this week the long-awaited independent review Into the government's counter-terrorism program prevent has been published it's been close to four years in the process and the review has been marred by controversy and critique primarily from the Muslim Community who feel they've been unfairly targeted and ostracized by the program prevent has been championed by successive UK governments as the first line of defense to combat radicalization but its critics say it is instead criminalized ordinary citizens and many of its victims have been children the review overseen by William shawcross has published a list of recommendations which all have been accepted by the government who promises to ramp up its focus on the key threat of islamist terrorism Dr Leila is the director and Senior caseworker at prevent watch the community-led initiative which has supported individuals affected by their prevent program in nearly 600 cases [Music] thank you welcome thank you for being here welcome to the big picture thank you for having me on we are scrambling to read this report that has just come out an hour before me and you sat down to talk right now I have here a list of recommendations and conclusions you've been looking through them yourself as well but I want to begin this conversation by asking you what the prevent program is this program that has been that's received so many complaints from the Muslim Community over the years but essentially is the primary focus of counterterrorism for this government what is the prevent program so the prevent G Ives a one arm of the UK's counter-terrorism strategy so the counterterrorism strategy has several other arms and those are slightly more tangible with regards to how to prepare and protect Society from a potential terror attack there's Pursuit which includes intelligent services for those who are like plotting or Associated so these people would be followed and then this prevent which is completely within the pre-crime space and there is no intention to even commit an attack by the person there's no planning no preparation or anything so you're talking about a space where it's almost like crystal ball gazing where you're saying well actually based on this idea or this um part of speech that you say at age 10 you know in 10 years time when you're 20 you are going to go on to be a potential terrorist and that's kind of the logic behind prevent and of course there is no evidence behind that we can't do that for any other crime so I'm not sure why it is that it's been so readily accepted that we can do this for terrorism and it impacts thousands of people every year who are reported to prevent the majority of which are children and it has been a statutory Duty for public sector workers so your doctors and teachers since 2015. and um yeah so in 2019 after over a decade of concerns about prevent about it particularly targeting the Muslim Community and being discriminatory about it curtailing freedom of speech and other human rights there was finally like a concedement by government to review the prevent Duty and that's where we have ended up today four years later we ended up with a report by William shawcross so as the name suggests prevent is a program that is attempting to try and highlight and isolate cases of potential radicalization in the community and put a stop to them before they even get that far has it succeeded in doing this so what it says on the tin in terms of prevent is that it's supposed to stop people from being drawn into terrorism and then there are these terms like radicalization and extremism that are very highly conflated there's not really any real definition they don't really understand how people go on and why people go on to commit acts of terrorism but there is this conveyor belt theory that people become radicalized and have extreme thoughts or behaviors and then they go on to to do acts of terrorism which in and of itself has been rebutted and the government has suggested that they no longer use this idea of this conveyor belt Theory from a person like being radicalized to going on to terrorism but in practice they still do so yes people are referred if they are showing signs of like vulnerability to radicalization and of course these people themselves aren't really sure what radicalization and extremism is they're not experts so they're based basing on a lot of their biases and their own Prejudice they're basing it on what is said in the media which as you can imagine is not helpful and they are making referrals and those referrals go initially and are vetted by a counterterrorism officer and then that counterterrorism officer uses their own bias and Prejudice logic to determine whether or not somebody might be might go on to be a terrorism terrorist in the future and the problem with this is that from the moment that this referral is made there is harm to that person and as I said the majority of these people are children so that kind of terrorism officer in order for them to establish whether or not they think uh this person might go on uh to be a terrorist in the future I.E are they vulnerable to radicalization so they're not even saying is this person you know plotting or planning a terror attack they think are they vulnerable to being radicalized they're not even radicalized yet are you vulnerable to be around players which may then go on to to end up being a terror act um the problem is is that in order to understand that they they usually visit the person and this is where you may have heard stories of children being interrogated by prevent officers who are essentially counter-terrorism officers okay so it's not even just PC plot this is a counter-terrorism officer anybody who had a