Asif Majid, PhD Canddiate in Anthropology, Media, and Performance, University of Manchester

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Britain’s counter-terrorism officers are investigating a series of anti-Muslim letters calling on people to participate in a “Punish a Muslim Day” on April 3.

Residents in London, Yorkshire and the Midlands region of England have reported receiving the letters, which have been branded as “malicious correspondence” by police.

West Yorkshire Police said the investigation is being coordinated by the UK’s North East Counter Terrorism Unit (NECTU), and enquiries are ongoing.

Assistant Chief Constable Angela Williams of West Yorkshire Police said: “What I want to do is to reassure the communities of West Yorkshire that these communications are being taken extremely seriously.

“We understand that they may have caused concern and upset people, especially the more vulnerable members of society. Public safety remains our priority and I would urge our communities to be vigilant but not frightened.”

Counter-terrorism police are treating the letters as a possible hate crime.

Images of the note, which contains a list of violent acts alongside a number of claims of why they were executed, have been widely shared online. The note incites verbal abuse and assaults on Muslims, as well as attacks on mosques.

It asks people to carry out violent acts including verbal abuse, removing a woman’s hijab or head-scarf, physical assault and using acid as a weapon. These were ranked using a points-based system, with the letter stating: “There will be rewards based on action taken.”

Police said they have a couple of letters that will be analyzed to determine their origin.

Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks), a project that monitors Islamaphobic hate crimes in the UK, said a photo of an envelope suggests at least one of the notes was dealt with at a Sheffield sorting office.

“This has caused quite a lot of fear within the community. They are asking if they are safe, if their children are safe to play outdoors. We have told them to keep calm,” said Iman Atta from Tell MAMA.

The group said it had received reports of people in Bradford, Leicester, London, Cardiff and Sheffield receiving the letters.

This article was first published on banglatribune.com
 

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Justin Forsyth, ex-CEO of Save the Children UK. Credit: By DFID – UK Department for International Development, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

It is now an acknowledged fact that women staff at Save the Children UK’s Headquarters in London suffered harassment and that their leadership failed them. In its public statements SCF-UK is now all about the implementation of policy reviews and a new dawn and a readiness for root and branch reform. Justin Forsyth, the former CEO, and Brendan Cox, his former number two, have both admitted that they mistreated women. But this stems from a crisis that culminated in 2015. Why is it only being acknowledged now? Why didn’t anyone speak up?

Well, that’s the thing. Many did speak up but they were silenced. What happened at Save the Children UK wasn’t a ‘mistake’, it was a strategic choice: achieving change for children, went the argument, needed Save the Children to be firmly led by powerful charismatic leaders who ruffled feathers and who should be followed obediently by staff.  

When staff started complaining about the bullying culture that was brought in by former Number 10 special advisors Forsyth and Cox, they were derided as moaners. Everyone learned that it was ‘their way or the highway.’ So when several women suffered repeated mistreatment, this was dealt with by leadership as part of the price of being an ‘effective organization’—and staff found out that it was dangerous to complain as a number of them later told the BBC.

Many kept their mouths shut, or at least complained to their peers through informal channels because they had no faith in the formal ones. The bullying and mistreatment was the worst kept secret in the development community. A great many NGO people knew about the ways in which the behavior of Cox was indulged and enabled by Save the Children’s leadership, who, as is now becoming known, did not do enough to stop it or to hold those responsible to account. But still people were reluctant to come forward. Nevertheless, some did. Complaints were made about both Cox and Forsyth, but neither was fully or properly investigated because the trustees protected their ‘star players.’

Some of the women affected said that the Chair of SCF International’s Trustees, Alan Parker, discouraged them from speaking out and left them re-traumatised. He even brought in Brunswick, the PR agency he founded, to help fend off the communications challenges of the crisis. Both Cox and Forsyth were allowed to go quietly—Forsyth to become number two at UNICEF in New York until his resignation on February 22.

The victims of Cox and Forsyth and their allies didn’t stop at telling peers, senior management and trustees about what was happening. They also went to the media. You might be wondering  why all these stories of harassment and abuse are being broken by the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph—it was the Mail that originally covered Cox’s departure from the charity back in 2015. Why didn’t the complainants go to somewhere like the Guardian? They did.

These victims are not typical Mail and Telegraph readers and they understood that a story about a lack of accountability in an aid organization will likely be followed in those newspapers by calls for less foreign aid. None of the victims support that goal. What they want is aid plus accountability.  

Almost all of the complainants went to the Guardian first. Different Guardian journalists were contacted, but all went quiet. One told me: “I just wanted to say I haven’t forgotten about this. Unfortunately the decision to work on the story or not is above my station, so I’m just waiting for a decision either way…” Later, when I asked if they had heard back the same journalist said: “I haven’t unfortunately. It was passed onto powers that be. At the moment it’s looking like it’s not going to run… I presume after some weighing of pros and cons.”

Not only did the Guardian not run a piece about Cox and Forsyth, they actually ran a piece by Cox. This was three months ago. Still I and others kept pressing them. To those affected it looks like some senior media people protect those who are also their personal friends—both the BBC’s Andrew Marr and Sky’s Adam Boulton have publically spoken up for the two men. Perhaps they also think that they are protecting Save the Children, but you don’t protect charities by covering up the behavior of predatory men, only by helping them free themselves from them, and if you leave it to outlets like the Daily Mail then the story gets turned into another reason to cut support for charities.

So this has been a massive disservice, and also a shocking approach to the news, as though women being harassed by powerful men should not be reported on if those men are ‘one of us.’ When the Guardian sat on the story a subsection of the whistleblowers went to the Mail and the Telegraph, who ran it with many fewer sources. The Mail ran a new story about Cox’s behavior on February 17 2018 and the Telegraph followed suit the next day. Neither mentioned Forsyth.  But on February 20 the fuller story of the SCF scandal was broken by Radio 4’s PM programme by a dedicated journalist who cited three complaints by female SCF-UK staff members about threatening text messages and other behaviour. SCF-UK has admitted that these complaints were not dealt with in a satisfactory way.

Just a few hours before the PM programme, Kevin Watkins, the current CEO of Save the Children-UK and a former trustee who was one of the people supposed to be ‘governing’ Forsyth, appeared before MPs on the International Development Committee as a leader on transparency and accountability. He wasn’t asked a single question about Cox or Forsyth, or the role of Parker, or his own previous role on SCF-UK’s Board.

