to that. There certainly are other forms of violent extremism. I think for me though the question is where those issues on radicalisation, leading on into violent extremism, should be located. As soon as perhaps inevitably you locate policy in respect of those problems in the context of communities, then automatically you have to move into the realm of what communities believe, how communities act, how they interrelate. Of course, communities and neighbourhoods are made up amongst others of a whole series of groups of religious and non-religious people. As soon as you focus or over-focus your policies on one particular group, you create all kinds of difficulties like the ones that we have seen. Q66 Alison Seabeck: I want to try to draw this away from post-9/11 because the group of witnesses we have here are all very experienced and have been involved in their faiths and communities for decades, I suspect. You will know because you have been around long enough to know that there have always been these sorts of tensions, irrespective of which group, and it is very much the point that you were just making. Therefore have we year on year missed tricks? Local authorities used to give grants to certain areas. We have very deprived areas in my constituency which get lots of grants. Other parts of my constituency resent it enormously. Is it about the message we are giving to other people? Are we not explaining why, if it is a short term investment, if you like, or a short term commitment to a particular area, that is necessary and why others should not be jealous about the money that is going in there? Do you have the sense that we have failed in that respect? Dr Singh: It is not jealousy. It is a sort of sadness to see interfaith dialogue being skewed or moved away from something that should be purely to do with the evils of crime and crime prevention. The involvement of religion in a nebulous way or a hinting way suggests religion is a problem where the interfaith dialogue was moving towards getting communities together, tackling real differences and impediments to understanding the bigotry of belief and things like that. They have been pushed to one side. Q67 Chair: Can I just pick you up on that issue about interfaith dialogue? In an earlier inquiry that this Committee did about community cohesion and integration in Burnley I definitely remember somebody saying to us quite forcefully that the problem they felt with the interfaith dialogue was that it was all the same people talking to each other and it was not actually reaching those parts of the communities which one might say were a bit problematic. Is there any evidence at all that interfaith dialogue, whilst a good thing in itself, is in fact at all relevant to what this particular inquiry is about, which is about Prevent? Dr Singh: It is extremely important. I totally agree with you that interfaith dialogue is now becoming very much the same with people talking to each other. It is not percolating down to the people who need to have a little understanding of other religions. That is important, but the whole focus of the government's attention means that we people from different faiths have also got to meet in different meetings on these sorts of programmes rather than get to looking at the real impediment to understanding which is bigotry in religion: mine is better than yours; mine is the only one. We have to find a way of going around that and accommodating each other. Mr Whine: I think it is our experiences with multifaith and interfaith activities that have led the Jewish community in recent years to look at it in two ways. One, there is the top down, religious leaders and community leaders meeting one another but, at the same time, we are also now trying to focus on the bottom up, which is to get members of synagogues, members of gudwaras, members of mosques together, around some common issues, something that they can do together. We have been trying to drive this forward for some years. Indeed, we got some money from the Communities and Local Government Department to help us do that. That is one point I would make. The second point is that I would agree that interfaith dialogue is important. I think sometimes multifaith, where all faiths are coming together, tends to deal with the lowest common denominator and perhaps, in answer to your question do they really go that far, interfaith - in other words, the Jewish community and Muslim community, Jews and Hindus, Jews and Sikhs, Jews and Christians or Christians and Muslims - is much more productive. Q68 Chair: Can you point to any positive examples of where it has actually tackled radicalisation? Mr Whine: Yes. In north London, as indeed there is in north Manchester, there are longstanding Jewish/Muslim dialogue groups which have dealt with local issues and local tensions successfully. Q69 Chair: Does anybody else have any other positive examples? Dr Singh: Yes. I think there has been an attempt at Sikh/Muslim dialogue but it does come down to people being nice to each other and not getting down to the things that really can cause tensions between the communities. It has not got very far at all. Mr Gupta: I can give you one example about what we have been doing to prevent something untoward happening in our part of London. That is the west London area. They say that whenever it snows back home we start sneezing here. Whatever happens politically between India and Pakistan, we here are affected by those happenings but as my colleagues have very rightly said, because of the interfaith dialogue, because we have the sorts of facilities whereby we can sit down and sort it out, things have been avoided. Now you can see not a single untoward incident has happened in that part of London. Whatever happens between India and Pakistan, we are not affected. We are living here and we have to solve our problems in this country. Let them solve their own problems. This is as a result of very good relations by bringing them to temples, by going to mosques, by sharing happiness, by sharing in our Ead and Diwali, all those things. Q70 John Cummings: Could you tell the Committee which social groups you see as being most at risk from radicalisation? Mr Whine: It is not a social class issue. If you look for example at the 7/7 bombers or the 21/7 bombers or indeed some of those who have gone one way or another to end up in Al Qaeda from the UK, they have come from a whole range of classes but indeed some of them came from well integrated and even wealthy backgrounds. I am not sure it is a class thing. Q71 Chair: Does anybody dissent from that? Mr Wilkinson: No. Dr Singh: I agree. Q72 John Cummings: Do you think the government should be doing more in schools, universities and also prisons in relation to preventing radicalisation and perhaps embarking on detailed discussions? Mr Wilkinson: I am not sure that it is necessarily government that has the only role in this. I think it is how you engage others with whom those in schools or the prisons subsequently when they are coming out amongst whom they will live. How do we engage the people alongside those who are likely to be radicalised more in these processes rather than governmentalising these kinds of issues? Q73 John Cummings: If the government does not do it, who will? Mr Wilkinson: The government can be a catalyst. One of the things we would say about the Prevent programme is that it has not really engaged other communities and neighbourhoods are made up of schools, churches, mosques and so on. If we do not engage those people in these programmes which are about neighbourhoods and how we live together, then I think we will not succeed. Part of the problem I think is how do you measure deradicalisation and the success of these programmes. One of the real issues we face at the moment is that we have all these programmes, large amounts of money spent - I notice ₤350,000 was spent on the radical middle way programme bringing scholars from abroad into this country - but I have not seen any assessment as to what impact that has had. There is a wider range of measures involving neighbourhoods and a wider range of communities that should also be attempted. Q74 John Cummings: Dr Singh? Dr Singh: I speak from experience, sitting on the chaplaincy council about prisons. It is the view, not only my view but the view of the Muslim adviser, that radicalisation has increased with the Prevent programme. It is the radicals that seem to be getting the support and the funding for doing what they want. It is quite an accusation. It has come through not myself only but anyone involved in prisons and on university campuses. The proselytising is extremely aggressive and nothing is being done about it. Q75 Chair: Can we pick up the issue about the prisons, Dr Singh? Are you saying that the groups that do the radicalisation have been getting support from government, or what? Dr Singh: We are talking about the Muslim community. They have been getting additional funding for all sorts of projects and they therefore see themselves in a sort of favoured status as a result of radicalisation. It has not made things any better. Q76 Chair: You are not suggesting that radical groups themselves have been funded? Dr Singh: Not as radical groups, no. Q77 Mr Betts: Is there a reverse thought process, that your communities feel let down and disadvantaged because you do not have extremists in your midst or are not perceived to have them and therefore you do not get the funding? There is a sort of reward for having extremists amongst you? Is that the case? Dr Singh: Absolutely. If I may say so, I have been told that by more than one government minister. In prisons Sikhs have one full time chaplain compared to 50 or 60 Muslim chaplains. Q78 Alison Seabeck: Hearing your comments, you are sort of suggesting that there are certain groups the government should not be engaging with, effectively. Is that the case? Dr Singh: I am suggesting the government should be even handed and engage with all groups in an even handed way. I feel that that would improve the situation. Q79 Chair: When you say "all groups", do you mean all communities? Dr Singh: All communities. They should not favour one or the other. They should tackle crime as crime. Q80 Chair: Are you suggesting that, in relation to combating radicalisation, it should not be within communities at all because it has had this perverse effect of appearing to channel funding at one community? Dr Singh: To combat radicalisation, one needs to look at the causes of radicalisation. As my colleague said, there are all sorts of causes. It does not have to be religion, but most religious texts have ambiguities within them and they can be interpreted in different ways. Someone who