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- [00:00]
Marshall Po
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- [01:36]
Professor John Holmwood
Foreign.
- [01:40]
Chella Ward
Listeners. And welcome back to another episode of season 13 of Radio Reorient, part of the Critical Muslim Studies Project. My name is Chella Ward and I'm joined today by my co hosts, Claudia Radburn, Amina Essat Das and Saeed Khan. This episode features a conversation with John Holmwood, professor at the University of Nottingham, discussing the UK's Prevent policy.
- [02:03]
Claudia Radburn
The Prevent policy, one arm of the government's Counter Terror Strategy contest, is concerned with preventing people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. However, it has been subject to much controversy over the years, with many accusing it of being Islamophobic and primarily being used as a means of surveillance against Muslim citizens.
- [02:24]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Interview can be viewed in the context of a number of events recently, such as the two independent reviews of the policy in the last two years, the far right riots of 2020 and the increase in far right rhetoric among public and political circles.
- [02:39]
Saeed Khan
Professor Holmwood spoke to a number of these issues, but also with a look to the future of prevents belonging and citizenship, and especially the impact of the policy on education. With that in mind, let's listen in.
- [02:52]
Claudia Radburn
Salaam alaikum, listeners, and welcome to this episode with Professor John Homewood. Welcome. I'm here with my co host, Saeed Khan. Also, I was wondering if, John, you could start us off with perhaps a brief summary of PREVENT for our listeners with less familiarity or our listeners outside of the UK.
- [03:19]
Professor John Holmwood
Yes, well, Prevent has been going since the early to 2000s. It's part of the government's counterterrorism strategy and policy. It's not actually directed specifically very closely at terrorism. What it's about is it's designed to prevent people at risk of being radicalized into the commission of terrorism offenses. So in that context it is a pre crime process, it's prior to any offences being committed and it involves identifying individuals who may be at risk. However, it's also had an aspect which is designed towards securing community cohesion programs to encourage integration and so on. So those two aspects of it, community cohesion, an individual identified at risk of terrorism, of committing acts of terrorism, those two things sit together in a somewhat uneasy relationship. And that has carried on from about effectively 2005 to 2000 to the present.
- [04:47]
Saeed Khan
So I mean it seems as though was really tracking what happened in, in the UK with the 77 bombings. And, and I, I'm sure that you have explored the similar trajectory of government measures and policies that occurred in the US following the 9 11, 2001 attacks. And I remember how influential the Prevent strategy was inside official Washington circles. It became more than just fashionable, it became really almost a template that the US was seeking to follow in wake of what had happened here involving the British Foreign Office, the home office, involving MI5, MI6, and there were all these efforts to coordinate with CIA, FBI, the New York and the Los Angeles Police Departments, counterterrorism task forces and all. Was it in your estimation, this kind of coordination based on this false premise that the Muslim communities in both Britain and the US were not only ripe for being targeted, but also that somehow the other, that the strategies could in any way possibly be used in both contexts?
- [06:23]
Professor John Holmwood
Yes, I mean there is something very paradoxical about it because it's not as if Britain hasn't had a long standing experience of terrorism, particularly associated with the situation in Northern Ireland. And we didn't need the extensive legislative or other kinds of involvement that are represented by PREVENT to deal with that situation. And indeed it's something of an oddity that PREVENT isn't currently applied within Northern Ireland. And that's partly, I think, because it's premise of there being a community which is outside the mainstream wouldn't work in Northern Ireland, because how would you decide whether it's Catholic community or the Protestant community, which is or is not the mainstream in that context? So it does depend upon a minoritized community being the target of it. And of course it is associated with, with widespread international cooperation around the threats of international terrorism associated with neoconservative arguments about the class of civilizations. But it's not simply, if you like a connection with the Anglosphere that one sees the echo of prevent, but also you can see the echo of PREVENT in the rhetoric of Putin talking about extremism and threats of terrorism and also the Chinese government in relation to Uyghurs. So I think what it's had is also a very deleterious consequence of reinforcing the idea of sovereign state actors against criticism, whether internal or external. And that is popping up again in the context of Palestine solidarity demonstrations against the actions of Israel and Gaza.