Several journalists told me how Forsyth and Parker can kill media stories. What made Cox so dangerous was his power, and that power came from Forsyth and Parker, but their power in turn came from how willing so many people were to participate in silence and in silencing: trustees, politicians, journalists, staff who kept quiet either out of fear of their careers or fear of hurting Save the Children, and ‘feminist leaders’ including Labour MPs like Lucy Powell and Jess Phillipswho publically praised Cox after his confession. 

But now it looks like all these silencers will be defeated by the persistence and courage of a few difficult women. One of them is Brie O’Keefe, who served under Cox and whose experience at Save the Children left her feeling broken. She spoke yesterday on the record and said this: “If you look at where I am right now I am in a town called Yellowknife in Northern Canada and I am so far away from it, and I am still afraid to speak out. But I am going to do it anyways.” 

When Save the Children does reform and return to its values and become a safe place for women, let’s not rewrite it as a story of how Cox and Forsyth ‘took responsibility’ and how Save the Children’s new leadership brought in a new approach. They were covering up key aspects of that story even yesterday—and still haven’t released the key documents prepared for the hearing that never happened because Cox resigned, nor those that look back and examine the whole crisis (SCF-UK has promised to release these documents later in 2018).

Remember instead the real heroes, the whistleblowers. Justin Forsyth remained the deputy director of UNICEF until February 22 2018. Alan Parker remains the chair of Save the Children International. Kevin Watkins, a trustee at the time of the scandal, succeeded Forsyth as CEO of SCF-UK and now insists that he has zero-tolerance of sexual harassment. Brie, meanwhile, lives in fear in a small town in Northern Canada. She and others like her are the real leaders of Save the Children. 

This story has been updated to reflect the resignation of Justin Forsyth from his position at UNICEF on February 22 2018.
————————————————————————————————

Save the Children-UK responds 2pm February 22: “Brunswick was not instructed with regard to these matters. Save the Children has always sought to protect all employees from inappropriate comments and behaviour.  If concerns about behaviour occur, there are very clear policies and processes in place to deal with them.

In 2011 and 2015, concerns were raised about inappropriate behaviour and comments by the then CEO, Justin Forsyth.  In each case, the chairman instructed HR to manage the process in conjunction with an independent trustee. Two trustees carried out two separate investigations into a total of three complaints made by three female employees.

Both reviews resulted in unreserved apologies from the CEO.  All the parties agreed to this and the former CEO apologised to the women in question.  At that time the matters were closed.
Concerns were raised with trustees that matters should not have been left as they were and that a further review was required. The review found that HR processes had not been followed in every aspect.

In a statement on Sunday, 18 February 2018, Kevin Watkins—who was appointed CEO of Save the Children in late 2016—confirmed that he was commissioning a root and branch review of the organisational culture, examining the systems and processes that protect and preserve the safety and wellbeing of all staff, and addressing any behavioural challenges among senior leadership. 
A spokesperson for Save the Children said: ‘The review will commence by the end of this week and report in June 2018.  The final report will be published, shared with the Charity Commission and made available to Government and every single member of staff.”

This article was first published on opendemocracy.
 

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Priti Patel who had served as Secretary of State for International Development in Prime Minister Theresa May’s government. (Photo: Russell Watkins/Department for International Development)

Those covert meetings brought about the downfall of Priti Patel on Wednesday night. She was forced to resign as international development secretary, responsible for Britain’s overseas aid budget, admitting her actions “fell below the standards of transparency and openness” expected of a minister.

Her position became untenable as further revelations this week showed she had held two additional unrecorded meetings with Israeli officials in London and New York in September, organised and attended by a prominent Israel lobbyist.

All meetings conducted by British ministers on official business are supposed to be recorded by government civil servants.

Although the office of Theresa May, the British prime minister, has insisted it did not know of these meetings until the BBC revealed them on November 3, a report from Britain’s Jewish Chronicle newspaper suggested otherwise. It claimed that, while the meetings were not authorised beforehand, May’s officials learnt of them almost immediately through Israeli counterparts.

During her vacation in Israel, Patel also dispensed with sightseeing to head instead to the Golan Heights, Syrian territory illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. Thoughtfully, the Israeli army accompanied her and had the chance to explain in detail their “humanitarian work” running a field hospital patching up those injured in southern Syria, including al Qaeda combatants.

Patel was reportedly so impressed she wanted to give the Israeli army a chunk of Britain’s limited international aid. Her department’s budget is apparently so tight that, according to the Independent newspaper, she approved cuts last year in aid to the Palestinians of £17 million, including projects in Gaza.

In other words, Patel hoped to give British aid intended for the most unfortunate directly to one of the best-funded and equipped armies in the world, one that already receives $4 billion a year in military aid from the United States, and which has used its swollen budget to sustain a five-decade belligerent occupation of the Palestinians and enforce its continuing occupation of the Syrian Golan.

All of this was done unofficially. In an example of under-statement, the British media called all of this a “breach of ministerial protocol”. The Guardian newspaper characterised Patel’s behavior as a sign of her “incompetence”. But is that plausible?

Was Patel so astoundingly ignorant of government protocol that she held meetings off the books with senior Israeli officials? Was it political naivety that led her to venture into the Golan under the auspices of the Israeli army and into an area from which Israel has been deeply meddling in the six-year Syrian proxy war raging just a few miles away?

And was it simply a coincidence that her unusual holiday excursion occurred as analysts have begun warning of an imminent renewed outbreak of hostilities between Israel and its northern neighbors, Syria and Lebanon?

It is worth picking through the debris in an attempt to work out what she, and Israel, might have been trying to achieve.
 

Meetings with Israeli officials

Patel is a prominent member of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a pro-Israel lobby group to which 80 per cent of the ruling Conservative party’s members of parliament, including most government ministers, belong. They and a similarly entrenched group of opposition Labour MPs belonging to Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) are there to advance Israel’s case in parliament and in British foreign policy.

Such MPs are invited on official “educational” trips to Israel where they get access to Israeli leaders and are wined and dined. The damaging influence of these lobbies on British politics – and the covert nature of their activities – were highlighted earlier this year in a four-part undercover investigation broadcast by Al Jazeera.

In the episode on the Conservative party, an Israeli embassy official was filmed plotting with party officials to “take down” a government foreign office minister, Alan Duncan. He is seen as a rare outpost of support for the Palestinians in the Conservative party. This disturbing incident was largely ignored by the Conservative leadership and the British media.