feels deprived can latch on to the wrong teachings. Someone with an affluent upbringing can latch on to the wrong teachings. It is those teachings that we need to get addressed and that is where interfaith dialogue was beginning to go. It stalled badly. Q81 Mr Slaughter: I do not want to over-simplify it but it seems that you are saying that it is not religion per se but perhaps a perversion or using religions at all specifically within radical Islam, as I understand what you are saying. Do you think that other aggravating factors - I will mention two - either a lack of national identity amongst minority communities or British foreign policy - i.e., an identification with what is happening abroad, perhaps in countries of origin - are active, aggravating features? Dr Singh: I believe they are. Obviously anyone belonging to particular communities, when they see that fellow members of their community in another part of the world are in their view suffering, being ill treated or badly treated, will feel an impact. It is the extremists within the community who will manipulate that sense of concern to more extremist activity. Mr Gupta: There can be three motivating factors to radicalisation. (a), as you said is very likely, reading of world politics, what is happening in Afghanistan, what happened in Iraq, why did it happen and why did it happen to only Muslim countries? The perception within a faith community is that they want to destroy Islam, the west wants to destroy Islam and Islamic states. (b) a half truth is a very dangerous thing and this is a half truth. The interpretation of the holy book is if you die in the way of God you will have a better life. After life, you will have a lot of good rewards. This is another thing. The brain is washed. Third is the people who are coming into this country and interpreting the holy book in a very wrong, un-Islamic manner. This is the part of Islam, if you do it like that, you will be having a good place in heaven. To young minds, that becomes very attractive. In schools, colleges and universities I have seen the literature which is being printed and sent out. That is distributed on the high streets. If these things are not prevented, if the leaders who preach day in and day out are not brought with a view to see that they are in a position to do good work in this country amongst young people and followers, this is a very dangerous thing which is coming up. They come here; they preach something and you cannot challenge that. That is one thing. In my view, if something is done towards, when they apply for a visa, if they are scrutinised, their mindset, what they are going to do there, literally the values they have, I think that will go a long way to sorting out this matter at the very root before it is too much. Q82 Chair: I do not want to get into this in great depth but would each of you be happy if the government did the same sort of thing? Are we just talking about clerics here essentially? Should the government really be getting into vetting clerics of every religion to work out what they are going to say and whether it is acceptable or not? Mr Whine: I think that would not be acceptable. If I can just go back to the question Mr Slaughter posed, there are two very important issues there. The first of them, national identity, is one that is increasingly confused with the whole Prevent strategy. National identity is about cohesion and the promotion of cohesive societies in which communities can learn to live with each other and with the greater community. That is a vital and parallel process from Prevent. On the issue of foreign policy I would agree with the previous speaker. Certainly the radicals promote the idea that Islam is under attack and this is the point where they tip people into radicalisation, in defence of Islam. The issue of foreign policy, whilst it is important and is a contributing factor, is not the only thing. There are so many other ways that one can deal with the issues of foreign policy on the streets of London or the streets of England without resorting to violence. Chair: Andrew, do you want to pursue any parts of your question? Mr Slaughter: Not at the moment. Q83 Mr Betts: Do you have any examples, despite the criticisms you have of any projects in the Prevent Programme being successful? Mr Whine: I do a quite a lot of work with police. I have been fortunate to have sight of some of the ops that they are involved in, and I can think of several. The Channel project is a substantive part of the Prevent strategy seems to be working. The Operation Nicole brings together Muslim community leaders primarily and presents them with the issue of, "How do you deal with a problem in your community?" through the various steps. I think that these are well thought-out programmes and are working. You have got proof of that, for example with one particular case of Ibrahim, who was reported on by local Muslim community leaders and as a consequence was arrested, tried and convicted. That is all a successful part of Prevent. There are other parts we would be critical of, but in general the strategy works. It is one of those strategies that needs to evolve and learn. We have seen some amendments over the last couple of years. That should be a continuous process. Mr Wilkinson: Yes, I can think of some examples, one from Bedford where there is quite a mixed community and where the local Church of England parish is working with a number of other community organisations, particularly Muslim organisations in that area on sports programmes with young people and that is funded from the Prevent Programme. I would add just a couple of riders to that. One is that it is more likely that these programmes will be successful where they are rooted in organisations that have existed in a neighbourhood for some considerable time. One of my colleagues from Leicester was saying that one of the problems is that funding has gone to bodies that nobody local had really come across before. It is a common problem with bidding type programmes, but that is no less true in this case. One of the difficulties of course, particularly in the cases I mentioned in Bedford, has been that until very recently it has been possible for bodies like Hizb ut-Tahrir to be saying to local young Muslim people that to engage with other faith communities funded by Prevent money is haraam, something you should not do. So it has been quite important for Government try to make clear - and this is where the cross-over comes - whether this funding under Prevent is about integration or whether it is about crime prevention. The reality is that it has not been clear and can never be clear. I notice that in the first part of the Secretary of State's important speech the other day he said that this is a crime prevention programme, and I understand that that is the intention; but the reality is that it certainly is not just that; it is a much more extensive programme around how communities live together and engage with these issues of radicalisation and violence. Once one accepts that reality, then one has to address some of the problems that the Prevent Programme has given rise to. Q84 Chair: Can I ask you about this programme in Bedford: have you any evidence that it has actually reduced radicalisation? Mr Wilkinson: Chair, I go back to my point that I think the measuring of impact is a very underdeveloped science in this arena, so I am not entirely aware of how one measures whether a particular person has been de-radicalised or kept away from - or whatever - here we are, spending 50, 60, 70 millions of pounds on a basis of measurement that I do not think anybody is very clear about. That is something to be corrected as the programme continues. I would say that there is evidence that those young people for example in the Bedford case, but we can all quote many others who are engaged with a whole range of people outside their own immediately intense context, with other young people who have other cultural values other than religious values, that you can show that their attitudes to the other are shifted. Q85 Alison Seabeck: You have all flagged up the lack of clarity in the aims of the Prevent Programme and the ability to deliver, and the lack of evidence. Yet a lot of the statements we had suggested that the Government should be leading this differently, essentially led from a values-based perspective very much a theological faith-based delivery mechanism rather than coming at it from any other way. However, we are sitting here saying we have not got any evidence of outcomes so we are not sure. Do you think this programme should be led through faith-based approaches and, if so, why? Mr Whine: I think it is balancing values and means - you have been talking about the means by which you deal with it. Values is also part of it, promoting the values of autonomy and a democratic society and so on. There probably has not been enough of that and I think there has been some inconsistency in the way in which the Government has approached it in dealing with some organisations that do not promote those values. I think that if one is to make suggestions for the future, then it could concentrate a little bit more on promoting the values that I think we all would find acceptable. Q86 Chair: Can I push one of the questions that was asked earlier and we got a partial answer? Dr Singh talked about engaging across communities but there is a debate about whether there are some groups within the Muslim community that you should not engage with, which I do not think we have had an answer on. Dr Singh: I do not think you should not engage with particular people, but it is the theme. If I may just explain, religion is a very complex mix. At one extreme there are ethical values that all religions teach, and there is a lot, much more than we often assume, in common. Those are the values that should be brought to the forefront and worked on. For example, we talked about that at the turn of the century at Lambeth Palace, and different faiths listed a set of values that we should live by in the 21st century, but then they were filed, and now people talk again about that. That is the better road. Otherwise religions with values, with all sorts of cultural entanglements and misinterpreted - there is ambiguity in religious texts - with those it gets very difficult. We have got to go back to finding what our faiths have in common and embed those in the way we live in society. At the same time we have to tackle the real differences about "mine being the only way and anyone who does not belong to my faith will roast in hell" and things like that. We have got to do something about that, and there is a way I can suggest: we can believe what we like but