- [08:36]
Saeed Khan
Well, I mean, on that you mentioned countries like China and Russia that have echoes of the PREVENT strategy, either in rhetoric or in actual implementation. That's an interesting, what used to be, I suppose considered a dichotomy between liberal democracies and the rest. And from what you're, what you're suggesting it seems is that the line between liberal democrat democratic countries and those that are more illiberal, less democratic, perhaps more authoritarian, that line of demarcation is getting blurred. Do you think that strategies like PREVENT and maybe even the USA Patriot act have facilitated to seeing the decline of then these Western liberal democratic values?
- [09:35]
Professor John Holmwood
Yes, I mean, I think so. And in a sense what it is, it's a form of Western real politic in terms of international diplomacy and international conflicts. One of the problems with it of course, is that both the US and Britain have domestic populations with connections to the places that are, and authoritarian regimes elsewhere that are otherwise being supported by British and American government. And so domestic populations become seen as, as a problem from the point of view of the realization of foreign policy. So I think that's been a feature in the past and that's part of the suspicion towards British Muslim communities and the trope of their dual loyalty, for example, is something that comes up which to be frank, is quite an older anti Semitic trope as well, or we would have recognized it in the early 20th century as a feature of how Jews were regarded in Europe as not only not integrated, but in a sense having a problem of really being integrated because they would respond to external sort of issues and concerns.
- [11:10]
Claudia Radburn
I think this is a really interesting point in a number of ways. Particularly you've just highlighted the various iterations of PREVENT and associated policies in a number of different contexts, all part of that global project of Islamophobia that we're Seeing in China, in Myanmar, in Kashmir, and in many Western European nations as well. But also, I just wanted to pull at the read that you mentioned about this kind of issue around identity. So we can see these iterations or rather extensions of the kind of colonial racial governance in prevents fixation on Britishness and British values. And this feeds extensively to the wider conversations that are being had all the time about citizenship and identity. And we've heard recently from commentators like Jenrick, remarking upon, sorry, Robert Jenrick, remarking upon this erosion of British identity, yet being unable to tell us what that is. So do you prevent in relation to these associated policies pertaining to citizenship, like the adjustments made to the Nationalities and Borders bills and these constant calls or cries for this return to British identity?
- [12:34]
Professor John Holmwood
Well, I think it's sort of deeply ironic. I mean, on one hand, of course, British identity is different under Empire and then after Empire. So many of the people who are called immigrants to Britain or are called second generation immigrants in Britain actually came to Britain as British subjects with their children as British subjects. And it's only in a sense their religious identity or their ethnic identity that is marking them out to somehow immigrants different, say from Polish communities or Italian communities in Britain, where you rarely see the phrase second generation referred in that context. So there is something quite deep. But there's also something really paradoxical because I would say that if one said, well, looking at what Britishness is, and it's usually referred to in terms of fundamental British values, since that was the term introduced in 2011 and that really involved commitment to democracy, rule of law, religious tolerance and so on, if you were to look at those values, then what you notice is that British Muslims show the highest degree of conformity with those values. They are the minority community that is closest to that of the British as a whole. And so if one said, well, also those values are not particular Islamic values, British values, the values themselves are not really problematic. So it's the difference that Islam represents, whether that's in terms of dress or in religious practices and so on, that marks the community out as different. Community is actually the most normal community in Britain. So it sometimes shocks, I think, people coming from a perspective, and particularly from a colonial perspective, which I share, that this is not a particularly radical community and it is a community that is well settled and has pretty mainstream views. But it is made the target of suspicion through the identification of the values being British values, which suggests they have to be inculcated in this group against what is or might be found within the home. So there's something I think, and particularly when it's applied within schools, there's something deeply disrespectful about it. It disrespects the parents and it also disrespects the community on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, just that it's convenient to treat a minority community in that way and there's political advantage to it. That's why I say that it is really significant that the policy doesn't apply in Northern Ireland, where that kind of pathologizing of a particular community would be deeply problematic.
- [16:11]
Claudia Radburn
I think that's a really interesting point, particularly around what you mentioned in terms of the very narrow way those British values are viewed, this idea of rule of law and democracy. And especially when you think of a couple of recent events, you know, Shawcross, in his recent independent review of Prevent, spoke extensively about there being not enough focus on so called Islamist terrorism, not enough focus on Muslim communities, and spoke about there being too much focus on the far right when it came to prevent. And thinking of that in the context of British values particularly, Shawcross said a year later that the UK was at significant risk having ignored his statements, particularly with regards to increased risk of terrorism in relation to Gaza and Hamas supporters. And when we think of that in terms of, you know, this adherence to democracy, the right to protest rule of law, not setting fire to hotels and other acts of violence, you know, how did you view all of this given the recent far right pogroms in the wake of the Southport stabbing?
