{"id":1264,"date":"2019-03-27T04:02:54","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T04:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=1264"},"modified":"2019-03-27T04:02:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T04:02:54","slug":"policed-multiculturalism-and-predicting-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=1264","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Policed multiculturalism\u2019 and predicting disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Police in Paris. Demotix\/ Cesar Dezfuli. All rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n

Rosemary Bechler(RB):<\/strong> \u00a0<\/strong>Francesco, you have analysed in
\nsome detail the relatively recent French plan to \u2018combat radicalization\u2019,
\nfollowing a path previously trodden in the UK and the Netherlands. Could you
\nexplain how, in your view, this approach to counter-terrorism influenced the
\nnature of the French response to the Paris attacks last November?<\/i><\/p>\n

Francesco Ragazzi (FR): <\/strong>What is interesting is that the first attacks
\nin January 2015, on the Charlie Hebdo office, came not much more than six
\nmonths after the first counter-radicalisation programme ever was announced in
\nFrance, in April 2014.<\/p>\n

They paved the way for this strategy with a ministerial report which was
\nkept secret, in fact until a few weeks ago when it was made public by the
\nFrench media outlet, Mediapart.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report was headed up by Prefect Jounot who was mandated by the prime
\nminister at that time, in 2012-2013, to try to get to grips with what was best
\npractise in the Netherlands and the UK, as well as what was going on at the EU
\nlevel. This attempt to revise policy was in turn a response to a series of
\ndevelopments including the Mohammed
\nMerah killings in 2012. France had been spared terrorist attacks over a
\nlong period from 1996 to 2012, during which time it had relied primarily on a
\nlaw enforcement strategy, the work of intelligence services and the police and
\nno or very little involvement of civil society or any other groups in the
\ncounter-terrorism apparatus. Intelligence services, specialised departments of
\ncounterterrorism in the police, and anti-terrorism judges \u2013 this was the way
\ncounter-terrorism had been structured and organised in France. It is not really a response to a changing threat, or to an analysis of what
\nthe response should be.<\/p>\n

And suddenly in 2012 it appeared that the system had not only failed to
\nprevent these killings, but that the list of people regarded as dangerous for a
\nlarge number of reasons by the intelligence services kept on growing. More or
\nless at the same time there was a new concern about the number of individuals
\ngoing to fight in Syria. Intelligence services and anti-terrorist judges were
\nin particular worried about the possible dangers of returnees. Add to this
\npressures at the European level to be seen to be doing something in relation to
\ncounter-radicalisation, and there is this decision by the French government to
\nchange course. <\/p>\n

It is not really a response to a changing threat, or to an analysis of what
\nthe response should be, but a response to what was considered to be a failure
\nin the Mohammed Merah attacks, and the pressures of the European Union.<\/p>\n

RB: <\/strong>To carry on retracing our steps a little, you refer to the
\nspeech delivered by the British Prime Minister David Cameron, in February 2011,
\nin which he talked about \u2018different cultures\u2019 living \u2018separate lives apart from
\neach other and apart from the mainstream\u2019 and denounced \u2018multiculturalism\u2019,
\nechoing remarks about its \u2018failure\u2019 made by Angela Merkel in 2010, as an
\nimportant contributory moment, having its roots in changing models of
\nintegration resulting from the July 2005 attacks in London. <\/i><\/p>\n

One had the sense at the time that this seemingly coordinated drawing of
\nthe line by several European leaders was an important moment, but what was that
\nactually about? <\/i>Multiculturalism was the target of all the rising populisms from
\nPim Fortuyn onwards.<\/p>\n

FG: <\/strong>Two things happened in parallel that can only be explained if you
\nconsider the political sphere and the sphere of what Didier Bigo refers to as
\nthe \u2018professionals of security\u2019 <\/strong>as relatively autonomous spheres.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What was happening on the one hand was the public renunciation of
\nmulticulturalism as a particular way of managing diversity \u2013 as a failure. But
\nthis process in itself had a long history. If you look at the Netherlands it
\nstarted in the mid 1990\u2019s and was the target of all the rising populisms from
\nPim Fortuyn onwards. In the UK, it took off not really with the 7\/7 bombings,
\nbut with the riots of 2001: that was probably the moment when the idea of \u201cparallel
\nlives\u201d entered the public debate with the suggestion that multiculturalism had
\nencouraged the development of \u201cseparate communities\u201d which did not think of
\nthemselves as British, and so forth. <\/p>\n