we should not push our beliefs on to others. We can believe that the earth is flat. I do not mind that as long as people do not try to push me off the end. Q87 Chair: I think that is not quite the question I was asking, and I am not a theologian myself and I do not want to get into it. It is a very pragmatic issue. As I understand it, if we are trying to reach young people within the Muslim community who are starting to be radicalised and we do not engage with those groups that are not themselves involved in any violence but which have quite an extreme type of Islam, then we are reducing our ability to relate to those young people. That was the question I was trying to get at, not whether we should be trying to persuade all the religions to respect each other - of course we should - and people who do not have religion, which is after all the majority in this country. Pragmatically, should we be using all of the groupings within the Muslim community to reach the young people who are at risk, or should we be exercising an ideological filter and saying some groups are beyond the pale? Mr Whine: It is an important practical point, Madam Chairman. Of course you have got to engage, we think, with all groups; but there is a difference between engagement and funding, and I think that is the nub. Mr Gupta: I agree with the last speaker that we should not leave any group disengaged; we must engage each and every group and see what their requirements are, why they became radicalised. Mr Wilkinson: Could I put a gloss on that, Madam Chair? In principle there are always circumstances where engagement is anything but, but it seems that the important principle is that we engage more with those who demonstrate they are looking for integrative and cohesive action. So I would say, if I am allowed to name organisations, bodies like Hizb ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun are not bodies that have any real interest in engaging with the kinds of programmes and activities that most of us I am sure would think were appropriate. It is not to say because they are illegal that we should not touch them but it is to say that we should not by engaging with them in effect give them more importance in the eyes of young people and others than those that are more positive. There is a fundamental principle there about how and who we engage. Chair: Can I thank you all very much. We could go on all evening but we have other witnesses. We have got your written submissions which obviously go into an even wider range of issues, and that will be part of our eventual report. Thank you very much. Witnesses: Mr Suleman Nagdi, Prevent Co-ordinator, Federation of Muslim Organisations, and Mr Fahad Mohamed, Managing Director, Somali Family Support Group, gave evidence. Q88 Chair: Can I welcome you both. Mr Nagdi has been sitting listening to the previous witnesses. Mr Nagdi: That is right, yes. Q89 Chair: You at least have the advantage of knowing some of the issues that have been covered already. Can I start with the speech that the Secretary of State John Denham made recently and ask you what your thoughts are on what appears to be the emerging strategy for the future of this Prevent Programme? Mr Nagdi: I was encouraged by his speech. However, I am not quite sure how it will translate on the ground. The reason for this is I have been involved in a number of training programmes for senior police officers and prison staff on the Prevent strategy to try and understand the single terrorist narrative, and the understanding is pretty limited in my opinion, of the statutory authorities in understanding the whole Prevent strategy and what it is all about. The issue also around political correctness normally kicks in and so people do not understand the issue itself at hand, so there is some difficulty how you translate that on the ground and how the vast majority of frontline service staff understand the message itself. Q90 Chair: What about whether the counter-terrorism strategy, with its current four bits, should be part of the role of the CLG at all or whether it should all be within the Home Department and that CLG should concentrate on the community cohesion integration front? Mr Nagdi: I think it should be with the Home Office. I also think we need to look at it in the whole, not confine it to the four. The issue around legislation that has recently come out in the 2001 counter-terrorism legislation, certainly section 44, which has been regarded as a blunt instrument by some of the chief constables up and down the country, and more importantly schedule 7, the powers to stop people at ports of entry, in and out of the country, has caused enormous problems within my community. The very people whose hearts and minds we are trying to win over are the imams and senior leaders of the community; if they are subject to these searches at airports continuously, day-in day-out then that itself is causing a very negative effect. I think we are creating a "them and us" scenario; in other words, the police and security on one side and the Muslim community on the other side. What we need to do is create a bridge and marry the two together because acts of terrorism affect us all and we need the support from the community, and also intelligence from the community. But that can only be achieved if the community does not feel that it itself is the target of profiling by legislation. Q91 Chair: Mr Mohamed, on the same question - do you have the same view or a different view? Mr Mohamed: I have the same view, and also when it comes down to the local authority it is the mixing of the Prevent strategy and community cohesion - they are two separate streams, especially with the mindset that it is targeting the Muslim community, and also winning hearts and minds; but there is already that negative association with the labelling, "the money is being put out there for us to spy on each other." In actual fact, people who work in the first sector understand that but it is better for them to have a deep understanding and filter it down to the grass-root people who are working with the hearts and minds in these communities. But that is not being accessed effectively through the first orders, who are local authorities, and that is not streaming down and the voices are not being heard effectively. Q92 Mr Betts: It seems that we are being told two things which appear to be a contradiction, but probably are not. One is that within the Muslim community many people feel that this money is tainted because it is counter-terrorism money and they do not want to be associated with that sort of work, yet from people from other communities we are being told, "It is unfair that the Muslim community is getting all this money for community projects simply because that is where the perceived extremists are, whereas our community does not have extremists and therefore we do not get anything." Mr Nagdi: You are right. The difficulty arises on a number of counts. First and foremost, in my experience, the vast majority of the people within the county where I reside who have applied for funding have not been the mainstream settled community of the county; they have been new groups that have come up and created - women-only groups, young people's groups, sports centres, et cetera - and applied for funding. These people do not really have the credibility within the community in the sense that they are not part of the settled community. The mosques themselves believe that they have run the mosques through their own charitable giving and have built up the structures, including the capacity of the imams et cetera through internal mechanisms and not from outside, so "do we really need the money?" Also, if we take the money there is an expectation that if, God forbid, this whole strategy fails, will we then be held accountable? We are already victims as a result of terrorist attack; and we are already victims in replying to this. By taking the money and there is a failure at the end of it, because it is not guaranteed where this would lead, what would be the result then, and will we be made answerable at that point? This is the fear of being accountable at the end whenever the strategy finishes, and saying, "We have given you X amount and you have not produced the result." That is the expectation they feel that is there by Government. Mr Mohamed: It is the non-clarity between "foresee" and "prevent" that people do not understand, the community and also the people who are trying to develop the programmes, and you find key individuals who are well placed who make comments that completely break every work that has been done on the grass-root level. Other communities feel neglected because the money is being poured into the Muslim community. What we need is a deeper dialogue and to create programmes on these inter-community issues to break the barriers and have a deep understanding and respect for each other rather than tolerance. Q93 Mr Betts: Could they just be community programmes which are targeted at people from different religious backgrounds? Is that something we should be looking at? Mr Mohamed: It should be an element. For inter-community dialogue and inter-community working it is a vital part; but we should also remember that the Muslim community has felt marginalised after 9/11, 7/7; they have been labelled "terrorists" and this money is supposed to capacity-build organisations, strengthen foundations so they work effectively and make them feel more resilient to violent extremism. Q94 Mr Betts: Do we know of any particular programmes you could point us to where you think they have been successful in preventing or countering violence and extremism in any form? Mr Nagdi: Personally - I am sorry to sound negative - very few, in my opinion. The ones that have generally helped are the ones that have gone around the educational side, educating the wider community to understand what Islam really stands for and to separate the Islamic faith itself from acts of terrorism, and I think it has gone a long way in relation to this. This work not only within my community, the faith community, but certainly also the frontline agencies that work with these communities - it could be probation, prison, police officers, et cetera - because there is still a perception in their minds - and you must remember this - that they are also part and parcel of the community and they read or see the same news bulletins that you and I would see, and they are tainted with this. But the difficulty I have is this: we talk about the Muslim community as if it is one block; it is a community of communities; the communities cover all parts of the world. They have settled in this country over the last 40 or 50 years, sometimes in