- [17:25]
Professor John Holmwood
Well, I'm, yes, very critical of Shawcross and I'll come back to something that's quite interesting though, what he's saying and that it might reveal important things about prevent. Yes. Reference to fundamental British values. What the far right violent disorder has demonstrated is that there are significant members of the white British community, if you like, that needed in those values. And indeed, I don't find the values themselves particularly problematic if they were promoted within schools and so on. What is problem is putting the word British in front of them as if there's one group to whom they fall naturally and another group that is in a sense potentially a deficit in relation to those values. So I do think schools should be talking about values, should be encouraging debate around democracy, should be encouraging good citizenship and so on. So I think it would be hard to say schools shouldn't be doing that. What is insight?
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Saeed Khan
Yeah, I'm sorry, please go ahead.
- [18:44]
Professor John Holmwood
Oh, no, no, I'll come back.
- [18:47]
Saeed Khan
Well, you know, the whole idea then about dissent being a quintessential expression of citizenship Is, is. Is very much a, of what has been taught and invoked as a, as a, a Western value. But yet you see then that politicians and policymakers, I don't know if it's a matter of willful ignorance, something intentional, or maybe just naivete, because like Shawcroft, like, like Shaw Kra. Sorry. In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security in the United States issued a major report forewarning the dangers of far right extremism. But it was Republican politicians, legislators, opinion makers, conservative talk radio and others that really browbeat the report into suppression, saying, how dare you go ahead and shed light on this when clearly, in their estimation, the bigger threat was Muslims both from within and from without. And now, as has been said before, the chickens seem to have, well, come home to roost and there doesn't seem to be any indication of a mea culpa. And at the same time, it seems as though, instead of even denying it, Republican or conservative politicians on both sides, it seems that this is happening in the UK as well, are leaning into these communities as constituents and as a voter base. How have you found that?
- [20:34]
Professor John Holmwood
I am absolutely in favor of treating all groups equivalently and equally. I'm not somebody who argues that the far right should be treated equally, equally under prevent in the same way as Muslims are treated under prevent, and somebody who argues that prevent itself is a problem and that actually regarding any of your citizens as implicitly internal threats is part of the problem. And that rather than focus them on them as threats, one should focus on the nature of political discourse, the nature of, of education within schools and so on, so that one should have that kind of approach. The difficulty, as you have observed, is that politicians have moved to the right. What that move to the right does is expose the hypocrisy within the approach. So that, for example, what would get you referred to prevent is if you made statements which overlapped with the statements made by some violent Islamist group, but you may have no intention around violence, you just are promoting. Well, I think a. Let's say, I think if the state embodied Islamist or Islamic values, that would be positive, that would be a good state that would get you referred to prevent. Even though if, in a sense what you're doing is philosophically, as it were, talking about the relationship between religion and the values of the state and law and so on. So if you said, well, I think Sharia law would be a good idea, that would get you a possible prevent referral. If you started talking about great replacement theory which overlaps with violent right wing views Then the argument is no, that shouldn't be the case. So that point to me. Well, the difficulty is the idea of the overlap and what you should be concentrating on is the way the views are being expressed in a manner that is lawful and makes them open to debate. And rather than trying to shut them down, you should be in a sense encouraging them being discussed and so on. And I think most of the evidence shows that when different groups debate and have a dialogue together, it moderates views on either side. So part of the problem is that our forms of politics are encouraging polarized kinds of engagement. But the one thing I'd point out very strongly is that isn't the case in schools. So it might be true of 25 year olds, it might be even true of 65 year olds that they're in their own silos. But school isn't a silo and school is a place where these debates can take place. So it's deeply paradoxical that the place where the prevent duty has its most, its deepest penetration is within the education system from nursery through to university. And that's what I find is really quite chilling.