Stand-off between rioters and police in Croydon, London 2011. Flickr\/ Raymond Yau. Some rights reserved.But then it was very quickly re-appropriated in the language of
\ncounter-terrorism, with the idea that home-grown terrorism, emerging from the
\nsuburbs of British, Dutch and other big European cities was in fact the product
\nof multiculturalism. This reached the point where even Nicolas Sarkozy,
\nstrangely enough, though multiculturalism had never been on the agenda in
\nFrance, thought fit to denounce it as well, as a failed system.<\/i><\/p>\n

So, if the idea that separate communities within a country need to be
\nrecognised as such and that the polity at large should accommodate for
\ndifference \u2013 if this idea of multiculturalism is to be discarded, in the name
\nnot only of fending off possible riots but in tackling terrorism \u2013 then you
\nmight expect the policies of homogenizing citizenship and playing down
\ndifferences, trying to get the entire population at least organised or
\nfunctioning around a single set of values, you would expect that<\/i> to be
\nmore or less the backbone of the new guidelines for counter-terrorism. This is
\nthe message that we hear now in the Netherlands, that has been somewhat vaguely
\noutlined in policies in the UK, but has been very much state policy in France
\nfor a while now. <\/p>\n

In fact, however, when you look closer at what \u2018professionals of security\u2019
\nhave been doing in the Netherlands since 2003\/4, in the UK very much after the
\nLondon bombings of 2005, and at what had been going on in France for a while \u2013
\nit is exactly the opposite! The idea is that to tackle radicalisation as a
\nparticular social problem, you have to deal with it differentially as if it was
\nprimarily a Muslim problem. So if you are to deal with it as a Muslim problem
\nyou end up targetting specifically Muslim populations. If you are to deal with it as a Muslim problem
\nyou end up targetting specifically Muslim populations.<\/p>\n

So, when Prevent
\nwas rolled out in the UK, it targeted particular areas where there was a
\ndeterminate percentage of the population that was Muslim. It was pursued through
\nthe idea of promoting moderate voices within Islam, reforming the governance of
\nmosques. So it was very much targeted at a community and the same happened here
\nin the Netherlands. France, interestingly, which for a long time you could have
\nexpected to pursue a non-identity based, or non-community based way of tackling
\nradicalisation, in fact in 2014-2015 really adopted a similar model. What I
\nshow in the
\nstudy of France in this period therefore is this discrepancy between deeds
\nand rhetoric. <\/p>\n

There is the political discourse questioning management through difference \u2013
\nthe policies of multiculturalism \u2013 on the one hand, and on the other, in fact,
\nthe managing of security issues through a differential approach based on the
\ndifferent treatment of communities. This was a paradox only at the level
\nof appearances, and only if you believe that security professionals do what
\npoliticians say. In fact they don\u2019t. Whatever is said, what
\ncounter-radicalisation began to do as a set of security practises was very much
\nto reinforce a division between a Muslim community and the rest of society.<\/p>\n

RB: <\/strong>This is where your concept of \u2018 policed multiculturalism\u2019
\ncomes in, an account of a system for managing religious and ethnic diversity
\neven in a laicist society like France, where this is not what their culture is
\nmeant to be about. So let\u2019s come back to the impact of \u2018policed multiculturalism\u2019
\non the response to the Paris attacks.<\/i><\/p>\n

FR: <\/strong>\u2018Policed multiculturalism\u2019 is an idea that I have been playing
\naround with to think about this particular set of security practises, not so
\nmuch in terms of whether it is efficient counter-terrorism or not, but really
\nin terms of what it does to citizenship. <\/p>\n

When you do this, what immediately becomes very clear is that within this
\nwhole overarching discourse of questioning multiculturalism \u2013 both in the UK
\nand the Netherlands that had, explicitly or implicitly, operated by the
\nmulticultural principles of governing through diversity, and in a France that
\nhadn\u2019t \u2013 what was really happening was the management of diversity without any
\nopen political discussions about them. <\/p>\n

Instead of saying, we need to pay due
\nrecognition to this community because this is the right thing to do, or because
\nthis is the way that we want to organise our society, now it became a question
\nof, \u201cWe need to govern in particular these Muslim communities in such and such
\na way, because otherwise it will create a terrorist problem.\u201d Instead of open
\ndiscussions about how and what should be the model of citizenship in our
\ncontemporary European societies, all the talk instead was of what kind of
\nwelfare we should provide, what kind of recognition, what kind of place we
\nshould give to religion in society, so that we don\u2019t provoke an attack on our
\nway of life by \u201cangry Muslims\u201d, and so that we can prevent people from becoming
\nradicals, going to Syria and so forth.<\/p>\n

