UK's First Muslim Minister Condemns Britain's Prevent Strategy as 'Broken, Toxic'

Rasa - A former Conservative Party co-chair and the first Muslim woman to hold a British cabinet post, called on the government to rethink its controversial Prevent counter-terrorism strategy, describing it as a "broken brand".

News ID: 428290

Date: 20 March 2017 - 23:47

RNA - Sayeeda Warsi, in an interview ahead of the publication of her new book, The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain, called on British Prime Minister Theresa May to publicly condemn Islamophobia and described being a Muslim in public life as a "brutal" experience, Middle East Eye reported.

Warsi, who quit then-prime minister David Cameron's Conservative-led coalition government in 2014 in protest at its failure to condemn Israel's assault on Gaza, minced no words about Prevent, which she said was focused too narrowly on the development of extremist ideology.

“I think Prevent, as a brand, is broken. I think it's toxic," she said. "I think Theresa May needs to pause, she needs to reassess what Prevent is about, and they need to have clarity of whether it’s counter-terrorism or counter-extremism."

'We were trying to be the intelligence services and the police in a process determined by a couple of politicians and their ideologies'

Under the Prevent Duty, which the government introduced in 2015, all public sector workers including teachers and doctors must have "due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism".

Prevent, which was originally introduced by the Labor Party in 2003, has long been criticized by many British Muslims who say it is discriminatory and even counter-productive by potentially alienating those whom it sets out to help.

Those concerns have been highlighted by human rights watchdogs and advocacy groups and parliamentary committees. However, the government has suggested that it plans to extend and expand Prevent despite admitting that it has still not settled on a legally robust definition of the "extremism" that it has set out to tackle.

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