UK: fighting Islamist extremism with British values

British Home Secretary Theresa May has been forced to drop the strict rules that would have obliged universities of England and Wales to ban extremist speakers from campuses. Ever since the measures were announced May has faced strong opposition from student associations and many academics.

At Westmnister, the Liberal Democrats and the House of Lords were the fiercest opponents but even Tory peers have lobbied to exclude Oxford and Cambridge Unions from the ban. The rules (discussed on this blog here) were part of a counter-terror initiative aimed at fighting extremism by preventing the radicalisation of students at university. They were brought forward following the unmasking of “Jihadi John”, Isis’ executioner with a British accent, as Mohammed Emwazi, a university graduate from Westminster University, who was radicalised while studying in London. One of the opposition’s main arguments has been that such prohibition would significantly limit freedom of speech at university.
The Home Secretary has also decided not to publish the new counter-extremism strategy, the so-called “Prevent” Strategy, and to leave the matter aside until after the general elections taking place this May, leaving the future government to deal with this controversial topic. Together with the new strategy, the publishing a report reviewing the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain has also been postponed.
This, at a time when the fear of radicalisation in Britain is reaching its highest peak, with 9 British medicine students illegally traveling to Syria from Sudan to work as doctors for Isis, only one month after three London schoolgirls had ran away from their homes to travel to Syria to join the jihadists.
Only two weeks ago, a draft of May’s counter-extremism strategy was leaked to the Sunday Telegraph. The draft contained a series of measures to target not only illegal behaviours, but also that kind of behaviour that is believed to radicalise communities and foster extremism. Institutions such as job centres were required to be on the lookout for vulnerable claimants who might become targets of radicalisation, and unofficial Sharia courts operating in Britain were to be put under close scrutiny. Other measures included penalties for benefit claimants who do not learn English and the requirement of committing oneself to “British values” to obtain a visa to travel to the UK or the British citizenship.
Postponing of the publication of the counter-extremism strategy will likely not change the government’s insistence on the “curative powers” of British value in eradicating extremism.With tension and suspicion rising in the country, the government is gaining more power to define whois an “extremist” and what the parameters for being a good citizen are. This could further alienate communities that already feel marginalised rather than integrating them and preventing their radicalisation. The time has come for a new debate on how multiculturalism can work in Britain. 

@aplazzarin