Gare de Lyon. Flickr\/Jon Siegel. Some rights reserved.Therefore the politics around these issues are gradually reduced to a
\nbureaucratic decision regarding the most efficient choice to be made for
\ntackling this threat. And in France, when you ask how this has influenced the
\nresponse to the Paris attacks, of course institutions don\u2019t change overnight,
\nbut it has had some impact. <\/i><\/p>\n

For the first time you had a directive from the minister to the prefects who
\nare in charge of administering the counter-radicalisation strategy, telling
\nthem to set up dialogues with the religious representatives! This is entirely
\nunheard of in France. This recognition that religious representatives could be
\npart of social policy, and that the French would recognise or deal with an
\norganised form of Islam, such as the official representative body of Muslims in
\nFrance, the Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman (CFCM), was resisted by many as
\nquite contrary to the principles of la\u00efcit\u00e9. In fact if you dig into how
\nla\u00efcit\u00e9 is supposed to work, it\u2019s not that clear cut, there were always debates
\nbetween accommodating and maximalist positions. But this was the first time
\nthat there was an acknowledgement of Islam, and the place of religious
\nrepresentatives, in the management of the terrorism question, branded as
\n\u201cradicalisation\u201d. So implicitly it made the recognition of the Muslim community
\nas a community by the state something of a reality, which it had not been
\nhitherto. And the driver for that was the fear of terrorism. Underpinning all of it is always this idea that
\nit is a Muslim problem.<\/p>\n

There are many reasons why Nicolas Sarkozy built on the initiatives of the
\nprevious ministers before him and created the CFCM. Not all of them had to do
\nwith security. Some of them were to do also with short-term electoral
\nexpectations that he would get something of a Muslim vote, and that didn\u2019t
\nreally work out for him, so he abandoned the idea. But the institution stayed.
\nAnd so progressively the French state started changing in its approach to Islam
\nand to Muslim communities. <\/p>\n

Now, many of the initiatives that are taken by the
\nFrench state are done under the rubric of a partial recognition of communities.
\nThere is a hotline that can be called if you think somebody is at risk of
\nradicalisation. Various local schemes will be based on religious cults, so
\nSalafism and violent Salafism can be treated like sects, like scientology or
\nsomething that you should be protected from, or that can be observed under the
\nheading of youth violence. But underpinning all of it is always this idea that
\nit is a Muslim problem. The minute you ask a French official about this they
\nwill say, \u201cOf course we don\u2019t recognise communities.\u201d But this is how it
\nactually works on the ground. It always ends up being about Imams, communities,
\nwhat does the Muslim community want, how is the Muslim community making an
\neffort to tackle radicalisation and so forth. So I think it has had quite a
\nstrong impact.<\/p>\n

RB: <\/strong>I was interested in your comments about the contestation over
\nthe nature of radicalisation that took place in Europe as this set of security
\npractises, with these similar identifiable features in different
\ncountries, emerged\u2026 and the jettisoning of the \u2018expert\u2019 view.<\/i><\/p>\n

FR:<\/strong> Yes, you are referring to a particular episode that I looked at
\nin 2008 when the discourse around \u2018radicalisation\u2019 was not yet fully formed. A
\nfew scholars working on terrorism and on Islam in Europe saw the opportunity to
\nquery the term and in particular the simplistic description of radicalisation
\nas a predictable linear process along which intelligence services, police or
\nsocial workers could intervene in order to prevent the next step from being
\ntaken, as if this was inevitable. <\/p>\n

An expert group had been set up in 2006 by the European Commission which was
\nmeant to be supplied with the findings of four smaller groups who were writing
\nmore grassroots-based or more technical short reports. The expert group would
\ndraw up the final report. I spoke to some of the people who participated in
\nthese various groups and interestingly the expert group, which contained the
\nmost highly recognised scholars, thought that the whole idea of radicalisation
\nwas a little bit silly and didn\u2019t in fact make sense in the way that it was
\nbeing interpreted by the Commission and by the emerging \u2018common sense\u2019 on this
\nsubject. <\/p>\n

