The UK government's failed counter-extremism strategy

Last week, British police announced three sisters from the northern English city of Bradford had travelled to Turkey with their nine children aged between three and 15, to join their brother who is believed to be fighting for the Islamic State group (IS) in Syria.

The sisters, Sugra Dawood, 34, Zohra Dawood, 33, and Khadija Dawood, 30, traveled to Istanbul, a common transit point for people heading to Syria, a week after leaving the UK for Saudi Arabia on 28 May on pilgrimage.

Two of the women's husbands appeared in an emotional press conference in Bradford urging their wives to come back home. The lawyers of the two men, Mohammed Shoaib and Akhtar Iqbal, have written a letter to the Home and Foreign Ministers in addition to the chairman of the UK parliament's Home Affairs Select Committee, Keith Vaz, in which they claimed that British police are party responsible for the radicalisation of the sisters.

If you believe the official account, extremist ideology is the most important factor for the radicalisation of British Muslims.

The letter said the North East Counter-Terrorism Unit (Nectu) had encouraged the sisters to contact their brother in Syria, with a "reckless disregard as to the consequences of any such contact on the families."

It added: "Plainly the North East Counter-Terrorism Unit (Nectu) has been complicit in the grooming and radicalising of the women."

"Playing the blame game"

A spokesperson for the Prime Minister's office rejected the allegations and accused the family of "playing the blame-game", in reference to a speech by PM David Cameron on Friday in which he said some British Muslim communities are giving credence to extremist beliefs and "too often we hear the argument that radicalisation is the fault of someone else."

The events of the past week, which also included a suicide attack in Iraq by a 17-year-old British boy from Dewsbury, and the government's response highlight the shambolic state of the UK's counter-extremism strategy.

There is an ongoing and unresolved debate on how fundamentalist Islamist radicalisation occurs, and whether the process is different to that of any other extremist ideology. If you believe the official version that has been touted by the Blair, Brown and Cameron governments, extremist ideology is the most important factor for the radicalisation of British Muslims.

According to this version, extremist Islamist ideologues are attempting to recruit vulnerable British Muslims into violent extremism by indoctrinating them with a twisted version of Islam.

Therefore, based on a preconceived notion of the causes of Islamist radicalisation, the British government introduced the Preventing Violent Extremism strategy known as Prevent, which is part of its larger counterterrorism strategy (Contest) after the 7 July London bombings, to combat the threat of extremist radicalisation before it posed a terrorist threat. Prevent focused on the entire British Muslim population as being "at risk" of radicalisation, thus automatically turning them into a suspect community.

Reports revealed that the government used Prevent programmes to gather personal information such as religious beliefs, political leaning and sexual activity on Muslims who had not been suspected on any criminal activity. The information was gathered through service providers such as youth workers and teachers, and one reported case involved a nine-year-old schoolboy from London who was reported to the authorities for showing signs of extremism, resulting in him being "deprogrammed".

British policy makers have failed to come up with an appropriate and consistent response on extremist ideology.

More recently a government document called for nursery staff, school teachers and child-minders to be trained to identify "children at risk of being drawn into terrorism and challenge extremist ideas which can be used to legitimise terrorism."

Alienating British Muslims

Such ridiculous and counterproductive measures have only served to further alienate British Muslims who feel increasingly attacked by government policy and public discourse that treats them like a fifth column.

Even on extremist ideology, British policy makers have failed to come up with an appropriate and consistent response. We hear rhetoric such as, "We need to stand up and be more assertive in promoting our values and challenging the extremists who fundamentally oppose them", yet state sponsors of extremist ideology are still valued partners and allies of the UK, even though a wealth of evidence links them to the promotion of extremism, both in the UK and abroad.

Most importantly however, consecutive British governments have completely ignored the role of their domestic and foreign policies in the radicalisation of British Muslims. "Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people - not a whole generation, a few among a generation - who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack upon Islam", according to Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5.

The British Muslims who have travelled to Syria to join the IS and other groups since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, who are estimated to be over 700 are proof that the UK's counter extremism strategy had failed. The main reason for its failure is because it views radicalisation as a process that occurs in a vacuum unaffected by social, political and economic factors. The government needs to urgently revise this view instead of criticising its Muslim population from foreign capitals, as was done by David Cameron on Friday.

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of al-Araby al-Jadeed, its editorial board or staff.