Patel’s membership of CFI is hardly surprising. But her level of commitment to Israel, beyond that of her CFI membership, is suggested by the nature of her choice of “holiday” destination and the endless round of meetings she held there. They were organised by Stuart Polak, who accompanied her and is the honorary president of CFI.

Patel has argued that the meetings touched on entirely innocuous topics. Netanyahu apparently took time out of his busy schedule – including his frantic efforts to staunch a corruption scandal that could lead to his resignation and jail time – to chat about Patel’s “experience growing up in an area of the UK with a thriving Jewish community” and “her political journey”.

More likely, Israeli officials were keen to talk to Patel for more pertinent reasons. Some are easier to identify than others. Most obviously, Patel’s role was to oversee Britain’s aid to the Palestinian Authority and human rights groups that monitor Israel’s appalling record of abuses in the occupied territories.

Patel had already proven her willingness to cut aid to the Palestinians. It was reported that in October last year she also temporarily suspended £25 million in funds to the Palestine, though her department denied the story.

A foreign office source told the BBC: “She has been pushing to get her hands on the PA aid budget and we have been pushing back.” Israeli officials may have hoped they could extract more concessions from her or persuade her to tie aid to greater Palestinian compliance with Israeli demands.

Netanyahu has additionally been leading an aggressive campaign to silence Israeli human rights groups and prevent them from receiving foreign, mainly European, funding. In a sign of how high a priority this is, Netanyahu asked the British prime minister at a meeting in May to end Britain’s supposed funding of an Israeli army whistleblower group, Breaking the Silence. In fact, the group receives no money from the British government.

Patel’s account of her meeting with Israel’s police minister, Gilad Erdan, at least hints inadvertently at another topic that both sides may have hoped would be of mutual benefit. Notably, she met Erdan a second time at the Houses of Parliament in September, in contravention of a decision by her department officials. The meeting was arranged through her constituency office and went unrecorded.

She says she discussed with Erdan the problem of antisemitism in the UK. He, meanwhile, stated in a Tweet that they spoke about ways to “counter attempts to delegitimise Israel in international institutions”. 

Erdan’s full title is minister of public security, communications (hasbara – or “propaganda” in English) and strategic affairs. He is charged with smearing Israel’s critics abroad and has established a “dirty tricks unit” to try to destroy the growing international BDS movement that campaigns for a boycott of Israel. Netanyahu has claimed that “delegitimisation” – criticism – of Israel is the biggest threat facing his country after an Iranian nuclear bomb.

As the Al Jazeera documentary indicates, the dirty tricks campaign has often relied on Israeli embassy officials and allies in western political parties, like the most zealous members of the CFI and LFI, to weaponise accusations of antisemitism against Israel’s critics.  

Since Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the opposition Labour party two years ago, the British media have been flooded with stories of a supposed antisemitism crisis under his watch. In judging the plausibility of these accusations, it is hard to ignore the fact that Corbyn is the first leader of a major British political party to place the rights of Palestinians above Israel’s right to carry on regardless with the occupation.

Was Patel plotting with Netanyahu and Erdan to help Israel in further damaging Corbyn, possibly by stoking yet more claims of antisemitism in his party, at time when the Conservatives have no parliamentary majority and are in a permanent state of crisis that may yet force elections Corbyn is well placed to win?

And, more cynically still, as some of her fellow ministers have suggested to the BBC, might the ambitious Patel have seen seeking to prove her credentials with Israel and its wealthy supporters and lobbyists in the UK, including Lord Polak, to help in a future leadership bid?
And if that is what these meetings were at least in part about, did Patel take on this task on her own initiative or on behalf of CFI? And was there really no coordination with the party leadership?

Interestingly, when the meetings first came to light, Patel claimed that the foreign office was fully informed. Only under pressure from Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, and May did she start backpedalling.

Now, the evidence appears to indicate that May’s office too may have been engaged in a cover-up. Michael Oren, deputy minister in the Israeli prime minister’s office, reportedly told senior British government officials about Patel’s meeting with Netanyahu the day it occurred.
The Jewish Chronicle has also reported that May and Patel spoke face to face in September about the latter’s meeting with Netanyahu, shortly before the British prime minister spoke at the United Nations General Assembly. May is said to have agreed with Patel on her “plan for UK aid to be shared with the Israelis.”

So given this context, what can we make of Patel’s extraordinary trip to the Golan?
 

Israel and the Syrian civil war

The field hospital that so impressed her is rather more than an example of altruistic “humanitarianism” by the Israeli army. Although it is widely reported that the hospital cares for “Syrian nationals” injured in the fighting in Syria, its primary role appears to be to treat foreign fighters from al Qaeda-affiliated groups injured in battles with Syrian government forces and their Lebanese ally, Hizbullah. A significant number of wounded have been transferred to hospitals inside Israel.

This barely concealed fact – it was even documented by the United Nations in 2015 – caused outrage among the Syrian Druze population living under Israeli occupation in the Golan, as well as Druze families in Israel. It looked to them like the Islamist fighters were being patched up so that they could carry on butchering Druze relatives a few miles away in southern Syria.

In summer 2015 that anger peaked, and several ambulances carrying fighters to Israeli hospitals were attacked by Druze, in the Golan and Israel. In one attack masked men managed to stop an ambulance and beat a fighter to death. In September two Israeli Druze men were convicted of another, failed attempt to stop an ambulance. They face up to 20 years in jail.

But in fact, Israel’s ties to al Qaeda groups and Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria extend beyond medical help. The UN reported that the Israeli army was seen transferring boxes to al-Qaeda groups in Syria. There are credible reports that Israel has also armed and trained al Qaeda fighters, and provided them with maps and intelligence. The strong suspicion is that Israel has forged links to these Islamic extremists to help them wear down Hizbullah and the Syrian army.

Israel has carried out more than 100 air strikes inside Syria, all against government forces, precisely to weaken the military alliance between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah, and thereby helping al-Qaeda groups. The Islamic extremists have also received assistance from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and less directly from the US.

Why was a British minister in charge of humanitarian aid getting mixed up in all this?
 

Creating an “alternative” government policy?

The episode has troubling parallels with events from 2011 when Liam Fox, Britain’s defence minister, resigned after his own murky dealings with Israel. The official grounds for Fox’s departure were that he had broken ministerial protocol by allowing a close friend and lobbyist, Adam Werritty, to attend defence meetings posing as an adviser.