They were particularly dismissive of the four reports that were meant to
\nfeed into their reflections because they saw them as narrow, poorly documented,
\nand in fact heading in the wrong direction. Essentially, they were giving a
\npicture of radicalisation as a process in which any kind of politicised Islam
\nwas a conveyor belt to violence, or where radicalisation was seen essentially as
\nan individual process regardless of the wider group dynamics, and in particular
\nthe escalating dynamic in the relations between individuals, groups and state practices.
\nThis they thought was pretty poor and not particularly helpful. <\/p>\n

But in the end what happened was that the short reports got published, but
\nnot the overview of the expert group, which was questioning the entire
\nenterprise around radicalisation. What became very clear was that the discourse
\nof the \u2018professionals of security\u2019, essentially the discourse reproduced in the
\nfour smaller reports, was the dominant one for the institutions, and not to be
\nquestioned. So where did the notion of radicalisation come from? Essentially
\nfrom those security circles before they turned to the academic world in order
\nto find out more about these contemporary problems. <\/p>\n

At that time it might still have seemed possible to challenge and even
\ndethrone the notion of radicalisation. \u00a0But right now, seven years later,
\nmaybe twelve years after it was first introduced into the European Union in
\nvarious public documents, we have to concede that this attempt was a failure.
\n\u2018Radicalisation\u2019 is here to stay and if we want to produce interesting
\nknowledge about what is going on, I think we have to deal with the term in another
\nway. Maybe we have to show that the process so identified doesn\u2019t work at all
\nin the way that has been theorised by government, by the intelligence services
\nand some of the scholars who reproduce this rhetoric.<\/p>\n

RB: <\/strong>Would you say that this is the value of Arun Kundnani\u2019s
\nconcept of \u2018radicalisation as a relational process\u2019 ? Is this where such a
\nconcept fits in?<\/i><\/p>\n

FR: <\/strong>\u00a0Yes absolutely. One of the characteristics of the way
\nradicalisation is conceived is almost teleological, an inevitable set of steps
\nin which people are first attracted to religion, either by going back to their
\ntraditional faith or as converts, and are put in touch with preachers who bring
\nthem to a more fervent way of practising their religion. There are a few more
\nsteps and then basically they commit an act of terror. <\/p>\n

What we know from the
\nwork of John Horgan, an original member
\nof the expert group, is that it is actually much more complicated than that. It
\nhas a lot to do with individual trajectories and choices, as opposed to people
\nbeing a product of what an ideology or a group would like them to do. In the
\ndominant discourse there is always this passive idea that you are radicalised,
\nbut never a political actor or the driver of your own radicalisation, right?
\nYou are at risk, a victim. This is to do away with the free will.<\/p>\n

Scene from Pontecorvo\u2019s 1966 masterpiece, The Battle of Algiers, a film about the Algerian War of Independence.The ideas of escalation that Arun
\nKundnani has developed with others, alongside the earlier work of Didier
\nBigo on the \u2018terrorist relation\u2019, that of Martha Crenshaw
\nand also Donatella
\ndella Porta from a social movements theory perspective \u2013 all of these help
\nus to see that in fact if you don\u2019t take the state into account, whether it is
\nthe state of origin, as in Egypt, Syria, or Algeria where we think about the GIA
\nand the civil war that happened there \u2013 but also the state over here in our
\nliberal democracies, you are ignoring an essential component in the escalation
\nof violence. So if you don\u2019t include the state, the foreign policy of the UK or
\nother countries, the sense of discrimination created by law enforcement and
\nother agencies, if you don\u2019t factor in all of these elements you have a very
\nvery partial account of why at any given stage people decide to engage in
\npolitical violence. So if you don\u2019t include the state, the foreign policy of the UK or
\nother countries.. you have a very very partial account.<\/i><\/p>\n

These are some of the ideas that we have been including in our recent
\nreports and others have argued this as well. And the reason why it is important
\nto insist on this is that recently the French Prime Minister has come out and
\nsaid that, \u201cto explain is already to justify the attacks\u201d. This was a heavy
\nanti-intellectual attack that must be challenged. Actually the exact opposite
\nis the case. We need to understand why some individuals decide to carry out
\nthis kind of violence and this will give us insight into how we can prevent it.<\/p>\n