police officer knocking at their door would feel slightly intimidated to know that they're coming from the counter-terrorism unit is even more intimidating as an adult let alone if you're a child we've had examples of children who have been at school and who have been questioned in school by themselves the teacher has led them to a room and they've been questioned by a counter-terrorism officer for half an hour and in one case actually eight-year-old for almost an hour his entire lunchtime he was being questioned by not one but two counter-terrorism officers and a social worker and there's never been any evidence to suggest that prevent is stopping acts of terrorism and when you see in the media these comments about you know we foiled X number of plots that is a plot therefore somebody was plotting somebody was preparing that's got nothing to do with prevent right because prevent comes before that so what they're really describing is pursue but then you see later a few sentences down in the in the article maybe even as the headline they're talking about prevent and so the layperson thinks and rightly so that prevent is there to prevent Terror attacks and who wouldn't want that right everybody wants to prevent a terror attack nobody wants to be the parent or the sister or the loved one of somebody who dies at a terror attack that's that's horrific like nobody wants to be in that position so everybody is going to say yes we don't want to be impacted by terrorism we want to prevent it and by conflating these terms um it really causes a lot of harm because people actually think what they're supporting is a legitimate policy to stop Terror acts when in fact there's been no evidence to suggest it does and the government today has been unwilling to interrogate prevent they even in this report they haven't actually interrogated prevent and that's what everyone wants interrogate prevent and see if this is actually doing what it says on the tin and if it is bring the evidence forward show us the primary criticism of this program has come from Muslims who feel that they have been disproportionately targeted by it and you know in 2016 65 percent of all the referrals to the private prevent program were referrals of Muslims and of those 2000 were Muslim children primarily at school what are the stories that you have been hearing from these people from from the people that have been referred to uh and particularly these children that that are uh finding themselves in the spotlight as a result so my role is as caseworker at prevent watch so I have listened to over 200 of these individuals who have called the helpline and we've dealt with over 600 individuals who have called and they are mainly children like not children calling but the families are mainly calling on behalf of their children who have been referred from primary school Secondary School some in sixth form I like college and we've had a case for example of a four-year-old who you may be familiar with this case but he was talking about the game fortnite and this was automatically referred as a prevent referral the teacher didn't even speak to the parent actually when we got some information from that school we realized in the notes that they had already made reference to this child talking about online video games because he was with his like older cousins and so he was familiar with them so it's not like this was just like this new child who appeared out of nowhere and he made this reference like they knew the child they knew he had older cousins that he had been around them were still playing online games now he was referred to prevent and the parents received a knock on the door at half past 10 in the night from police who were coming to check the home to see if there were guns and bombs in the shed like this was a default obviously there was a huge breakdown in trust then between the mother and the school even though of course the police officer realized okay the this is a nonsense referral and even though this will be noted down as a referral that didn't get passed on to the Der radicalization program okay it's one of the false misinformed referrals there is still harm and impact that's been done because firstly this family who live on a very quiet street have had police show up at their door so just the embarrassment in terms of like my neighbors are watching what do they think that stigma is one part the other part is now having to deal and re-mend that relationship again with the school who you feel have massively betrayed you because they've just referred your child and you know they're not saying oh I think your child's being naughty like they're saying your child could potentially be a terrorist in the future that's what you're getting from four-year-old right yeah a four-year-old child so this is like one example story other stories are you know you can see more tangible homes so we had a a young boy who was starting sixth form he thought he was actually going in for like an induction day he went to go and meet the new members of staff and he ended up being questioned on a prevent referral that was made several years prior to that so the school had shared the information with the next school the college so he couldn't even start fresh from that experience and again that prevent referral came to nothing so technically you would look in and say Well it's come to nothing you know rather safe than sorry but he's having tangible Harms he ended up having his place withdrawn from that sixth form in September as he was about to start so can you imagine being in a position where you think you're going to start sixth form in September and now you've had your place withdrawn and you have to go and find