- [24:19]
Claudia Radburn
I think that's a really important issue. And we've seen with various iterations of prevent and it's nearly 20 years of being in place from the revisions in 2011 becoming a statutory act in 2015, more reviews subsequently, and its trajectory of sort of never shifting from that position of focusing on public services, but especially education. And you know, under our last conservative government, we've seen that drawn as a kind of battle line, this, this focus on marginalization through, as you said, education services as young as nursery level. And we've, we've seen, you know, ridiculous referrals like the child who drew a cucumber and the teacher perceived that it said kookabomb even though the word bomb was never mentioned, and numerous other horrendous examples relating to very young children. But also with the events that, you know, you worked on substantially around the Trojan Horse scandal and there's been, you know, recent instances at schools like the Michaela Community School of that kind of marginalization of young Muslim children. Do you see now that we're under a new and inverted commas government after the last election, do you think we'll see changes to this current status quo around prevent and this consistent othering of Muslims?
- [25:53]
Professor John Holmwood
I think we could and I can give you a roadmap to that. But first I'll suggest what is really kind of the problem and why the problem is associated not just with conservative criticisms of Muslim community, but also liberal views as well. So the Trojan Horse affair and the Michaela school affair, both relevant to the role of Islam within schools for anybody outside the UK will probably be puzzled to discover, but there's no such thing as a secular school within England. So there may be schools which are faith designated schools, but that does not mean that a school which is not faith designated is, by that token, secular. All schools have to have daily acts of collective worship and they all have to teach compulsory religious education. If a school is 98% Muslim, as the schools were in Birmingham associated with the Trojan Horse affair, they could apply for a determination for collective worship to be Islamic in character. So that's the context. Now, lots of schools where people looking like me send their children, don't bother with collective worship at all. And that's where we have the idea that they're secular. But obviously, if you're going to apply for your school to have a determination to allow it to have Islamic collective worship, you're not doing that in order to ignore the legal requirement to have collective worship. You're going to do it because in a sense you think it's a good idea. So you are in a sense more compliant with the legislative requirements on schools. So that was the context in Birmingham. And although I'm sort of atheist, not religious at all, my view was, well, the thing about schools is that every child has the right to bring their whole self to school. My children had no difficulty improving bringing their secular views that they'd learned at home into school. Why should a Muslim child have to leave part of their identity behind at the school gate? That's a really bad thing. Not only is it a bad thing, it's associated with poor performance. So what the schools in Birmingham did is by they in a sense brought together most of the identities of the pupils with these ethos towards success of the schools and they achieved dramatic improvement in those schools. And then they were attacked for Islamifying the curriculum, despite the fact that what they did was lawful, but partly because none of the mainstream commentators were aware that schools were not secular. So all the language was, they treated the schools as if they were faith school. No, they treated the schools as schools were supposed to be. And then when one goes to Michaela, Michaela very specifically promotes itself as a secular school and very specifically says that children bringing their different identities to school is a problem of integration rather than the means through which integration could be achieved. But of course, they were in breach of the requirement of collective worship in schools. They said they didn't do it. And there was no outcry about Michaela not doing it. Instead the argument was, well, this is a good heap head teacher who shouldn't be criticized. You know, parents knew what the school was like so they should have chosen another school. And nowhere else do we have this idea that parents have no rights to an opinion in relation to the school, especially when the school is acting against the guidelines and statutory requirements in education. So I think we've got a very almost say, corrupted media class that can't be bothered to find out what the context of things is and just wishes to promote the legitimate anger of parenthood to indicate the problematic extremism of those parents. And that occurs within the liberal press. So the Guardian is no better than the Telegraph, in my opinion on those matters. And when I spoke to fellow sociologists about, when talking about Trojan Horse school and said, well, of course no school in England is secular, they all reply, oh, but they should be. And I said, well, whether they should be or not is beside the point. They're not. And therefore nobody should be under attack for doing what the legislation requires them to do. If you want to change the legislation, change the legislation. That would be in line with fundamental British values of saying, well, the legislation needs to be changed. But instead there was an un warranted and really problematic attack on the parents, the governors and so on. And on the back of that, the 2015 Prevent Duty was introduced. 2017, the cases of misconduct against the teachers all collapsed, but the prevent duty was in place.
- [32:18]
Saeed Khan
I mean, I, I went to school until I was eight years old in the UK and I remember the institutionalization of corporal punishment. And whether it was just because I was 8 years old or because it was the reality, it seemed awfully arbitrary the way that it was meted out. And it appears now that there's a selective amnesia that is being deployed by the media, by school administrations, by policymakers, that if corporal punishment is somehow now seen to be an anachronism, obsolete and, and disfavored by society, that's, that's well and good. But to go ahead then, and to impugn, for example, Muslim schools where, for example, there may still be using corporal punishment and to indict it on grounds of religion or culture without recognizing that there was this broader historical arc and precedent and I suppose to be really ironic to say that, well, aren't these schools, if they are still using corporal punishment, simply implementing an older version of.