RB: <\/strong>As you put it rather well in <\/i>the
\nSciences Po study<\/i>, \u201cThe Egyptian military government\u2019s brutal
\ncrackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood or the Syrian government\u2019s slaughter of
\ncivilian populations can of course not be compared with practices in European
\ncountries. It would be just as mistaken, however, to disregard the significant
\nrole of the \u201cilliberal\u201d practices of western democracies, particularly in matters
\nof discrimination, surveillance, and even torture (for instance in Guantanamo)
\nin certain individuals\u2019 decision to engage in political violence.\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n

Can we turn now to some of the perverse effects of these choices that
\nhave been made in counter-terrorism?<\/i><\/p>\n

FR: <\/strong>\u00a0Yes. Here the reports of the UK\u2019s independent reviewer of
\nterrorism legislation, David
\nAnderson, were really clear in documenting how a certain number of state
\npractises in counter-terrorism such as stop-and-search in the streets (section
\n44.1 and 44.2, now revoked), the Schedule 7 stops at the borders when people
\ntravel used by the UK authorities, and many other measures have adverse effects
\nand touch a very large population that has nothing to do with terrorism. <\/p>\n

These procedures have in common that they involve extensive contact with the
\nauthorities, despite the fact that there is no clear idea that the person
\ninvolved is a suspect in a terrorist investigation. In France, we are talking
\nabout such techniques of counter-terrorism as those in which a very large
\nnumber of people are arrested and detained pre-emptively while officials see
\nwhat comes out of the interrogations, even if they have to release a lot of
\nthese people in the process. If you look at the official numbers published by
\nEuropol you will see that France carries out the largest number of
\ncounter-terror arrests, but then also has the largest number of individuals \u2018released
\nwithout charge\u2019. Laurent Bonelli has documented rather well how that works. <\/p>\n

But France has other techniques, like the regional units for the disruption
\nof radical Islam (P\u00f4les r\u00e9gionaux de lutte contre l\u2019Islam radical), which
\nconsists of agencies from non-law enforcement services such as tax,
\nveterinarian, health and safety and the police going into cell-phone stores,
\nbutchers, different kinds of shops, raiding entire streets because they have
\ntargeted one shop or business which they think supports terrorism. But in order
\nto be invisible and not seen to target specifically Muslim businesses, they go
\nand visit the entire street. Then they look in detail into a particular
\nbusiness, trying to find anything they can peg onto its business practise, which
\nhas nothing to do with terrorism. It might have to do with a breach in health
\nand safety for example, or irregularities in how the taxes were declared \u2013 but
\nthey scour the business for sufficient fines they can levy to disrupt the
\nactivities which they consider might be linked to the financing of terrorism.
\nThese raids are a concern to a lot of people in France. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, all of these techniques have clearly signalled to the Muslim
\ncommunity in Europe that they are under suspicion.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Manuel Valls, Prime Minister of France. Zaer Belkali\/Demotix. All rights reserved.RB: We heard so much about free speech during the Charlie Hebdo
\natrocity, but here again we have very mixed messages being raised at the EU
\nlevel where such questions are put forward for consideration as, \u201cto what
\nextent online content can be blocked if it does not directly violate the law?\u201d
\n\u2013 this, against a background in which hate speech legislation seems to creep
\ninto more and more of the ways in which we deal with each other as citizens?<\/i><\/p>\n

FR: <\/strong>Absolutely. <\/strong>This was one of the elements of the latest
\nlegal changes in France, in which a website can now be pre-emptively blocked
\nand the only recourse is to an administrative judge, after the fact. So the
\nauthorities can decide to block from one day to another a website whose content
\nthey consider may be too close to radical Islam or justifying terrorism. <\/p>\n

Another cause for concern is the very problematic climate set up by the new
\n2015 law in the UK alongside its \u2018counter-extremism strategy\u2019. It is
\ninteresting that we are no longer talking about preventing terrorism, but
\ncountering it now \u2013 and no longer targeting violent extremism, but \u2018extremism tout
\ncourt<\/i>\u2019. <\/p>\n

It has set in motion a huge debate and multiple problems on British
\nuniversity campuses regarding academic freedom and freedom of expression. This
\nI think, and I go back to what I was saying before, is a direct outcome of some
\nof the understandings of how radicalisation works; because, the only
\njustification you can have for preventing somebody from speaking, even if they
\nare not advocating violence at all, is by arguing that, well, extreme or
\nradical ideas end up leading to violence in the medium or the long term. <\/p>\n