the 1970s and 1980s, and the others most recently among the Somali community; each one comes with their own experience and understanding of the British way of life. A one-size-fits-all right across the UK cannot work. We need to say to local authorities, and give them more leeway to say, "You have a particular migration pattern within your city or county; what is best suited for your set of circumstances? What happens in Leicester may not be relevant to what happens, for example, in Bradford. Bradford may have a 70 or 90 per cent Pakistani community, whereas Leicester would have an East African/Indian community that came and lived under the British mandated territories, and their understanding of integration and working with other communities is far different to, say, somebody from Birmingham. However, it seems from Government that there is one programme right across the board, and they say: "This is the Prevent money; you apply for it", without understanding the complicated migration patterns. I think this should be taken into consideration. Q95 Mr Betts: The programme you drew attention to is essentially exactly about informing other people that all Muslims are not extremists. Are there any particular programmes that have targeted those Muslims who are extremists or who may become extremists and actually does the job that Prevent is supposed to do? Mr Nagdi: Personally, I do not think so because most people taken down violent extremism are people generally with bigger profiles. If you read the profiles of the suicide bombers of 9/11, 7/7 they are people who have disengaged from mainstream Islam, away from the mosques and in some cases they meet in the coffee shop round the corner or the kebab shop round the corner, and they have a new set of networks. We are trying to address the existing established organisations, thinking that they will be best placed to talk to these young people, but these young people are not engaged with mainstream; they have already moved away from mainstream. In fact, in many cases they regard the mainstream as being people who are also legitimate targets. For example, myself, working within this - I am also regarded as a legitimate target by these people. So where are we directing the money to? This is the question we need to ask. Will it actually go to those who are already disengaged with us? Q96 Chair: Mr Mohamed, do you want to talk from the point of view of your experience? Mr Mohamed: My experience is - I work with young people and families especially from East Africa - Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan. Because they are migrant communities, newly arrived communities, many of them do not access the services available to them and integrate effectively, and then you find young people either feeling marginalised or have gone through the institutional systems and have got a criminal record, and they are vulnerable, English is their second language and they get pulled in by people who are prone to radicalisation by looking at what foreign policy is: "Look what happened to your brothers and sisters in Afghanistan and Iraq". They go into that. It is understanding exactly, as Suleman said, it is sort of branding it one Muslim community. We are Muslim communities and we have these cultural norms that affect us more than faith, and you find people stick in different areas. The money and the policies need to be effective with the population residing in the boroughs or the counties. Q97 Alison Seabeck: Some of the questions I wanted to ask you have already answered and therefore I would like to trawl back to what we have just been talking about and the evidence in the previous session. All witnesses have said: "The money is not going to the right groups; it is going to little groups springing up all over the place." We have heard in evidence that the people who are radicalised are generally not engaging with groups to whom you feel the money ought to go and therefore some of these other little groups that are springing up - are they not in a better place to deal with, or perhaps have a connection with? Mr Nagdi: It depends what the intention is. If it is to stop and prevent violent extremism, then I would disagree; I would say they are not best placed to do this work. I think we are in a very difficult situation. I do not believe there is a blueprint for this whole issue. I think we are learning as is the community and as is the government as to how we handle this issue. We must understand that it is not like a washing machine where we put someone in and they come out washed the other side and become de-radicalised; it is far more complicated than this. Can I be permitted to give one story to try and make people understand that what Government initially thought, that it was the mosques and then it moved up to prisons, and then it moved to hate preachers and so on and so forth from foreign policy over the last couple of years. I would like to relate a story that I have been working for the Sterling police in Scotland, and there is a family that lives just outside Sterling in a small village and they have been there for 34 years - a typical Asian family, or I think it is a typical Asian family, with a supermarket and a house on the top. Their son was born in the village and he went to the local primary school and secondary school. When he finished secondary school he came into the family business. He never had a university education. There are no mosques in the city and no outside preacher came in. All the parts that you can put together as part of the jigsaw that this is what leads to it were all missing, except that the Sterling police picked him up on counter-terrorism charges. Only when they went through his hard drive did they realise that he visited some websites that showed some pictures of war-torn countries which were terrible, which you and I would not normally see on the BBC or ITV. I know this because I have travelled to the Holy Land and spent over a week and seen some of the refugee camps with 65,000 refugees with one tap for 20 families, open sewers, et cetera. It affected me as an adult. I came back - how did I react to it? I reacted by joining with a human rights agency, writing articles, doing talks at universities. This is my way of clearing my conscience of working with the situation. The question I pose is what happens to the young mind, the 14/15/18-year old who sees these graphic images on the TV and sees his fellow Muslims - because remember something, that Muslims are always thinking of the world-wide Ummah, the Muslim Ummah. They do recognise borders and nation hoods but they came up much later after the Ottoman Empire. Their mind-set is the whole world, so it is my family, my brothers and sisters who have been killed, and I have seen a dismembered body or something, I am sure has an effect. Also, something very, very important if I may and I am not going on too long, we need to understand and look at the profiles of previous suicide bombers and try and understand; though religion was in the background, they were not particularly religious in any way. In some cases they were people that just were walking the Road to Damascus and had just seen the light overnight and then did what they did. Others were converts to Islam, who are also vulnerable because they do not have the support mechanism as say someone like I would have, coming up from childhood, in a mosque, in a house - parents, brothers and sisters and people around me who I could look for support. What happens for someone who just converts to Islam and he then becomes an active picking for somebody who wants to sanction out a terrorist attack; he is an ideal person to be placing. I think it is more education, more Islam, greater understanding of the faith and to separate it. I hate the British way of saying "Islam" and "Islamist" - we just put three other letters at the end of it, and all of a sudden what is a religion of peace becomes a world of terror. It is very similar to the BNP: they have taken away the St George's flag and mainstream is trying to recapture it, and I think Muslim people need to recapture Islam in its true form as a religion of peace and not add "ist" at the end, and then all of a sudden it has a separate meaning altogether. Sorry for all that! Q98 Alison Seabeck: Mr Nagdi answered in part in his long response to the question whether or not violent extremism only has religious and political origins. Can I ask Mr Mohamed whether you have a view on whether it is purely embedded in religion and politics or whether there are other causes? Mr Mohamed: It is also about violent extremism on national aspects, nationalism. If you look at different terrorist groups many of them use religion, but the thing that frustrates a lot of Muslims and a lot of young people that I spoke to is they say: "How come terrorism and Islam are synonymous with each other? When the IRA were bombing, nobody called them Catholic bombers; people called them the Irish Republican Army so why are they saying Muslims are terrorists?" If I take it on an equal route, especially in the Somali community and East African community, what is happening back home with young kids being born, the Diaspora, their parents who are always in contact back home and they see what is happening, 18 years later they are still stateless, and especially when the Ethiopians came in. You find a lot of young people in the Western-style world who have actually not even integrated but assimilated and they listen to hip-hop and they dress the same way and they do all the things, but then one day they wake up and they realise "look what is happening; people are raping our women back there" and they pack their bags and go back and there is active recruitment because these young people are vulnerable and very idealistic. The way they view their motherland - they still have their heart there. Then, when you look at organisations springing up, I believe some of the money should go to those springing up organisations because those are the ones that will not be accessed effectively or their voice is not being heard. If you take a survey of people and they say the Prevent money has gone to the usual suspects, the ones that are easiest to access, that the Government has always found easy to interact with and they say these people represent the community, when in actual fact they do not represent the community because if someone is in London, London is a very diverse community and different boroughs host different Muslim groups. So if the representatives of those groups are feeling more marginalised than others, how do we counteract that? Q99 Chair: Can I pick up on your point you made, Mr Mohamed, about the Somali community in particular. How