- [33:33]
Professor John Holmwood
Britishness the case, were it to be the case, that is, I don't think there Are any Muslims schools within the formal school sector that are conducting corporal punishment? So I think the idea that Muslim practices are strict or that the concern about segregation in classes, for example, a teacher will organize a class according to ideas about attentiveness, managing naughtiness in the class. If we're going to say, and that might involve boys sitting in the front, it's not straightforwardly that boys in the front because the teacher wishes to give them better quality attention. And indeed what you should look at is the outcome in terms of the performance in the school. So in the schools that were accused of segregation of that form, the girls outperformed the boys. So there isn't evidence that the girls were being disadvantaged. So I think that and the aftermath of the Trojan Horse affairs was that girls and boys at the post Trojan Horse schools were required to sit together at all times, that is in classes, in social events and so on. At Michaela School, people from similar religious backgrounds are told that they cannot sit together. So you have quite draconian and authoritarian views around interaction. And so I think, and what for me it shows is an unwillingness when you've raised something, you've got a concern to examine it properly rather than to use that concern to promote a particular kind of agenda. It's very clear that the Trojan Horse affair was used to promote a more radical version of prevent being put forward. And part of the background to prevent, because you've mentioned 2011 and 2015, is all the elements of the 2015 prevent duty were flagged in 2011. What was the difference between 2011 and 2015? It was that in 2011 it was a coalition government and the Liberal Democrats wouldn't agree with the extension of prevents in that way. In 2015 it was a majority Conservative government and they could justify it against opposition from Liberal Democrats who are now in opposition in Parliament on the grounds of, well, look what happened in the Birmingham Trojan Horse case, conveniently that took place in early 2014 and the court cases weren't defined or settled until 2017. So they had a period in which a false narrative about what had happened could be used to justify a shift in political policy. What 2015 did was extend prevent by saying what prevent should address was non violent extremism. And I think that is the key issue because what it did was take the focus of prevent away from the proximity to terrorism, violent terrorist offenses, to saying, well, it's about nonviolent extremism as well. Well, nonviolent extremism is within the law. Then in 2019 you have the introduction of non violent terrorism offenses and so prevent is pushed even further back and some of that is recognized by Shawcross. So if you want me to say something related to Shawcross, what I think Shawcross does is to say prevent really should be about terrorism, focused on terrorism and the terrorism threat is Islam and we shouldn't have it associated with things which are at some distance from actual terrorism. So he was hostile to, well, you shouldn't include incels, they're not terrorists, that's a different kind of offense. So some of what he was saying made some degree of sense but of course what he did was refocus the arguments around Islam whilst leaving a sort of big vacant space about other kinds of offenses. And that's where what you've got is, because you've got a language of extremism, you can start to say, well what we need is to have measures about other kinds of extremism. Let's call it what Sarah Khan calls it, hateful extremism and we need measures against hateful extremism. But what you notice is terrorism has disappeared. Now my worry is that the Labour government is very keen on the idea of hateful extremism. So. And what the far right violent disorder has done has made it look as if there's problems of different kinds of extremism. I for one wouldn't call that disorder terrorism, but it's certainly hateful. So what you've got is that pressure to extend the surveillance and the monitoring of communities or groups from the point of view of what are for the most part lawful views, you know, expressed in radical terms maybe, but not in themselves problematic.
- [40:07]
Claudia Radburn
I really, it's. If it wasn't so horrendous, it'd be quite amusing, this designation of hateful extremism as opposed to the non hateful kind and so on. And also, you know, particularly the way that Shawcross narrates that review in some of his commentary when he talks about, you know, this over focus on the far right and on, as you said, you know, incel culture and other elements of what we would designate as sort of rightward leaning extreme views. And I think in one of his commentaries he remarked upon, well, there's numerous conservative politicians and some I'm proud to call friends that hold these views. So it's not terrorism or extremism at all. I can remember reading that thinking you're not making the point that you think you're making here. And it just emphasizes this sort of steady progression of prevent that. You know, occasionally there are these plateaus but then like with events around the Trojan horse, a sudden escalation of, you know, surveillance and you know, pressure. How do you, how do you view Prevent rather with regards to the future then? Obviously there's been numerous calls for it to be scrapped and you've done an extensive work with Prevent Watch. Do you see a future where that becomes a possibility?