This is the argument that I think is being deployed in the UK. It was
\nquite shocking that the newly-appointed Vice-Chancellor at Oxford, Louise
\nRichardson, felt she had to argue in defence of the right of organisations like
\nCage, for example, to be invited to talk at Oxford University. The fact that
\nthis became a piece of news, that an organisation like Cage was \u201callowed to
\nspeak\u201d, is surely quite telling about the climate of severe limitations on
\nfreedom of expression when it comes to anything related to questioning the
\npractises at Guantanamo, the drones policy, the foreign policy of the UK, its
\ncounter-terrorism strategies and so forth \u2013 a climate that it seems we are now
\nin.<\/p>\n

Flickr\/ codepinkhq. Some rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n

RB: <\/strong>What is very noticeable about these perverse effects, taken in
\nthe round, is the way they revolve around the predictive capacity of the state,
\nan anticipation of radicalisation which ensures that in all our countries
\nminority populations are caught up in the broadening nets of counterterrorism
\nand suspicion in significantly swelling numbers\u2026<\/i>It is no longer proof but just
\nsuspicion which is sufficient.<\/p>\n

FB: <\/strong>I would like to say two things on this point. The first of course
\nis that you are right that all of this is grounded in a predictive, anticipatory
\nidea of security. Probably one of the more significant paradigm shifts of the
\npast ten to fifteen years has been the increasing belief that law enforcement
\nand policing should be predictive rather than reactive, and this is changing
\nthe entire system of criminal justice, so that it is no longer proof but just
\nsuspicion which is sufficient to enact a certain number of either
\nadministrative practises, such as the freezing of assets, control orders \u2013 they
\nhave now been transformed into temporary measures (TPIMs) \u2013 measures that
\noperate below the threshold of proof, but that are thought to be enough to
\nrestrict liberties and prevent people from engaging in terrorist-related
\nactivities. Certainly, this is anchored in that kind of predictive understanding
\nof policing and that shift has been discussed a great deal in terms of
\nalgorithms, mass surveillance, the Snowden revelations and how all of the
\njustifications for this mass surveillance lie in the promise – and it is
\nvery much a promise and maybe a myth \u2013 of the ability to predict through
\nnumbers, big data and so forth, who the next terrorist is going to be. <\/p>\n

Now, of course some of that can be put down to an element of, \u201cLet\u2019s trust
\nthe numbers.\u201d But I would like to raise a different point that is emerging from
\nour current research, and that constitutes another important part of the
\nrationale behind counterterrorism and these new security measures. This focuses
\nrather on trust in society, and the ability of intelligence services, the
\ngovernment, the authorities, to hijack existing relations of trust in society
\nand to use those relations of trust in order to make predictions. Who
\ndo we know that you also know who is going to give us a lot of information
\nabout you?<\/p>\n

So it is not the logic of Google or the database that we have here, so much
\nas it is, to remain with the technology metaphors, the logic of Facebook. Who
\ndo we know that you also know who is going to give us a lot of information
\nabout you, not because of some kind of algorithm that has computed that you
\nmight be representing this or that risk category, but through these particular
\nrelations, whether they are interpersonal relations or professional relations?
\nWe think we will be able to anticipate the future of these suspect individuals
\nby getting at them through these relationships. <\/p>\n

Let me give you a few examples. The first is the idea that Muslim
\ncommunities need to police themselves, or that the authorities can pick and
\nchoose some Muslims who are not suspect Muslims, but who are in fact the
\ntrusted ones. They will occupy functions like maybe the local police officer, or
\nthe Prevent coordinator: or maybe they will be part of an NGO working in a
\nspecific neighbourhood on countering radicalisation. These individuals will be
\nco-opted into the law enforcement counterterrorism logic in order to reach
\nthose individuals who, let\u2019s say, the white middle class policeman is not able
\nto reach, because they don\u2019t trust him.<\/p>\n

But then there is a second category of people. The first category taps into
\ncommunity relations, interpersonal relations, people \u00ad\u2013 say \u2013 who grew up with
\neach other, so that law enforcement thinks, \u2018if we are able to bring one of
\nthose people into our ranks, then we will have a key informant (like some
\nanthropologists would say) for our communities over there to know what is going
\non\u2019. This is recognisable as very much a colonial logic. But the other
\ndimension is that this trust is not confined to interpersonal relations. And
\nthis is the second category. <\/p>\n