But in fact, Fox’s ties to Werritty were even more problematic than admitted. Craig Murray, a former British ambassador turned whistleblower, has argued that the official story about Fox was used to deflect attention from far more serious violations of government protocol.
Fox and Werritty were active in a shadowy group called Atlantic Bridge that had close ties to the neoconservatives who were deeply embedded in the administration of George W Bush. The neocons openly promoted an aggressive policy designed to destabilise the Middle East, all in a bid to help Israel.

The neocons had served as a long-standing pressure group for attacks on Iraq, Iran and Syria – chiefly because they were seen as bulwarks against Israel’s hegemonic influence in the region. In 2003 they succeeded in persuading the Bush administration to invade Iraq, unleashing a lethal collapse of central authority there.

Israel and the neocons have been trying to engineer a complementary attack on Iran ever since, and there is overwhelming evidence that they have been seeking to undermine Syria too.

The most significant of Fox’s off-the-books meetings occurred in February 2011 when he and Werritty, supported by the UK ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, secretly met Israeli officials in Tel Aviv.

According to Murray, drawing on his contacts in the diplomatic service, the Israeli officials were, in fact, Mossad agents. And the topic they discussed was Britain’s possible role in helping to create a favourable diplomatic environment for Israel or the US to carry out an attack on Iran.

Separately, the Guardian newspaper revealed that Fox’s ministry had drawn up detailed plans for British assistance in the event of a US military strike on Iran. That included allowing the Americans to use Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian ocean, as a base from which to launch an attack.

Unnamed government officials told the Guardian Fox had been pursuing an “alternative” government policy. Murray, more directly, suggested that Fox, Werritty and Gould had conspired in a “rogue” foreign policy towards Iran, against Britain’s stated aims.  

Although Fox was forced to resign over his links to Werritty, he was quickly rehabilitated once May became prime minister. He was appointed secretary of state for international trade last year.

With fitting irony, Patel was on a trip to Africa with Fox when she was called back to the UK as the scandal deepened. Under pressure from an embattled May, she has resigned.

Was Patel pursuing an “alternative” policy towards Israel, or its neighbors? And if so, what was that policy, and did anyone senior to her authorise it?

Her role in talking to senior Israelis bypassed the foreign office. Did she do so because officials there like Alan Duncan were not seen as sympathetic enough to Israel, and might try to sabotage it? The permanent bureaucracy of the foreign office has often been seen as holding “pro-Arab” views not unrelated to western interests in the Gulf and its plentiful oil.

And how does May, a fervent supporter of Israel, fit into this picture?

Given British government secrecy, it will likely never be possible to provide definitive answers. But it is worth remembering that Israel, its still-powerful neocon allies in Washington and the Saudi regime are angling for the Israeli army to reverse the decisive gains Assad and his allies have made in taking back control of Syria in recent months.

This week Daniel Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Israel, wrote in the Haaretz newspaper that the Saudis were meddling yet again in Lebanese politics, forcing Hizbullah into greater political prominence, to provide the pretext for Israel to renew its confrontation with the Lebanese militia and thereby stoke a new war between Israel and Lebanon and Syria.

In his words: “Israel and Saudi Arabia are fully aligned in this regional struggle, and the Saudis cannot help but be impressed by Israel’s increasing assertiveness to strike at Iranian threats in Syria … When the moment of truth arrives, Israel’s allies, with the United States in the lead, should give it full backing.”

When the time comes, Israel will, as ever, rely on well-placed friends in western capitals to support and misrepresent its actions. Until her resignation, Priti Patel would undoubtedly have been one of those prominent champions of Israel helping out in a time of need.

Courtesy: http://mondoweiss.net

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Theresa May as Home Secretary in 2015 speaking at Chatham House event ‘Countering Terrorism: A Global Perspective’. Chatham House/Flickr.

Some rights reserved.Given the recent attacks in London and Manchester, the violence of the far right in murdering the MP Jo Cox, and the images of the London bombings in 2005 still fresh in Britain’s collective memory, it is no surprise that preventing terrorism remains a high priority for the UK government. Yet, since 2005, preventing terrorism has shifted, from attempting to stop terrorist attacks, to attempting to pre-empt terrorism by discouraging the ideas that appear to be behind these attacks. Since 2005, the fear of ‘home-grown terrorism’ has led to a policy focus on ‘extremism’ – defined as a precursor stage on a ‘radicalisation’ journey towards political violence. Yet, what does ‘extremism’ mean? And what ideas are therefore considered threatening?

A certain logic appears to dictate how we comprehend an attack having taken place. The perpetrator of the violence is a ‘terrorist’ who must have been ‘radicalised’ to believe that violence is a legitimate action to achieve a political goal. Furthermore, this radicalisation must have been promoted by an ‘extreme’ political ideology that catalysed that journey. Whether we look at Mohammed Emwazi (the British ISIS fighter known more commonly as ‘Jihadi John’), or Thomas Mair (Jo Cox’s murderer), newspapers are awash with analyses of the ‘radicalisation journey’, which attempt to pinpoint the very moment, and the very factors, that caused that person to take up a violent struggle.

Yet, this fascination with journeys to terrorism, and this emphasis on ideology, is not supported by academic research. The fact of the matter is that the empirical evidence is very weak and uncertain. We simply do not have the ability to say why one person turns to violence, while another, under the very same conditions, does not. Despite this focus on ‘extremism’ and ‘extremist ideology’, we are no closer to saying what impact it has on political violence. In the words of terrorism scholar, Mark Sageman, “There is no doubt that ideology, including global neo-jihadi ideology, is an important part of any explanation in the turn to political violence, but we still don’t know how”. The American scholar Randy Borum is even more dismissive of theories of radicalisation: “None of them yet have a very firm social-scientific basis as an established ‘cause’ of terrorism, and few of them have been subjected to any rigorous scientific systematic enquiry”.

This uncertainty in the ‘science’ behind radicalisation does not appear to have translated into policy circles.

This uncertainty in the ‘science’ behind radicalisation does not appear to have translated into policy circles. In the 2011 major overhaul of the UK’s counter-terrorism Prevent strategy, the emphasis on the ‘ideology’ of terrorist groups was made objective number one. The strategy writes that Prevent will, “respond to the ideological challenge of terrorism and the threat we face from those who promote it”. It is this transformation of counter-terrorism strategy into a counter-ideological project that makes the UK’s approach to countering terrorism so threatening to democracy and political change more broadly.