do you think the government here or anybody could effectively engage with young people in your community who are feeling the pull of radical politics from your homeland, if I can describe it that way, or where your ancestors came from might be a more accurate way of putting it? Mr Mohamed: Yes, the homeland, of course. Q100 Chair: It is that interface between politics and events in Somalia and Somaliland what is happening to young Somalis in Britain. Mr Mohamed: There was a report that was published in Canada that realised that many of the bombings that happened - the last bombing that happened in Mogadishu and the one that happened in Somaliland - were committed by men with Western passports, young men actually crossing the border with American or Canadian or British passports. The best way for the Government to engage is to understand that there is a problem because if do a census of everybody and ask them, "How do you describe a Muslim?" the British mentality of Islam means they would say somebody of Pakistani origin, somebody of Indian origin. They do not understand that it is a very diverse religion and that people come from all walks of life, they are people of Afghani descent and people of Somali descent, and many of them are living in the same society as their peers but they feel the pull-and-push factors from home and from their parents, and also their peers who are much older than them who have got extremist views because they have a bad viewpoint of the religion. They have a contrary viewpoint of the religion. It is by engaging effectively and listening to them and working with different - on what is happening back home - programmes and active communication and dialogue between Somalia and the United Kingdom. Q101 Chair: Do you think that that is the way forward? Mr Mohamed: Yes. Q102 Chair: In that specific community? Mr Mohamed: In that specific community, yes. Q103 Mr Slaughter: I was going to ask about the relationship between radicalisation and foreign policy but I think you have answered that in part. Can I ask one more general question. From the quite detailed answers you have given so far it does not appear from your point of view and your communities' point of view that the Prevent Programme is working at all. Do you think it is working at all? Mr Nagdi: No. To be quite honest, I think it has a very limited work. I say this by virtue of the fact that we have to be also responsible as citizens and taxpayers, and if taxpayers' money is being used for a particular project then we need to be accountable to the electorate. The issue is two-fold: one is the idea of Muslims, no matter what time they came to this country, and how they see themselves; so this argument comes up: "Are you a Muslim first or are you British first?" That is a typical argument that comes from the press. A more difficult one is that it does not really matter how I see myself as an individual: it is how do others see me? That is the challenge, and I think a lot of education needs to be done around there. If I were to say that I am British, this is my home and I am proud of my splendid country, I have to go the extra mile to prove that. But something very sinister is in the minds of the British Muslim population: 1.5 million to 2 million people, depending on the figures you take, marched against the war in Iraq. They were made up of people from all different backgrounds, different faiths, and non-faith, and showed democracy at its best. We go out there and we can take to the streets and say to Government that we are not happy with a particular policy. The question I would pose is this: say only 5,000 Muslims had taken to the streets of London and demonstrated against the war in Iraq, would the question of disloyalty then kick in at that point? At what stage do we feel that we are British? At what stage do others look at you as being British? I have heard this argument in relation to the Sharia law, which has been brought up in this whole thing that we are trying to change the issues around. I have sat as a magistrate, serving on the Leicester bench for many years; three members of my immediate family are police officers serving within the county; and I still ask the question: how much more do I have to go before I am accepted? As work is being done in telling the Muslim population, "You need to better integrate yourself" I think the indigenous population also has to be told that it is slightly unfair. People have integrated - not wholeheartedly, and some to different degrees, and they have also come with different experience - for example the Somali community may have come from war-torn countries and they are still living the horror of what took place. I came from a country where it is relatively safe but I grew up under the apartheid system in Zimbabwe and South Africa, so I went to a school - where whites were with whites, Asians in Asian schools, and the indigenous black people went to their school. That was my formal education, of primary and secondary. That does not mean I have not integrated into wider society. The very fact that I am sitting in a powerhouse of democracy right now, being an individual who was brought up under the apartheid system, shows that it is a bit more complicated than a simple little sound bytes that we all try to give to the mass media. I think we have to go beyond that and truly try to understand if we are true, to try and dismantle the machinery of terror that exists out there, and also I believe we should keep it to a balance. If one were to read the Interpol figures for 2006/2007/2008, there is a figure of around 0.2 per cent acts of violent extremism conducted in the name of Islam on the European mainland - of course the Basque Separatists being the highest. So let us have a balance on this. People think that 98 per cent of all acts of terrorism are done by Muslims, but the police figure speaks something totally different. I think there needs to be a balance in this argument. When you talk about the Channel project, the only individual we have in the Channel project in our country is actually a 14-year-old young person who has been taken out by the far right and hatred for minority communities, and that is the only figure. That is not to say it does not exist among the Muslim community. There may be some cases of self-denial in certain sections of my community. I admit that as well because we need to be fair if we are trying to sort this problem out, but we need to work in partnership with the community and not the community at a distance. Q104 Mr Slaughter: Let me ask Mr Mohamed in a positive rather than a negative way: how could the money from Prevent be better spent? Mr Mohamed: On education, education and education. It is important because we - I call myself British. I can be British and Muslim at the same time, but a lot of young people and families cannot make that distinction because they are facing adversity every time they leave the house they find Muslim-phobic behaviour, marginalisation in uptake of services. Unless you get accepted for who you are and what you believe in - because we have a sense of tolerance. British society has a sense of tolerance. I have created tolerance from negativity because I tolerate breaking up apartheid, but what we need to have is mutual respect for each other's differences because we are building a nation, and when the atrocities were committed it was widespread across all faiths. In fact my sister missed that bus that blew up in Tavistock Square. I would say channel the money into local grass-root organisations, as Suleman said, that have credibility in the community that they serve or that have a long history of service and that have delivered great work before and know the make-up of the community they are working with, and also bring in the host community and all the faiths must work collectively for the betterment of British society. That is the best way to get the money across. Mr Nagdi: Something that has also been lost: the United Kingdom is known to be, its people and its Government, very generous, and we send out billions of pounds of aid world-wide when national disasters take over, or whatever the case may be. I think that this has been lost in this whole argument. It seems that the community has been targeted but we need to better articulate that argument, to say, "As a nation we also have a lot of plus signs in what we do"; and I think that has been missing out of this whole thing. It seems to be always around the negative issues. We are not talking about what a wonderful thing it is to be here. One example I can give is that I attended a police conference in Budapest and Ii was absolutely shocked to hear that in Europe issues on stop-and-search are not recorded where a disproportionate use of power is being used, and in the UK it is. Let us relay all of this good news to the people out there that they are not being targeted as a community; there are good practices as well in the United Kingdom and we are light years ahead of certain places in Europe. Chair: There is just one brief question, John, on who should be identifying where the money is going. Q105 John Cummings: Who do you believe should be responsible for identifying those at risk of promoting or partaking in violent extremism? Mr Nagdi: I would think it would have to be the local law-enforcement agencies, the police, probation, and the local authorities. I do not think we should put the money in silos to tell them exactly where they can spend it. I think they should make the case and each county and city should make the case relevant and tailored for its own particular needs. Q106 Chair: You are against the money being allocated on the basis of the number of Muslims? Mr Nagdi: That is right, totally. Q107 Mr Slaughter: You said the local authorities; we have had evidence previously where - I do not think anybody would disagree that if you are targeting criminal offences, whatever they are - why is it the job of the local authorities? Mr Nagdi: Because local authorities better understand and also there is an element of fear that if everything came from the police then there would be the fear of actually accessing the funds, thinking it was security-led and it could lead to all kinds of fear within the community. I think local authorities are more seen as a safer pair of hands than just the police on their own.. Q108 John Cummings: Can I take that a stage further? Do you believe that local communities are adequately equipped to identify those at risk? Mr Nagdi: No, I think they are very weak. I do not think they have the necessary training nor the skills to identify and actually report this. Q109 John Cummings: Do you think local government is? Mr Nagdi: No, not local