There are a whole set of professions that also
\noperate on the basis of trust: teachers, kindergarten instructors, university
\nprofessors, doctors, lawyers\u2026 all having a certain privileged relationship with
\ntheir clients, the students, patients, general public that they work with, that
\nis based on trust. And indeed they depend on those trust relations as the only
\npossibility for them to carry out their work properly. Right? So in a way,
\nthese are professions that have the opposite a priori<\/i> relationship with
\nthe public to the law enforcement and security professionals. A customs officer
\nor a policeman should be a priori <\/i>suspicious of what she or he observes,
\nor they won\u2019t be doing their job properly, whereas a doctor must have her or
\nhis trusting relationship with the patient or be unable to understand what is
\ngoing on. The same goes for a teacher or a professor: you cannot create a
\nproper learning environment if you don\u2019t establish a proper relationship of
\ntrust in the classroom.<\/p>\n

Now, what is interesting is that the logic of counter-radicalisation is to
\nask those professions to go precisely against the necessities of their
\nprofession which are to build trust, and to replace it with a logic of
\nsuspicion. Not only are they asking the impossible, but they are asking these
\npeople to undermine the very basis of the relationship they must have with
\nthose they work with. I think this is really a recipe for disaster, since it
\ncan only take us in a few directions and none of them is desirable. <\/p>\n

Either, let\u2019s say, the teacher decides, \u201cOK, she or he is not qualified to
\ndetect signs of early radicalisation or to deal with it\u201d, and as soon as a
\nyoung boy reads the words \u201cterrorist house\u201d instead of \u201cterraced house\u201d, the
\nteacher had better report them to the police because \u201cthey know better.\u201d What
\nthat does is to completely undermine any trust the class might have in its
\nteacher. They will be afraid that the next time they write or say something
\ndodgy or suspicious, they will be reported. When you read about this in the
\nnews, it might be funny and absurd if it wasn\u2019t so tragic. But on a day to day
\nbasis, how will this teacher deal with a relationship of trust that has been
\nentirely undermined in this classroom? This remains an open question. <\/p>\n

I have carried out some research with some social workers here in the
\nNetherlands who are extremely alert to this phenomenon. Two things happen.
\nEither they behave like this teacher and they report, but the reporting only
\nworks for them if nobody else can disclose the fact that they have reported a
\nperson. A youth worker working with a group of young men from the
\nneighbourhoods of the Hague, for example, will tell the police, but only on
\ncondition that the police never tells anyone that he or she is the one who has
\nreported that individual. So the trust relationship that she has can continue,
\nbut on the basis of a lie. This is one way that it can work, but only by asking
\nthe social worker to be untruthful about the relationships they establish. <\/p>\n

What is the other outcome? The other possibility, and I have evidence of this
\nfirst hand, is for the social worker to tell the youth they work with, \u201cWell
\nlisten. I have to tell the police everything that you say, so don\u2019t tell me
\nanything that I might have to report. We can talk about anything but that\u2026\u201d In
\nwhich case the whole purpose of using the trusted workers to report signs of
\nradicalisation is defeated because they would prefer not to listen rather than
\nhave to report! <\/p>\n

RB: <\/strong>Could you also explain the negative impact of the Prevent strategy in relation
\nto social and economic inequality, where assumptions regarding the cause of
\nradicalisation coincided with
\nsubstantial cuts in spending earmarked for developing disadvantaged
\nneighbourhoods, so that Prevent became one of the sole sources for funding\u2026
\nCould you explain how this stigmatised the \u2018suspect community\u2019,
\nso that by 2010, the Communities and Local Government Cttee. of the House of
\nCommons was denouncing this focus as having \u201cincreased the risk\u201d and "not
\nbeen constructive\u201d.<\/i><\/p>\n

FR: Well, this I think is quite specific to the UK. Community projects flagged as Prevent became one of the only sources
\nof funding.There might be a
\nmanifestation of it in other countries, but we should look at the evidence
\nfirst. Because Prevent was initially based on the assumption that the recourse
\nto politically motivated violence was due to dire economic and social
\nconditions, it was deployed in local authorities through the Department of
\nCommunities and Local Government \u2013 on the controversial basis of the percentage
\nof Muslim population in designated target areas. This coincided, after the
\neconomic crisis of 2008, with important cuts in community-related spending.
\nCommunity projects flagged as Prevent became therefore one of the only sources
\nof funding for several NGOs, who then had to take the difficult decision
\nwhether to accept abundant \u2018counter-terrorism\u2019 funding for their activities or
\nchase meagre alternative sources. <\/p>\n

