Extremism is on our shores and deradicalisation must start in our communities
Last month, a 44-year-old in Texas took four people hostage in a synagogue. The perpetrator, a British man by the name of Malik Faisal Akram, was shot dead on the scene after a standoff with police. Despite military campaigns against terrorist groups and government programmes aimed at stymieing radicalisation at home, the question of how to quell extremism remains a live one.
Since the pandemic began, the UK’s Counter Terrorism Policing has reportedly foiled seven “late-stage” terror attacks. The lessons of the past two decades show one thing: lasting solutions are more often than not found at the grassroots level.
Last month, the UK’s security minister Damian Hinds echoed what many analysts had warned. Hate groups and terrorist organisations had thrived during lockdown, with a particular growth in extreme right-wing terrorism online. The internet, for all its upsides, has become a force magnifier of polarisation and extremism.
The government’s recent online harms white paper sets out tougher measures to tackle terrorist propaganda and recruitment online. It gives Ofcom regulatory powers to hold internet platforms accountable for the content they host. Meanwhile, the UK’s counter-extremist programme Prevent has been under review. Its delayed findings should be presented to parliament sometime later this year.
These are welcome steps, but we should not hang our hat on them. The mere fact that there have been 32 foiled terror plots in the past four years shows we have a way to go in preventing radicalisation before it materialises.
In Europe, initiatives like the Dialogue About Radicalisation and Equality (DARE), of which the UK is a participant, have been funded to identify the causes of radicalisation. DARE brings together grassroots activists and civic organisations to promote best practice, giving them the tools they need to support their communities. This kind of approach to civic society doesn’t assume that policymakers have the answers, but rather works with grassroots activists to find the right solution.
Top-down approaches taken in the past few decades, including Prevent, have produced mixed results. The Texas synagogue attacker had himself twice been referred to the programme, most recently in 2019.
An interesting parallel can be drawn with the UK’s own experience of combating radicalisation abroad, where hard-won gains brought about by military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq have been rolled back in recent years.
More than a decade ago, when I chaired the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, our enquiry into Afghanistan argued that military solutions had distinct limitations. We recommended more community engagement to bring about peace and end radicalisation. Today, it may seem that report did not go far enough.
It is now clearer than ever that the task of securing a peaceful society starts in the community, and this is as true for the UK as it is for Afghanistan.
There is a wealth of initiatives we can support to advance a sense of common purpose in disenfranchised communities. Investing in the work of those who are addressing radicalisation on a human level in the UK and across Europe is a simple, but effective approach.
There are plenty of examples. Sajda Mughal, a survivor of the 7/7 attacks, is the founder of the JAN Trust, working to educate communities to tackle extremism throughout the UK. Nigel Bromage, a former Neo-Nazi, and the founder of Small Steps, tours the country discussing the dangers of far-right extremism and countering the demonisation of Islam prevalent in some communities.
More further afield, Latifa Ibn Ziaten, a French-Moroccan mother who lost her son to a terror attack in Toulouse in 2012, travels throughout France to tell her story and promote social harmony within and between communities. Last year she was honoured at the Zayed Award for Human Fraternity, an international initiative aimed at supporting those who advance peaceful coexistence. The award has funded her efforts and, with its endorsement by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, helped spread awareness of her work to international audiences.
We must do more to support and invest in initiatives like these, addressing the root causes of conflict in society and celebrating the fraternal bonds that unite us. The more focus and investment we put in at a grassroots level, the easier we will find it to stop radicalisation – not right before an attack, but at source – and create a safer society.