Prevent explicitly aims to counter extremist ideology. One arena in which it aims to achieve this is in schools. Since 2015, schools must by law, comply with the ‘Prevent duty’ – a legal requirement that teachers are trained to identify to relevant authorities any students that might display signs of ‘radicalisation’. Such a requirement has had profound and traumatic impact on some students, the vast majority of whom are Muslim. A report by the Open Society Justice Initiative entitled Eroding Trust listed a number of troubling cases including: primary school students having their political opinions recorded by the Home Office; a 12-year-old being interviewed by school leaders after playing a ‘terrorist’ in a drama class, and a secondary school-aged student being interviewed by police for expressing pro-Palestinian views in school. All of the students involved were Muslim.

But schools must not just scrutinise and survey their students. They are also regulated on their ability to promote “fundamental British values” and their ability to “challenge extremist views”. This curious expression of ‘fundamental British values’ was conceived within the first attempt by a UK government to define extremism – within the 2011 overhaul of the Prevent strategy:

“Extremism is vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. We also include in our definition of extremism calls for the death of members of our armed forces, whether in this country or overseas.”

Despite clear divergence and contestation in the academic literature regarding the meaning of extremism, the UK government defines an extremist as someone opposed to a certain group of values. These values have been critiqued for not being uniquely British, for being vaguely grouped under the word ‘including’, and for being potentially contradictory – the Suffragettes’ necessity to break the law in order to make Britain more democratic being oft-cited in this regard. Despite this, schools make frequent reference to this definition, with common citations in school counter-extremism policies, school assemblies on fundamental British values, and in classes that teach students about terrorism and extremism.

A suffragette meeting in Caxton Hall, Manchester, England circa 1908. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved.But how do schools interpret ‘extremism’ and how do they challenge extremist narratives? Exploring this aids an understanding of the broader implications of this focus on ‘extremism’ in countering terrorism. This article reports findings from an on-going study, which has analysed nearly 200 lessons currently used in British classrooms that teach students about the issues of extremism and fundamental British values. Exploring schools’ teaching on the topic offers us all great pause for thought as to the dangers of current thinking about extremism and counter-extremism, and in particular its threat to democracy.

The study analysed how extremism was defined in each of these 200 lessons. It found three broad groups of definitions. Some lessons offered no definition at all – assuming students would already know what extremism is. Others would offer tautological definitions suggesting ‘extremists are people with extreme political or religious views’. The third group would cite the government’s definition straight from the Prevent strategy directly into classroom presentations.

It is heavily implied that the UK government holds British values, and that anyone who does not is therefore an extremist.

Students are thus being offered very little assistance in assessing what might be considered ‘extreme’, but they are certainly being aided in understanding what the ‘moderate’ or the ‘reasonable’ is. Through citing the government’s definition, students are being taught that the UK government is the barometer from which extremism is measured. It is heavily implied that the UK government also holds British values, and that anyone who does not is therefore an extremist. The government is thereby in a position to adjudicate the ‘normal’ or the ‘reasonable’. One sees this most clearly when the fundamental British values themselves are being taught. Democracy, for instance, is often taught in direct contrast to dictatorship. One presentation explains, “The UK is a democracy, of course”. Another compares the pros and cons of living in the UK or living in IS-controlled Syria, and asks students where they would prefer to live. That the UK could be more democratic is a suggestion that is very rarely offered.

In cases where definitions of extremism are absent or tautological, students are asked to fill in the gaps. But this does not stop these resources building up a picture of the ‘normal’ from which extremism is said to deviate. Extremists are painted as being ‘manipulated’, and ‘vulnerable’ to being ‘brainwashed’. As such, rational, moderate, correct views and values are implied into existence. Extremists are painted as abnormal. As one classroom presentation to students explained: “Extremism in its broadest sense is an individual or group of individuals who take an extreme position from that of the norm, or take an extreme action”.

Extremists are thus painted as people who have “crossed a line” from the permissible to the illegitimate. In an educational video, one interviewee explains: “Extremism for me is when somebody goes too far because of something that they believe in”. Exploring the multitude of examples of ‘extremism’ that are given across these lessons helps to explain both a lack of clarity as to what extremism is, and the sheer breadth of ideas that are seen to have crossed this line into extremism.

Alongside the many mentions of what might be termed ‘Islamic extremism’ and the frequent mentions of what might be termed ‘right wing extremism’, it is fascinating to examine the more unusual examples of extremism on show in these materials. In particular, these examples tend to focus on having crossed one of two ‘lines’ – into the realm of illegality or into the realm of violence.

Caroline Lucas MP’s arrest at an anti-fracking demonstration was given as an example of extremism.

With regard to the latter, it is interesting how often examples of genocide – the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide in particular – are given as examples of extremism. While these are both certainly forms of ‘extreme’ violence, they appear to bear little relation to contemporary threats, and are particularly at a distance from current terror threats from those inspired by white supremacists or the Islamic State. The violence of genocide is horrific, but is it terrorism? In another case of ‘extreme’ violence, students examine violent clashes that occurred between members of the EDL and anti-fascist protesters, and are asked, “when does protest cross the line?” – with the occurrence of violence demonstrating the presence of extremism.

In other cases, it is breaking the law that indicates ‘extremism’ – the rule of law being one of the ‘fundamental British values’. One respondent in an educational video, when asked ‘what is extremism?’ answers: “Anything that doesn’t obey the law of the land is extreme”. Examples included students protesting tuition fees in 2011 damaging property, or an educational play in which a fictional ‘anti-capitalist’ group had planned to break into and graffiti a bank. It seems of little surprise, therefore, that Caroline Lucas MP’s arrest at an anti-fracking demonstration was given as an example of extremism by a police officer training teachers in the Prevent duty. It appears that civil disobedience, despite it playing a vital role in struggles for women’s suffrage or employment rights, both contradicts ‘fundamental British values’ and is ‘extreme’.

What is perhaps of most concern are examples of ‘extremism’ where it is merely an opinion or view, rather than an action.