- [41:34]
Professor John Holmwood
I think so. If we just say one thing, it is possible. Well, it is the case that there are some bad people wishing to do bad things to other people. So it would be wrong to criticize that. So people have been arrested for terrorism offenses and they've also been arrested for non violent terrorism offenses. So obviously you would need some kind of program related to their experience within prisons and particularly since they will at some point, particularly those who've committed nonviolent terrorism offenses be coming out of prisons. So you would want a program of monitoring and probation, a program within prison and so on. So I think it would be hard to argue against that, although some of my colleagues in the anti prevent space do. But I think that would be difficult also because of online material and this particularly affects young people downloading material online is that terrorism offenses, non violent offenses, are getting younger. And that's partly because material that's freely available in America and if you're online, you don't know whether the material is in America or not, that material is not illegal in America, but it is illegal in Britain and will potentially not simply get you in to prevent, it will actually get you with a possible terrorism charge. So it seems to me reasonable to suggest, as the independent reviewer of terrorism does, is that those are pretty serious charges to bring against young people, 16 year olds and so on, who probably haven't really formulated any kind of intention but are now brought into the criminal justice system with custodial sentences. And you'd be better off having a program that was designed to keep them out of the criminal justice system. So those are areas that I don't object. Everybody else is really at a distance. You cannot demonstrate any kind of connection between the kinds of things that get somebody referred to prevent or even the things that get them assigned to the de radicalization program within Prevent have any connection with the commission of terrorist offenses. We have the possibility of criminal charges for things that are called inchoate offenses. We have no need to bring prevent or to bring a prevent program into that area. And certainly if you've got a nursery school, why do you have prevented? Because you're using it to identify a problem with their relatives in primary school. Why do you do it? It's not the risk of radicalization of the child, it's a surveillance technique. And so I would take PREVENT entirely out of schools and higher education settings. I would also remove it from healthcare settings because it disrupts the relationship, the relationship of trust between medical staff and others. And I think it would be very easy to do that because what PREVENT does is generate so much information, so much noise within the system that police and security services can't deal with. So people do commit terrorist offenses and are found to have come to the attention of prevent, but nothing was done. Why was nothing done? Because they were so far away from committing an offence that nothing could be done. So these are not failures of prevent, these are failures in an area where there could not possibly be any successes. So you could have, you know, that's why I'm saying that a focus on education and a focus on proper dialogue and discussion within schools, whether it's around right wing or so called Islamist offensive or whether it's misogyny and so on, that's what schools ought to be discussing, picking up and so on. And if I have one positive position on this for the Labour government, so the Labour government could remove PREVENT from education and from hospitals, why it ought to do that is because the school leaving age in England is 18 and they're proposing to reduce the voting age to 16. If you have pupils in school who are able to vote at 16, you couldn't have the regime that the Michaela School has because you're trying to encourage them to be self critical, aware, participating adults. And I don't think really you could have PREVENT operating in the school because you'd want proper citizenship education. And proper citizenship education I think would have to completely dismantle the idea of fundamental British values. So if the Labour Party delivers on its policies for lowering the voting age to give young people more responsibility, then I think that will be entirely positive and would undermine PREVENT from within, as it were.
- [48:05]
Claudia Radburn
I think in a conversation where there's a lot of negatives and a lot of horrific things to discuss, that's probably as close as we're going to get to a positive summary of the conversation. Even though I'm sure we could go into this in even further depth and critique.
- [48:26]
Professor John Holmwood
Can I just add one thing though? Of course. Because what happens with the misrepresentation of things? I became very familiar with the Birmingham schools and the Birmingham teachers. They were really exciting, vibrant places precisely because the children were enabled. Look at the Michaela School case. Who is the person that you think is the most positive figure in that case, it's the girl who brought the case, not the head teacher. You'd rather have lots of girls like the girl who brought the case than you would have the idea of the docile pupil that is the object of the teacher. So there is something incredibly positive to look forward to, and that is a population of engaged and empowered young people and to recognize that PREVENT is an obstacle to that.
- [49:27]
Claudia Radburn
That's absolutely a wonderful note. I think for us to conclude on, as you say, it really is something that I hope we can look forward to in the future. So suffice to say, all that's left is for me to say thank you very much, Professor John Homewood, for joining us and for those responses to our questions. We look forward to perhaps following up one day with an interview when PREVENT has been removed from education and healthcare, like you said. Thank you very much.