The \u2018Muslim community\u2019 here, is therefore understood as a reified,
\nmonolithic and cohesive group which is collectively responsible for the
\nviolence emerging from its midst, and perceived as a result to be collectively
\nresponsible for addressing the issue. This led some to \u2018tweak\u2019 regular
\ncommunity projects to match the descriptions of the funding stream (in
\nparticular refocusing on Muslim beneficiaries), irrespective of the risk the
\nbeneficiaries posed in terms of radicalisation. For others, this focus amounted
\nto pure and simple stigmatisation of the Muslim community, considered as a
\nsuspect community composed entirely of potential terrorists. <\/p>\n

As Paul Thomas has shown rather convincingly, for non-Muslim community
\nleaders, it generated frustration, as the traditional funding sources they
\nrelied on became unavailable, and they could not claim the new ones. The
\nChannel mentoring programme raised similar concerns. Individuals are identified
\nby or referred to professionals (police, local authorities, teachers, doctors,
\nsocial workers, youth services, offender management services) who then devise a
\n\u2018support plan\u2019 for the individual, generally through a mentoring programme.
\nBetween 2007 and 2010, 1120 people were referred to Channel. \u00a0Although
\nChannel is not purely targeted at young Muslims, there is a widespread feeling
\nin the Muslim community that regular activities such as political involvement
\nin peace movements or a pious religious practice, when carried out by young
\nMuslims, trigger unnecessary referral to the Channel programme, due to the lack
\nof experience of those who refer them.<\/p>\n

RB: <\/strong>Do we have any idea then,<\/i> <\/strong>what kind of chilling
\neffect these trust-destroying practises are having on the everyday lives of
\nMuslim youth in European countries, and in particular activists enjoying what
\nrights our democracies have to offer them ?<\/i><\/p>\n

FR: <\/strong>A good example to illustrate this is the case of Rizwaan Sabir.
\nHe was one of the two students at Nottingham University \u2013 you might remember \u2013
\nwho was arrested on terrorist charges for having downloaded the Al Qaeda manual
\nfrom the US Department of Justice website. He was preparing a thesis on Al
\nQaeda so it made perfect sense for him to have this on his hard drive, but he
\nwas nevertheless reported to the police and was only freed after six days of
\ndetention. He then won a subsequent court case against East Midlands Police for
\nhaving fabricated evidence against him. There was
\nalready a file on him.<\/p>\n

But what is interesting about his case is that as he learned more and more
\nabout what the police had on their files against him, it was clear that it was
\nnot so much the terror charges that first marked him out as a potential
\nradical, but it was when he attended pro-Palestinian demonstrations a few years
\nbefore these events that had already placed him under surveillance. There was
\nalready a file on him, nothing to do with terrorism, but for participating in a
\nmarch in favour of peace in Israel. <\/p>\n

And certainly this is one of the effects of this suite of policies. Because
\nradicalisation is such a vague term, and because nobody knows what one sign of
\nradicalisation actually looks like, and frankly I don\u2019t know what that sign
\nwould be… everybody is working with the stereotypes they have about what
\nconstitutes a radical. And for many, including civil servants, police officers
\nor maybe local intelligence services, participating in perfectly legitimate
\npolitical events which question UK\u2019s foreign policy, or which might question
\nthe war in Iraq or in Afghanistan, or any other topic that may not be very
\npalatable to the administration, or to the authorities \u2013 is considered to be a
\nsign of radicalisation. <\/p>\n

Therefore, yes, I think this is an open door to all sorts of limitations on
\nfreedom of expression, or at least, the categorisation of a perfectly regular
\npolitical activity as a form of radicalism that in the future might lead to a
\npossible terror attack. And this is distinctly worrying.<\/p>\n

2003 No to Iraq march. Flickr \/ Vertigogen. Some rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n

There is an acute and growing tension between the concern for safety and the protection of our freedoms. How do we handle this? Read more from the World Forum for Democracy partnership.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police in Paris. Demotix\/ Cesar Dezfuli. All rights reserved. Rosemary Bechler(RB): \u00a0Francesco, you have analysed in some detail the relatively recent French plan to \u2018combat radicalization\u2019, following a path previously trodden in the UK and the Netherlands. Could you explain how, in your view, this approach to counter-terrorism influenced the nature of the French response…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}