What is perhaps of most concern however, are examples of ‘extremism’ where it is merely an opinion or view, rather than an action, that has strayed across a ‘line’ too far from the norm. The Westboro Baptist Church (organisers of the  “God Hates Fags” protests) is given as an example. One presentation offered a series of examples of ‘extreme’ views that students were required to challenge including “Multiculturalism is bad for Britain” – an argument made strongly in a speech by David Cameron back in 2011 – yet, one would be hard-pressed to argue the then Prime Minister was an extremist. One can be ‘extreme’ about a whole host of issues according to some teaching materials – rights for fathers, nuclear power, whale hunting, even vegetarianism. ‘Extreme’ appears synonymous with being passionate for unpopular ideas – and yet, these ideas are also being painted as threatening.

While these examples of extremism appear broad, and at times laughable, what is of most concern is the links drawn between these ‘extreme’ views and the potential for political violence. Despite, as mentioned above, the lack of scientific support that can link so-called ‘extremist ideology’ to the use of political violence with any certainty, the linkages between ideas and violence is made very clear in educational resources. As one teaching resource explains: “Extremism can lead to violence and so it is never OK because we can’t predict what will become of extreme views and innocent people don’t deserve to suffer.” As the UK government themselves argue in the Prevent strategy: “Terrorist groups of all kinds very often draw upon ideologies which have been developed, disseminated and popularised by extremist organisations that appear to be non-violent”. Extreme ideas in non-violent organisations may lead to violence, and thus need to be discouraged: the threat to democracy appears considerable.

As someone who has engaged in civil disobedience and been threatened with arrest, I have “crossed the line” into extremism.

In compiling this research, it appears that, according to the UK government, I am an extremist. As someone who has engaged in civil disobedience and been threatened with arrest, I have “crossed the line” into extremism. But moreover, even if I had not done this, and did not ever plan to do so in the future, simply acknowledging the legitimacy of civil disobedience might be enough to be considered an extremist if, after hearing my views, someone else went to protest illegally. In linking the term ‘extreme’ both to the threat of violence and to the idea of ‘abnormal views’, the UK government is transforming diverse ideas into a threat, and narrowing the window of legitimate opinion. In countering extremism, the UK government is therefore countering a key tenet of democracy – free and open debate of a diversity of views and ideas. It is deeply ironic that in attempting to protect so-called fundamental British values, the UK government appears to endanger those very same values it champions. It is deeply troubling that the window of ‘reasonable’ and ‘permissable’ political views that we are offering to our young people in their education on extremism and terrorism is so narrow.

It is clear a new strategy is needed if the UK wishes to both counter extremism and promote democracy. Perhaps clearly discouraging the use of violence rather than discouraging diverse political views would be a good first step forward.

Kieran Ford is currently a PhD student and researcher at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand. Having grown up in the UK, Kieran has a background in education and activism. His research interests include education, extremism, community, peace and social change.

Courtesy: Open Democracy
 

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General Election 2017. Danny Lawson/PA Images. All rights reserved.

The previous two columns in this series have explored the idea that a Conservative Party landslide, with at least a 150-seat majority, might not after all be the outcome of the United Kingdom's general election on 8 June. The earlier one expressed "a niggling sense that something may be developing below the surface that could break through even in the short time left” (see "The Corbyn crowd, and its message", 18 May 2017).

That notion was based partly on the way in which Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was repeatedly attracting large and enthusiastic crowds at open-air events arranged at short notice, apparently responding to a felt need for a less regimented and more engaged kind of politics. Within a week, this sense of a trend had begun to evolve into something rather more definite, and Labour activists were beginning to think the Conservatives might be denied an overall majority (see "Corbyn, and an election surprise", 26 May 2017).

This latter column indicated a possibility of wishful thinking, but the trend of the last few days suggests that it is now distinctly possible. Part of this sudden and unprecedented shift reflects the Conservatives' campaign errors, especially over confusion on its policy over social care. But it is also clear that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is connecting with people in a remarkable way – his popularity is growing day by day and, far from being an obstacle to Labour’s electoral ambitions, he is becoming their star player.

Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is connecting with people in a remarkable way – his popularity is growing day by day and he is becoming their star player.

In light of these two columns, Oxford Research Group has just published a briefing that extends the discussion to look specifically at Jeremy Corbyn’s views on international security. These views were expressed in his Chatham House speech on 12 May and further developed in a thoughtful response to the devastating Manchester Arena attack late on 22 May.
 

A turning-point

In terms of conventional electioneering wisdom, defence and security are assumed to be Labour’s weakest policies, certain to be bitterly criticised as unpatriotic by the great majority of the national print media. Such criticism certainly followed the Chatham House speech and the subsequent Manchester intervention, but they had much less effect than intended. Indeed Corbyn’s view that the war on terror was failing and that there must be a fundamentally new approach to international security got much more support than expected, and certainly did nothing to dent the growing popularity of the party.

Jeremy Corbyn addressing crowds in 2003 against going to war in Iraq.

The ORG report concluded:
“[After] more than fifteen years of the war on terror, failed or failing states in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia, close to a million people killed and over eight million people displaced, the argument for some serious rethinking on Western approaches to security is hardly difficult to make.

This is where Jeremy Corbyn’s Chatham House speech is so significant since it breaks away from a near-universal Western state consensus and may be much more in tune with what many millions of people may be thinking. Whatever the outcome of the general election next week, space has been opened up for much wider debate. Independent organisations such as Oxford Research Group that take a critical but constructive approach to security will have a particular responsibility to aid the quality of that debate.”

The ORG report does, though, include one serious caveat. If in the coming weeks, ISIS loses both Raqqa and Mosul and then collapses, making it look like the war on terror is at last something of a success, then any chance of rethinking security, whichever party is in power, will be much diminished. At the time of writing the ORG report, such a collapse did not look too likely but what is relevant here is that further, wide-ranging evidence from just the last few days strongly confirms that view.
 

Three days, four theatres of war

That evidence comes from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt and the Philippines.

In Iraq, the army’s extended operation to retake Mosul was expected to be completed in barely ten weeks, but is now likely to take at least three times that. Der Spiegel reports that during the fighting, ISIS has deployed over 850 truck-bombs hundreds of young men ready to kill themselves. Even now, there are still around 1,200 ISIS paramilitaries defending a small core of the old city and the Iraqi army is only able to deploy a similar number of its elite task-forces one and two of its "golden division" (i.e. special forces).