- [49:59]
Professor John Holmwood
Okay, well, thank you. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks. Bye. Bye.
- [50:04]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Thank you for listening to Radio reorient in partnership with the New Books Network. Don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast and to follow reorient, the critical Muslim Studies project on social media to stay in the loop.
- [50:16]
Claudia Radburn
I really enjoyed the conversation with John Homewood, especially in the current context, with everything that's going on in the UK right now. We initially had that conversation when we'd not long heard about the William Shawcross Review, which was very controversial, not least because of his former role in the Charity Commission, but also because of some of his subsequent statements, but also in the context of things like changes to citizenship policy, the addition of clause 9 to the Nationality and Borders Bill, the right to remove citizenship without notice, but also in the wake of October 7th and the wave of protests that happened, and obviously more recently we've had the prescription of Palestine action and all of the backlash to that. But I think with all that in mind as well, part of the conversation that I found and I always find interesting when discussing PREVENT was thinking about the future of the policy, the future of PREVENT and countering violent extremism in general. Obviously there's been calls for PREVENT to be scrapped for some time now. There's been accusations of its inherent Islamophobia. But instead of seeing sort of meaningful change, we just seem to get review after review after review, even within this year. Quite recently, there's another independent review from David Anderson in the wake of the Southport stabbings and the attack on an mp, and we don't. We don't seem to see any particular change from that. We often see certain aspects acknowledged, but never sort of a meaningful change. And obviously, you know, this has a particular impact on education, especially as Homewood mentioned. And I think his comments, particularly about how prevent interventions in education and healthcare especially, are so very corrosive, so very damaging, and they present real risks, not just to academic freedom, but the very way that people learn or feel comfortable enough to disclose aspects of their health. And I think that's something that's worthy of a great deal of attention.
- [52:46]
Chella Ward
I think the point about education, you know, that Homewood made and that you're making now, Claudia, I think that's a really important one. One, you know, I think you will know the figures better than me. But, you know, my understanding is that, that, you know, the vast majority of reports that are made under the auspices of PREVENT actually concern, you know, young people between the age of 11 to 15. And it's something like, I think these are the Amnesty International numbers, but it's something like 5% of them are young children, children under the age of 10 years old. And so that means, you know, as you've said, that, that schools and later universities, although with that age of children, we're talking mostly about schools, including primary schools, are one of the major engines. You know, children are subject to this kind of, of targeting, which, as many organizations and reviews have already said, is often an Islamophobic targeting. And that makes me think about the way that the term terrorism or the term violent extremism, which is the term, and you know, that's the terminology under which this policy is written, is being sort of hollowed out of meaning in these kinds of conversations. Because in order to accept that what this set of policies under the contest strategy, what it really does is counter violent extremism, you would have to accept that 5% of violent extremists are children under the age of 10 years old. Right. And then you have to ask the question, well, is that plausible? Is it plausible that 5% of violent extremists are actually, you know, little kids toddling around in the playground? I mean, to me, that that starts to feel implausible. It starts to conjure up, you know, ideas of, you know, bombs being placed into teddy bears and all this kind of like ridiculous imagery. And it starts to erode the relationship between what's said about these policies and what we can plausibly believe is reality. And for me, that, that the obvious link to make there, that for me is also part of this hollowing out of, of the term terrorist is the, as you mentioned, Claudia, the prescription of Palestine action, where again, we are being asked to believe things that are not incredibly plausible, which is that, you know, priests in their 80s or, you know, elderly school teachers or people who have never in their lives been convicted of, you know, so much as a parking ticket, are in themselves, you know, likely to, to, to take part in terrorist activity or are terrorists, right, are arrested under counter terror legislation because they have held up a sign that says that they support Palestine action and they oppose the genocide of the Palestinian people. So in both cases, it seems to me what we've got is almost an attack on language itself because we've got words that are being hollowed out of their meaning. And, and the third comparison, then I'll stop with the comparisons and let somebody else talk. But the third comparison for me is the term Islamism and the way that the term Islamism, particularly under French persecution of, of Muslims at the moment, the term Islamist is also being hollowed out of meaning. You know, we had recently the, the Muslim Brotherhood report in France where there is an attempt to paint what are, you know, daily Muslim practices, for instance, saying assalamualaikum, for example, as an attempt to, you know, paint or wearing a headscarf. That's the. Obviously the big one around which this revolves in France is girls wearing headscarves in schools. We are being asked to understand that as in itself a signal of being involved with the Muslim Brotherhood in some kind of political way. And the role of education is on the one hand important because this is. Education becomes an engine under which these policies have their discriminatory effects. But it's also important because it allows us to see that the relationship between language and reality is really crumbling here, right? Because the more 10 year old girls who are stopped from going into French schools because on the assumption that, you know, they wear the hijab and therefore they must be involved with Islamist political organizations. You know, you put those children next to the nine year olds who are being signaled to prevent, you know, in primary schools in the UK and it starts to become a picture that's less and less plausible, right? It starts to become a picture where terms like terrorist, terms like extremism, terms like Islamist are losing the valency that Western, you know, Western states and Western governments and west toxicated governments also have wanted to give them. So I wonder whether there's a kind of potential for resistance here in the fact that, you know, if it's mostly children who are being signaled under these policies, perhaps the policies aren't really doing the things that they're supposed to be doing. And perhaps the terminology isn't really a reflection of reality either.