government, no. I think it is a job for the security forces, as part of the intelligence, to lead individuals. I also believe that as part of the Channel project you have the say-so of the chief constable and chief executive of the local authority. I think there has to be some community input at that stage as well because we are automatically assuming that these two high-powered positions would know exactly the issue about radicalisation, which is not only Islam but many others; and I think they need to draw in expertise from the community to help them identify it. Q110 Chair: Mr Mohamed, you are not so keen on local authorities, I think. Is that right? Mr Mohamed: No, because what I am saying is the Government's paramount factor is putting money into local authorities, and some local authorities are excellent and working in partnership with local grass-root organisations. Some of them live in that silo attitude: "We know what is happening", and the money is not ring-fenced into what it is supposed to be doing. You find some of them using the money for different projects. We need to set a benchmark on what exactly standard a local authority needs to have for them to access money and for them to have a steering group of the diversity of communities that reside in their county or their borough to help facilitate the distribution of the funds. I wholeheartedly believe that the grass-root organisations and the community groups do have the capacity because they have worked in the first sector for decades, so they know what is happening in the community. Some need upskilling but many of them do have the capacity to deliver the projects and understand the nature of the agenda. Chair: Thank you both very much indeed. Witnesses: Dr Paul Thomas, Course Leader, Diploma in Professional Studies, Youth and Community Work, University of Huddersfield, Mr Bob McDonald, Principal Lecturer, International School for Communities, Rights and Inclusion, and Mr Yaser Mir, Senior Lecturer, International School for Communities, Rights and Inclusion at University of Lancashire, gave evidence. Q111 Chair: Can I start by asking you whether you think that the Prevent Programme should be being broadened to include other forms of extremism other than that which is linked to political Islam? Mr McDonald: I think I have got a mixed response to that. It is a helpful development with the connecting communities development, although that is not part of the Prevent money; but I would not want to extend it; I would want to fundamentally recast it. At the moment there is a suggestion that other forms of extremism could be an add-on to what we have got which is essentially focused on Muslim extremism, whereas I would want to fundamentally recast the majority of the budget on to community cohesion and start from a much different basis. That is why I have got a mixed response. Q112 Chair: Just to pursue that, are you suggesting that you would decouple CLG from the counter-terrorism bit and just get it back onto community cohesion? Dr Thomas: That would be my feeling, based on some of the evidence that I have got and reading academic material; that community cohesion would be a much more effective way of building resilience not just within individual communities but across communities, and that is something distinctly different from the very necessary security that the Home Office ----- Q113 Chair: Do you feel that approach would work, for example, with far-right extremism? Dr Thomas: I think there are some very well-established practices with young people being attracted towards far-right racism and involvement in far-right political organisations, but you hit the same problem that Prevent is now having, that if you are going to change their values and change their attitudes, they need to be in contact with other people and involved in a wider process of dialogue and learning and exploration. That has to be done with other people. You cannot change people's attitudes and values in separate silos when the attitudes are about other types of people, other faiths and other ethnic backgrounds. Mr Mir: Certainly our research would suggest that Prevent needs to be broadened out beyond just extremism with Muslim communities because Muslim communities at the moment see themselves as having a disproportionate focus on them as a whole faith community, and it needs to be broadened out to incorporate far-right extremism. That is at a macro level; there needs to be a response that deals with whole communities, working with Muslim communities and other faiths, building shared values. We know through our work that community cohesion on its own will not defeat and prevent violent extremism, al-Qaeda inspired violent extremism, therefore we need a targeted approach utilising local infrastructures and community organisations to work with those who are vulnerable and at risk. Mr McDonald: I would echo what Yaser has just said, having worked with the same communities on similar work. Certainly from the evidence we have gathered with a range of different communities both in the capital and other parts of England, the indicators and messages that we are getting back from those communities is that Muslim communities were not happy about the singular focus on them as a particular community. They raised a range of different issues that they were concerned about, and far-right extremism, for example, was something that was raised quite commonly. At that time, a couple of years ago from the work we were undertaking, they felt it was not receiving adequate attention from their perspective. Q114 John Cummings: Do you believe that the role of religion has been overplayed as a driver for radicalisation in Prevent? Mr Mir: Certainly through our research we realise that communities feel resentment towards the Prevent programme, particularly in terms of how their religion has been attached to terrorism and violent extremism. They would like to see a diffusion between the religion and terrorism. What communities have told us is that this is an issue of criminality and should be looked at as a community safety and crime prevention agenda, rather than something that targets the Islamic religion. We know through evidence we have collated that religiosity is not a factor that contributes to radicalisation, it is actually a factor that helps in terms of protecting them against terrorism. A good understanding of their Islamic faith actually protects us against them who try to impose an al-Qaeda narrative on the community. Q115 John Cummings: Do you agree? Dr Thomas: Clearly there is an issue about understandings of religion. Going back to the previous question about white extremism, we have to ask the question why are minorities of young people in both some white communities and some Muslim communities taking such extreme positions. I would argue that those young people are often in segregated communities. They are often from communities that are socially excluded from an economic and social point of view. For instance, the research I have done in Oldham and Rochdale shows that poor white young people and some of the poor Muslim Pakistani and Bangladeshi background young people both feel that economic and social avenues have been closed down. I think that has got to contribute to the fact that some of them, a small minority of them, then travel a further distance in terms of hardening identities. There is certainly academic evidence that people who have been the losers in economic change - and there has been profound economic change - have often retreated to a very fixed and very singular identity, a sort of defence from the fact that the world is changing in a way that has not been helpful for them. Q116 Mr Betts: You talked about the radicalisation of the 7/7 bombers. They did not come from particularly poor backgrounds and they were not particularly uneducated. One of the concerns is about the radicalisation process in universities where people are not segregated and where people are getting an education, but are still entering into some extreme views and extreme sects almost promoting those views. Dr Thomas: There are a couple of things about that. There is clearly more than one background leading to violent extremism. What I would say about the 7/7 bombers - I work in Huddersfield where one of them lived very locally to us and I live in Leeds as well - but the Leeds bomber certainly came from a community that is very segregated. South Leeds is a very segregated community and racial tension is very high. I think we have to step back from the individual's educational/employment status and look at the community experience. I would suggest that Ted Cantle's analysis of the lack of cohesion in many communities would fit that model very well. John Cummings: Which communities do you see as being most at risk of radicalisation? Q117 Chair: I think we are talking about within the Muslim community. Mr Mir: If we look at the risk factors, just to pick up Dr Thomas's point in terms of social exclusion, deprivation and discrimination, these provide the hunting-ground in terms of Islamophobia. Discrimination as well as deprivation provides a hunting-ground particularly for al-Qaeda inspired extremists to prey on vulnerable young people. They increase the vulnerability. Where there are suggestions that the 7/7 bombers came from well-off backgrounds or were integrated into society, living in a cohesive community, they do have a sense of grievance and empathy with their brothers and sisters that are living in a deprived situation or are being discriminated against, so there is a deep sense of empathy and sympathy to those living in that situation. Q118 Chair: Can I just pursue that. From the research is the community they live in in this country more relevant and their perceptions that they are discriminated against or deprived, or is it their identification with communities abroad, from whence their families came originally, although not exclusively, identification with what is going on in Palestine? There is a very tiny Palestinian population. Mr McDonald: It is very hard to say definitively what the active risk factors are in that sense. From the work we have been doing, there seems to be a range of different indicators and risks associated with attraction towards violent extremism and no one single factor necessarily predominates. Different factors can occur at different times. It may well be in certain circumstances that it is experiences of discrimination in this country that are the determining factor, or it could be experience and insight into events that happen abroad. Dr Thomas: To get back to Mr Betts's question, it is very true that background of people being attracted that way are very highly