So many of these troops have been killed or seriously wounded that the division is reported to be greatly depleted, with little capability of providing a professional core to the army when ISIS moves fully over to insurgency mode. Already that insurgency is evolving, the latest grim result being the bombing of a Baghdad ice-cream parlour in a Shi’a district of the city on 30 May, killing thirty-five people and injuring more than a hundred.

In Afghanistan, the Trump administration is overseeing a rapid expansion of its air-war against the Taliban and ISIS offshoots, with 460 weapons released in April 2017 compared with 203 in March, the April total being the highest since the peak of Obama’s “surge” in August 2012. The paramilitary response is wide-ranging, including one of the largest truck-bombs ever detonated, killing over eighty people and injuring more than a hundred, just outside Kabul’s “green zone”.  

In Egypt, the recent bombing of Coptic Christian churches was followed by attacks by ISIS gunmen on a small convoy of Copts going on a pilgrimage to a monastery 150 miles south of Cairo. The assault in Minya province killed at least twenty-eight people, the latest in a series that has taken the lives of more than 100 Copts since December.

In the Philippines, the army has been caught out by a sudden surge in paramilitary activity from a group linked to ISIS, in violence made worse by Philippine army casualties caused by “friendly-fire” incidents. The impact, and the sense of a government unable to cope, was enough to persuade President Duterte to cancel a visit to Japan. The continuing insurgency and counter-violence in the southern province of Mindanao, where martial law is now in force, is part of a growing climate of insecurity in which the state plays a major role.
 

A time to rethink

These and many other incidents – including, of course, Manchester – are reminders that ISIS and similar movements are simply not going away, and for Trump to promise more force will be the equivalent of piling yet more combustible material onto the blaze.

ISIS and similar movements are simply not going away.

The implications for Britain are that at some stage there has to be a fundamental rethinking of its defence posture and how it responds to al-Qaida, ISIS and the like. Even if Theresa May’s Conservative Party is re-elected, that process will eventually become impossible to avoid.

But if Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party were to achieve the near-impossible and form a minority government in the coming weeks, its chances would be greatly boosted. Just one reason for anticipating a Labour success is that the much needed rethinking might happen sooner rather than later.

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy's international security adviser, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His latest book is Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threat from the Margins (IB Tauris, 2016), which follows Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on Twitter at: @ProfPRogers

Courtesy: Open Democracy

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Masked men disrupt an inter-faith marriage at Leamington and Warwick gurdwara, UK. Image: Independent. 

On Sunday 11th September 2016, as world attention focused on the 15th anniversary of Islamist attacks on the Twin Towers, local press attention momentarily shifted to the arrest of 55 members of Sikh Youth UK at the Leamington and Warwick gurdwara (place of worship for Sikhs). The group claimed that this was a ‘peaceful protest’ against the scheduled Anand Karaj (Sikh wedding ceremony) between a Sikh bride and non-Sikh groom.

They also claimed that they are not opposed to interfaith marriage per se – stating that Sikh and non-Sikh couples can have a civil marriage and also receive a gurdwara blessing – but that the Rehat Maryada, a code of conduct developed in the 1930s, reserves the Anand Karaj for Sikhs exclusively. This prohibition was re-iterated in an August 2015 agreement reached by 300 Sikh organisations.

There are problems with these claims. The protest was clearly intended to intimidate. Protestors turned up with heads and faces covered and some were carrying kirpans. Although they claimed that kirpans are ceremonial daggers and that these had been misrepresented by the media as ‘blades’ and ‘weapons’, religious references were used to obfuscate the blindingly obvious. It’s true that kirpans are usually only carried by a small minority of baptised Sikhs but there is also a history in the UK of kirpans, and Sikh martial arts weapons, being used during violent in-fighting within gurdwaras and especially by Sikh fundamentalist factions. Moreover, this particular incident followed other aggressive interventions at gurdwaras in Southall, Birmingham, Coventryand Swindon.

As with these other episodes, the protestors filmed the incident and circulated the film footage in a move to publicly shame families already pushing against deeply conservative proscriptions. The film footage shows protestors referring to interfaith marriage (not just the Anand Karaj) as ‘messed up’, stating that ‘Leamington is finished when we’ve got elders saying it’s alright to marry white people, black people’. Jagraj Singh has been one of the main spokespeople defending the protests. One need look no further than the youtube videos ofBasics of Sikhi to see him opposing interfaith relationships. In one such clip, he states ‘relationships or dating are not part of Sikhi, marriage is part of Sikhi’. Relationships outside the conjugal union are presented as uncontrolled lust and marriage is clearly seen as something that only takes place between two Sikhs.

The Rehat is highly gendered and presents a problem for minority Sikhs who do not subscribe to the Khalsa version of the religion. The section on marriage states ‘a Sikh’s daughter must be married to a Sikh’ and tells Sikh women to treat their (Sikh) husbands with ‘deferential solicitude’. Fortunately, more liberal Sikhs have spoken out about the hypocrisy of protestors who selectively focus on one section of a man made code of conduct that has itself been amended three times while turning a blind eye to serious issues like familial sexual abuse. Herpreet Kaur Grewal noted that the focus is always on Sikh girls marrying out while there is relative silence and inaction on caste discrimination and female foeticide. Throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, the prohibition on mixed relationships manifested itself in regular reprisals between Sikh and Muslim gangs for targeting ‘their’ women. The question is, why has this resurfaced now? Why has a rule invented in the 1930s gained renewed significance in the last few years? The Leamington incident has given rise to some intense theological debates but one needs to focus, instead, on the political context of these events to comprehend their dynamics.

Resurgent Sikh fundamentalist forces in the UK

In the past decade, but particularly since the 2012 I Pledge Orange campaign for a stay of execution of Balwant Singh Rajoana  (one of four Sikh fundamentalist activists responsible for the suicide bomb that in 1995 killed the Chief Minister of Punjab and 17 other people) there has been an exponential rise in the numbers and confidence of Sikh fundamentalist forces in the UK. This growing momentum is particularly visible at the annual commemoration in London of Operation Bluestar, the name given to the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi’s assault on the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar in June 1984.

Importantly, a number of Sikh fundamentalist activists had fled to the US, Canada and Europe in anticipation of Indira Gandhi’s crackdown on Sikh militancy. Two organisations behind the annual June 1984 commemoration events – Dal Khalsa and Sikh Federation UK – are the main Sikh fundamentalist organisations in England. The Dal Khalsa is a right wing political party that emerged as a cover for Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale’s electoral ambitions so that he could present himself as an orthodox protector of the religion. The group have been implicated in the murder of members of minority sects and its primary objective is to establish a Sikh theocratic state otherwise known as Khalistan.

