A major new commission, chaired by former attorney general Dominic Grieve, has also called on the government to urgently review its Prevent programme.
During interviews with British Muslims for its report ‘Missing Muslims: Unlocking British Muslim Potential for the Benefit of All’, the commission also found a strong sense that Muslims and Islam are ‘unfairly targeted’.
The fear of discrimination is even putting young British Muslims off from engaging in politics and other aspects of public life.
But the Prevent programme, which was set up in an attempt to stop extremism early on, was particularly strongly criticised – being raised as an issue in all 11 cities that the commission visited to gather evidence.
As a result, the commission recommends that tackling extremism and radicalisation would be ‘better achieved with a programme that has greater trust, particularly from the UK’s Muslim communities’.
It also calls on ministers to come up with a definition of anti-Muslim prejudice across Government, in the same way Antisemitism was formally defined last year. [Metro.co.uk] Read more