- [57:41]
Saeed Khan
I find the transatlantic aspect of this really interesting that while the US is anywhere from five to eight time zones behind the US or the uk it certainly looks to the UK for inspiration. Maybe it's just the accent or more, but PREVENT certainly has has its own ability to be sonorous among policymakers in the US perhaps as a template. And while PREVENT itself may not have been as successful as those who its architects would have liked, none of them have actually conceded that it's problematic to begin with. They're just looking at ways to go ahead and refine it. Which means then that the security industrial complex is still hell bent on securitizing societies and not just Muslim communities. And I find it disturbing as to the ways that they co opt civil society. The whole c say if you see something, say something. And telling on your neighbors has become the new form of nationalism and patriotism. So the idea that because external enemies seem to be so nebulous now, it's enemies from within. And here you find, particularly in the United States, that that is being trained on any group that does not conform. So for example, President Trump first of all lying about the the killer of a podcaster and conservative activist Charlie Kirk as being radical left despite there being no evidence of it, but literally now designating ANTIFA as a terrorist organization, designating the progressive left as an enemy of the state. So this idea then about how the mechanisms of the state are going to be used is only half of the equation. I think what PREVENT and its policies also do then is deputizing the public to do their bidding.
- [59:38]
Claudia Radburn
Yeah, absolutely.
- [59:38]
Podcast Host/Announcer
I'd agree with you said. And I think in terms of sort of the points you're making in terms of PREVENT not being scrutinized, for example, when it's looked to from contexts such as the US or indeed the vilification and criminalization of young people. And I think back to sort of the 2004 criminalization of young girls wearing hijab in French schools or sort of through prevent, the numerous children that are that are implicated in this. And I sort of see this cyclical impact of Islamophobia. We don't questionize it. We don't question it becomes legitimate, legitimized and justified because of Islamophobia. And then in turn the work that it's doing is strengthening and enforcing Islamophobic principles. And really it reminds me of sort of the the extension of all of this. We're sort of in this sort of McCarthyist thought crime era where now, as you say, just thinking the wrong thing. And I think about the, the protest bill in the UK context, that hasn't come from protests associated with Muslimness. This has come from a gendered dimension, really. We're starting to see any opposition as gaining legitimacy, as gaining traction through the normalization of PREVENT CVE agendas and the surveillance of communities that aren't doing and thinking the right things.
- [61:03]
Claudia Radburn
Undoubtedly. I think, gosh, there's just so much with PREVENT that we could go into if we had the time. We could look at the, you know, the historical trajectory of projects like Riku, the thought control like has been mentioned and not least the fact that something that isn't widely acknowledged is that the original extremism risk guidelines upon which, you know, PREVENT judges and categorizes people, the people that designed that admitted that it was designed with so called Islamic violence in mind above any others. So it doesn't seem to matter how much PREVENT says that, you know, it's addressing all kinds of terrorism. It's become continuously clear that, you know, there is an overwhelming focus here and it is an Islamophobic one. But suffice to say there is not enough time in a singular podcast episode to address such a policy. So I say thank you to Professor Homewood for joining us and to my co hosts and of course to our listeners. And we hope you'll join us for another episode of Radio Reorient.
- [62:30]
Professor John Holmwood
Sam.