Sikhs rally in Trafalgar Square, 2011, to mark the attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984. Image: BBC

The Sikh Federation UK are a large Sikh political party (conventions numbering 10,000 delegates) but it’s leadership are almost entirely formermembers of the organisation International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF). ISYF was established by Bhindranwale’s nephew Jasbir Singh Rode and others living in Walsall in order to mobilise international support for secession from India. ISYF was banned in Britain in 2001 under anti-terror laws because its members had been responsible for assassinations, bombings and kidnappings. Along with the Babbar Khalsa International, they were implicated in the 1985 bombing of the Air India flight 182 from London to Montreal which killed 329 people and also the attempted bombing of the Air India flight 301. But key members of the ISYF founded the Sikh Federation UK. The ISYF and the Sikh Federation UK have the same objectives but through their seemingly ‘reasonable’ and ‘civilised’ lobbying tactics, Sikh Federation have successfully garnered support among key politicians leading to their success in lifting the UK’s ban on ISYF.

The annual commemoration in London of Operation Bluestar has become a space where many of the nodes in the constellation of Sikh fundamentalist networks in the UK become highly visible. Sikh organisations that otherwise pass as moderate welfare providers or civil rights groups reveal their ideological leanings at these events. Moreover, the organisers are actively involved in reconstructing collective memory as the terror instilled by Bhindranwale and his men is overlooked or forgotten and Sikh fundamentalist claims are sanitised. Every major political party now sends an MP to address the rally in Trafalgar Square. These demonstrations have grown from a hundred or so fairly marginal student groups, to tens of thousands of participants of varied ages from around the country. The demand for Khalistan and the pressure to live by the rules of a very narrow version of Sikhism have been intensely invigorated. Sikh fundamentalism now has many foot soldiers who have become a major thorn in the side of gurdwara committees up and down the country, organising talks at gurdwaras and bussing people in to impose their world view.

Policing Sikh mores: women in the firing line       

Within the last couple of years, Sikh fundamentalists discovered the political mileage of public policy attention to child sexual exploitation. Following a series of headline cases in which networks of predominantly Pakistani men were convicted of sexually exploiting white British girls, Sikh fundamentalists claimed that girls from their communities had also been targeted by Muslim men. In September 2013, the BBC’s Inside Out documentary series publicly applauded the ‘services’ of Mohan Singh of the Sikh Awareness Society(SAS). Twitter activity after the Inside Out documentary was very telling – while outraged Sikh women said they would never trust Mohan Singh and his men to assist them with any difficulties, Sikh men felt vindicated by a programme that validated their own communal anxieties.

In the last three or four years, Mohan Singh has become something of a celebrity and a regular speaker at gurdwaras and Sikh student societies up and down the country, whipping up anxieties about women’s relationships and the activities of young people. At one of his talks at a gurdwara in east London, which I attended with a friend, there was deafening silence as he told a packed audience – men, women, young people and small children – that their daughters and sisters were being raped by Muslim men. A series of pictures of Asian men convicted of sexual offences against children were referred to as a ‘long list of Muslim perpetrators’. These images ran seamlessly into paintings of Moghul warriors beheading and suffocating Sikh leaders during the 1500s in order to make the argument that Muslims represent an historical threat to the ‘Sikh nation’ or ‘Qaum’. Flagging a crisis among Skihs, Mohan Singh admonished the liberalism of Sikh parents with respect to alcohol consumption and allowing their children to choose their own partners.  No mention was made of the fact that violence and abuse is still far more likely to take place within the home, nor were there words of condemnation for familial sexual abuse perpetrated by Sikhs themselves.

It is no coincidence that inter-faith marriages have become a growing concern during the same period. Nor that the Birmingham based Sikh Awareness Society has grown in popularity, as has the Wolverhampton based Sikh Federation UK. Young men from the Midlands are bussed into areas around the country to stop inter faith marriages from taking place. Indeed Sikh Youth UK, the group claiming responsibility for the incident on 11th September, is also speaking at gurdwaras and Sikh student societies. Their topic of choice is, unsurprisingly, sexual exploitation and proscriptions on drug and alcohol consumption. Mohan Singh called for Sikhs to establish a national network to ‘protect’ their women and children – Sikh Youth UK are just one of a number of groups that appear to have heeded that call.

In 2014, Mohan Sigh’s growing popularity and his tour of the UK’s gurdwarastranslated into a new section of a draft Sikh Manifesto- entitled ‘action against perpetrators of grooming and forced conversions’-  by the Sikh Federation UK, Sikh Council and Sikh Network. The document was used to lobby MPs in the run up to the 2015 General Election to meet specific ‘Sikh demands’. The document reveals skills among Sikh fundamentalists for working through the spaces of governance and power. The Manifesto was endorsed by all the main political parties, an irony indeed for the Sikh Labour councillors in Leamington Spa who are currently under attack by the same Sikh fundamentalist forces.

Both the Dal Khalsa and Sikh Federation UK were quick to defend the Sikh Youth UK’s protest at Leamington and Warwick gurdwara. While the Dal Khalsa picketed the police station where 55 protestors were held, the Sikh Federation were quick to go on the media offensive. They issued a press release and gained sympathetic press coverage from the tabloids. While claiming to represent ‘the Sikh community’, SFUK defended ‘the justifiable objection’ of Sikhs to interfaith marriage, they applied pressure on the police to apologise for their ‘over reaction’, and demanded a ‘more sensitive’ response to future protests. Moreover, by stating they would raise media coverage of this issue at a government meeting on hate crime they sought to equate opposition to fundamentalist mobilisations and conservative codes of conduct with hate crime! The press release claims that ‘virtually all gurdwaras’ have been implementing an agreement reached in August 2015 but they fail to mention that this agreement was meant to be voluntary but is, in fact, being imposed through force; this so called ‘agreement’ came about after an assault on an inter faith marriage in Southall in August 2015 and after pressure on thatgurdwara to heed the most right wing Sikh voices. Surrounded by the rising tide of fundamentalism, Leamington and Warwick gurdwara committee’s defiance on inter-faith marriage must be applauded and supported. It is a much needed breath of fresh air.

(This article was first published on OpenDemocracy.net.)

Also read: Proud to be 'anti-national': Gurpreet Singh
 

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