educated, and it is true that on some campuses there is a real issue. Again, those young people have not really been engaged in citizenship and democratic processes and their involvement is going in different directions. That is partly why I would argue for a broader community cohesion programme, to engage young people in much more democratic debates across ethnic backgrounds. We have got some examples of that, for instance the British Youth Parliament initiative around the Safe Space project and what local and national youth parliament processes are doing where young people from different backgrounds are engaging in very robust debates about foreign policy and national policy, but that is within a multi-ethnic and democratic background. Some of those young people on campuses are not getting engaged in wider democratic debate. At our own university, in Huddersfield, the Muslim Students' Association have got very involved in the students' union and play a really strong, positive role in wider student politics, and I suggest that is one example of the way forward. Q119 Mr Betts: Can I turn that question round. You told me a few minutes ago that actually it was the poorer people in the community who were being radicalised. Now, the Youth Parliament is excellent and I have met them in Sheffield a couple of times, and they are very committed young people, but these are educated, intelligent people who are interested in wider political issues who are prepared to debate and engage with each other. It is not going to touch the vast majority of people, is it, who might be attracted towards either Muslim extreme organisations or the BNP, on the other hand? Dr Thomas: It can be. Some of the research I have done in Oldham is about how youth organisations in communities in Oldham have tried to promote community cohesion so young people from every youth centre and youth project in Oldham come in together to celebrate Eid to discuss what the Muslim faith is about. These are very ordinary white young people from housing estates where there are pretty robust attitudes to other ethnic backgrounds. That community cohesion work is starting to change attitudes through building relationships and through creating safe space for young people to be around and to be together in a town where those safe spaces do not normally exist outside the school. There are not the avenues outside of the youth projects that enable people to come together because housing is very segregated and that is why I argue so strongly for community cohesion work to build resilience across communities as well within communities. Q120 Chair: Do any of you work on communities in London because London is not segregated except in some extreme circumstances and you might get a different model. Mr Mir: We have done research in London and we are working with community organisations in London. Do you want to know about the risk factors? Q121 Chair: Yes. Mr Mir: In terms of what Bob has already highlighted, there is not one risk factor, there are a number of risk factors leading to a similar outcome. One of the other risk factors is having a persuasive ideology which distorts Islamic theology which promotes religious language and imagery amongst vulnerable young people and takes advantage of foreign policy grievances. These are other risk factors. Coming back to the point in terms of what communities have suggested as solutions, as there is no one risk factor and there are a number of risk factors, there is a number of solutions and responses that are required also to the various risk factors. We feel through our research it is suggesting that at a macro level community cohesion and a whole communities approach is required, building understanding between different communities, promoting shared values, but you need to prevent violent extremism still as a criminal activity, looking at it as part of the crime and community safety agenda. In the same way you would prevent gang crime, knife crime in London, you would prevent violent extremism among those that are vulnerable and at risk, and to do that the research is suggesting you would work in the local community infrastructure, work with credible individuals, organisations, individuals that have street credibility and have a good understanding of the religion also. Q122 John Cummings: Do the advisers also have an opinion as to how the impact of British foreign policy on those at risk through radicalisation could be managed? You have identified a problem, but what do you say about how to mitigate it, to manage it? Mr Mir: Is that directed at me? Q123 John Cummings: Well, you are the one who just spoke about it. Mr Mir: As my colleague has already suggested, room and safe environments need to be provided to discuss and debate foreign policy, particularly for young people. Another risk factor is an identity crisis or reaching a crisis point. Safe environments need to be provided to be able to debate and discuss the issues to do with foreign policy. Q124 Alison Seabeck: Yes. International School for Communities, Rights and Inclusion have talked about community cohesion and the difference between the values-based approach and the means-based approach and, slightly confusingly, you suggest they are mutually exclusive. It would help to have a little bit more on that. What are the strengths of the values-based approach? Mr McDonald: Maybe I could respond to those issues there. First of all, the distinction between values-based and means-based approaches does not come from us. We were referencing it from something that we came across. It seemed at the time an interesting framework or conceptual framework to look at analysing the various approaches that were being taken that seemed to be quite varied. From our perspective, in our work we have tended to think in terms of macro and micro. There are macro approaches which Yaser and colleague have referred to in terms of community cohesion, which should be used as a tool across a range of different communities. It is separate from Prevent. We certainly see it as a separate part of Prevent. It does contribute to helping all people with a sense of values and loyalty to this country and a sense of belonging with commonly shared values being promoted. However, we have recognised through our work as well that certain micro, more targeted work, needs to be undertaken with particularly vulnerable individuals. That is where we see the agenda really forming part of the crime and community safety agenda. We have come across occasional examples of local project work undertaken by grass-roots community organisations who have that local credibility and understanding of particularly young people in their own areas, who are able to connect with those young people who are ----- Q125 Chair: Can you give us a brief example? Mr McDonald: Yes. There are examples of young men who have had drug-related problems and drug-dealing problems. Some of them have actually been ex-offenders. They have been found to be vulnerable to violent extremist narratives in their local areas and this has been promoted to try to give them an "in principle" justification for continuing their criminal activity. It has been called colloquially things like "economic jihad" and "chemical jihad" in terms of drug use and fraudulent activity - stealing credit cards and things like that. Q126 Chair: A bit like the IRA robbing banks. Mr McDonald: Yes. Those vulnerable young people then are actually prey to violent extremists, who encourage them to go to further stages, which is clearly dangerous. Q127 Alison Seabeck: How important are the faith groups in getting to some of these people, the different religions, in terms of enabling access to and supporting those people particularly? Mr McDonald: I would say very important. There needs to be a local street and religious credibility that the young people can connect with that does not come from far outside their local area, and that they are comfortable with and feel that those local organisations actually "speak their language" and can understand. Dr Thomas: I see the values-based from a slightly different point. It seems like the Government has got itself into a bit of a cul-de-sac by asking organisations to essentially sign up in advance to values. For me, community cohesion is about building values and process, and one of the youth workers in Oldham said to me, "What we are doing with young people is helping them through a value change and that is very difficult". We are talking about white young people as much as Muslim young people. You are asking them to take on different values. Values are created through processes, and surely organisations should be judged by what they are doing, are they doing cohesion work, rather than what they sign up to? Q128 Alison Seabeck: That is important. My constituency is Plymouth and we had the Exeter bomber who came from Plymouth. It is not an obvious area and quite difficult to target, and therefore what you are saying is a broader community cohesion agenda is what places like Plymouth need rather than trying to target very, very small groups within our city. Dr Thomas: I would agree that there should be a much more targeted programme aimed at individuals or peer groups in the way that is being suggested. In the first year of the Pathfinder activity CLG were pleased to say they had worked with 40,0000 young people, virtually all Muslim young people. That is so broad brush. That is why in the submission we suggest there is such a disjuncture between the stated aims and the reality of what is going on on the ground. A lot of it is very good youth activity but it is mono-cultural youth activity and that is not getting the effects that we should be getting for our money. Q129 Alison Seabeck: Intermediary groups therefore do have a use in this process whether they are faith groups or others. Dr Thomas: Yes. I think there is a real danger that we reinforce one identity, which is young people's faith identity. Research I have done in Rochdale show that all Muslim young people do see their Muslim identity as very important, but also they are very comfortable with British identity and they ask for cohesion. They want more contact with other young people. There is a real danger that we focus too much on faith. They are also young people and are also British and also Mancunians, they have got other identities as well. Q130 Chair: Can I get at the specific question, which is my understanding of the difference between the community means-based and values-based thing. It was Mr Mir who said that some of these young people do not have a firm religious base which then leaves them vulnerable to extreme ideologies. Are you suggesting the government should be involved in building up their theological base, or are you suggesting somebody else should? The second question is, are there some organisations within the Muslim community that we should not be engaged with, or should engagement be with the widest possible range of organisations? Mr Mir: Can you repeat the first part of your question? Q131 Chair: If you were identifying that some young people do not have a very good understanding of Islam and, therefore, they are extremely vulnerable to extremists who come along and say, "We have got the answer" and it sounds good and coherent and so they go and sign up, what are you suggesting you should do against that? Are you suggesting the government should get in there and get more Muslim education going, specifically religious education going? Mr Mir: No. In terms of those getting involved and vulnerable to violent extremism, they are religious novices and actually do not have an understanding of their religious faith, and it is not for the state to impose a values-based approach or a particular strand of the Islamic faith on the community. This is exactly what the community resents and feels that somehow the hearts and the minds of the community need to be won, when actually most of the community condemn acts of violence and crime, and therefore en masse the community's hearts and minds do not need winning. Therefore, it is for local community organisations, mosques, faith organisations, building their infrastructure, using local credible individuals, to work with those at risk and not working with all the faith community at large. Also, they must have a good understanding of their religion, so more capacity-building with local infrastructure and local community organisations, including the mosques and faith organisations. This is not the role of the Government. This is how communities see this. Q132 Chair: The second question then is: if you are trying to get at the young people who are particularly at risk of radicalisation, there is an argument says you need to be working with groups which, whilst not involved in violence themselves, might share some of the religious analysis. Should those groups be worked with or should there be concentration on what one might call mainstream? Mr Mir: There needs to be - communities have suggested this through our evidence - an inclusive approach of working with grass-roots organisations, those voices that are seldom heard as well. However, there cannot be engagement with groups that promote violence or acts of terrorism. This would be in any community. You need to work with grass-roots organisations that have credibility and understanding of the religion, but not those that promote violent extremism or extremism. Q133 Mr Betts: You talk about working with mainstream organisations based in the community and everybody would accept this is a good starting point. What happens in a situation where some young Muslim men came to see me concerned about a situation where they thought it was the mosque that was actually radicalising some young people in the community rather unhelpfully and was not being challenged? Mr Mir: Where the mosque is involved in radicalisation? I think if they are then they need to be challenged. Q134 Chair: Yes, but who by? That is the question. Mr Mir: The communities themselves. Other parts of the community. Our work is suggesting that the communities are best placed to tackle this. Q135 Alison Seabeck: How difficult is that for established communities where people respect the mosque and everything it stands for? How easy it is for them to challenge the mosque and say, "We think this particular imam is doing X, Y or Z"? I cannot imagine it is easy. Mr Mir: There is an issue with the mosques and imams not being able to engage with vulnerable young people. Q136 Chair: That is not the question we are asking. In this example, which I accept you do not know the detail of, but just take it as it is, Clive gets approached by two young men in his constituency who say, "We are really concerned because the mosque" whichever one it is "is actively promoting radicalisation." Now, are you suggesting they should go and speak to the imam? What do you do in a situation like that? Mr Mir: If there are acts of violence that a mosque is promoting then they need to go to the police. Q137 Mr Betts: It is not acts of violence; it is probably promoting views that may be at the fringe of Islam where people are being encouraged to take quite extreme views contrary to more mainstream Islamic thinking, which are not being challenged, and which are being pushed at probably relatively uneducated young people in the community, and also the imam himself is out of touch and has probably come from abroad and does not have an understanding of how British systems operate. There is a concern there that has been expressed to me on more than one occasion. Dr Thomas: Going back to the first question, I totally agree there needs to be capacity-building. In Kirklees where I did some of my research there has been very good capacity-building within the madrassa sector and within cooperation of a lot more organisations in the form of management committees, but you saw in the first part of this session about how other faiths feel there is a very partial focus. While Prevent is so focused on one community and it is called a crime prevention programme, there is a disjuncture. I have a community work background, and salute really good capacity-building, but it has to be across all the communities and it has to be tied much more into promises and action on cohesion otherwise it looks like a very partial programme. Q138 Chair: The trouble with that one, Dr Thompson - I do not know whether the rest of you were listening to the religious panel we had - I do not think any of the other communities were coming forward and saying, "We also have got a problem within our community of fanatical priests" or whatever. They were not complaining that they needed to be targeted by the Prevent programme. They were complaining, I think, that money was going to a community which was seen as problematic and money was not going to communities that were seen as not problematic. Dr Thomas: They are very significant amounts of money, and I would agree with the point that one of them made that it seems to have squeezed cohesion out. Q139 Chair: The suggestion that you then slid off into was the suggestion that we should be policing the theology of every community, which is not the question we were asking. Dr Thomas: No, I am not suggesting we should police theology. Capacity-building of community infrastructure is different from policing of theology. At the moment capacity is being built in one faith community with the Prevent money but not in other faith communities, and I am suggesting that is problematic. Q140 Chair: Are you talking about community capacity or are you talking about religious capacity? You can have community capacity within - just to pick one - the Somali community in Sheffield, and you could have community capacity to help women within that community to be able to run mother and toddler groups or whatever. That is a different issue from the issue that Clive has raised about whether there may be some religious persons within some Muslim communities who are themselves purveying religion. That is not a community capacity issue, is it? Mr Mir: I am just saying that is what Prevent money is being spent on quite often. Q141 Chair: Yes, but what we are trying to get at is, is it a problem if there are persons within a particular religious community who are using their position within their community to purvey a form of Islam which we have all agreed is not consistent with mainstream Islamic values nor particularly consistent with British norms? Is that a problem and, if it is, what should we be doing about it? Mr McDonald: It is a very good example that you have raised and a very difficult one to answer. Q142 Chair: That is why we are asking. Mr McDonald: Absolutely. My response in consideration is go to the community and ask. There would need to be an exercise based upon a community engagement approach where you asked a range of different local people and got them involved in examining the particular problem that you have raised and listening to what their solutions were. Q143 Mr Betts: Is this not part of the problem? I am not saying there is an easy answer because if I had the answer I would probably have done something positively than I was able to. The answer is what is the community there, is it not? If you go to the community, you might go to the community leaders, and they might be the people who are the leaders in the mosque as well, and as these young people said to me, and they were educated people and they knew exactly what the issues were and wanted to engage across community boundaries, was "the last thing we would do is go to the mosque or give them any money because the people running this mosque are not interested." They are perceived as the community leaders as well. It is a real dilemma, I think. I do not know how you get out of it. Mr McDonald: I think some suggestions go beyond the community leaders. Dr Thomas: That is why Prevent is partly trying to highlight the role of women and young people and probably rightly, but that is bound to create tensions. The previous speaker suggested that people without credibility in communities were being funded, meaning they are not established community leaders. These are community development tensions, very real ones and community workers have been very well aware of them. You will know better than I do, being representatives. There is still a disjuncture between what Prevent money says it is for and these nitty-gritty community development issues. Q144 Chair: Just to finish, because we could go on for ever. Can I ask for a very quick "yes" or "no" really. Should Prevent be shoved into the Home Department and CLG should just concentrate on building capacity within communities and community cohesion? "Yes" or "no", I think I would like from each of you. Mr McDonald: That might be the answer! Cohesion work is very important, in a sense, whichever department. What matters is not which department does it. Q145 Chair: It might alter the perception. I do not want to guide your answer! Anybody else want to try? Dr Thomas: Yes, absolutely, providing the resources currently spent with CLG do go on cohesion because my concern is that there is not enough money for cohesion at the moment. Mr Mir: Yes, in terms of cohesion CLG has a key role to play. In terms of the criminal element and the targeted work with vulnerable individuals, perhaps the Home Office has a key role to play on the criminality aspects. Chair: Thank you very much. |