another College how did you explain to that college why you are looking for a college in September October like how bad does that look and how do you get over that of what's just happened to you so I think a lot of these cases that come through yes they're from the Muslim Community we also get calls from people who aren't Muslim who have had you know what would be considered far-right referrals and they're equally nonsense you know we've had children being referred for you know talking about history and things and and the teacher saying well you know a bit too much about these world wars and you know but so essentially they're being criminalized for what they intellect for the fact that they're reading above their age and we've seen this in the notes of of the prevent referral it's like oh they're they're reading uh inappropriate material for their age and they don't mean inappropriate as and it's harmful they just feel that they're at such a higher level intellectually that all of a sudden what that's intimidating that a child should actually go on to read more should actually have a keen interest in history so these are some of the referrals that we get even when they're non-muslim so you deal with a lot of individual cases individual experiences but when you zoom out and you look at the communal impact of a program like this on say the Muslim Community what does that picture look like so people often look at the numbers which is really harmful because yes the numbers tell you a part of the story but they don't tell you everything so you can look at it and say okay over the last six or seven years over about 4 000 people have been referred to prevent according to the statistics which by the way we think is very conservative because we know there have been cases that haven't been logged officially but they were prevent referrals so you look at you say Okay 42 000 45 000 PM referred to prevent since 2015. that only counts the people who have been referred to prevent it doesn't count their families it doesn't count their communities it doesn't count particularly the Muslim communities who know prevent exists even if some of them don't even know it by name they know this like list or some kind of consequence to their children being too Muslim exists and it causes them to self-censor it causes a huge amount of paranoia so I had one client for example who didn't want to share information with her doctor because she had previously been involved with prevent for her younger child and so then when she was in a completely different situation actually in intensive care with her young baby she was questioning why the doctor wanted to do like certain tests she was like why do they want to do that are they going to share the data which sounds overly paranoid but actually they had done it to her previously and so you can imagine every person that she may have told or every person who may have heard of her story or every person who doesn't know of her story who just knows that prevent exists and that is taking this stance particularly towards Muslim is quite traumatized by it and very disempowered so I think it's definitely shutting down the confidence of Muslims particularly to participate in political life I think a lot of organizations and individuals feel that it if there isn't a predominant mainstream NGO speaking about this topic then they shouldn't and they shy away from saying some of the more Frank things about prevent so you'll see a lot of Muslim organizations are diluting down their messaging and you know they rely on mainstream ngos who are non-muslim to say okay you can say that we can't say that because we're Muslim why why is your credibility as a Muslim if you're showing evidence and you're putting evidence forward as to how this harms you and your community why is that any less credible the prevent strategy that has been put forward and has been widely criticized it's being criticized for the wrong reasons is being criticized or somehow an attempt to restrict freedom of expressionably not at all the right way to concise is that it has been ineptly and inefficiently distributed so that people in the Civil Service and elsewhere haven't had the guide but haven't had the tool haven't had the Gray's Anatomy as it were to know which organizations support and which not to in the Muslim Community this program uh here in the UK is is notorious they as you mentioned I don't think there is a single Muslim that isn't aware of the prevent program or is aware of the fact that there is some kind of program that they on some level are susceptible to but outside of this Muslim Community is the same level of awareness there are people in the public here in the UK are aware not only of the program itself but of its potential shortcomings I don't think it does only based on some of the conversations that I've had so when I'm speaking to um you know other Muslim parents and you know we're talking about prevent and or what I do and maybe then the topic comes up um you know they seem familiar with it um when I'm speaking to some of my non-muslim friends and other parents and you speak about prevent they tend not to really know what it is particularly if they're in a community where there's not a huge amount of diversity even some of the teachers when you speak to them and they're in areas that have a high number of Muslims they're a bit more conscious of this idea that you know radicalization we need to look at radicalization because of safeguarding then you speak to other teachers who are in predominantly non-muslim schools and you talk about safeguarding and this idea of radicalization doesn't quite come up having said that though it is definitely creeping into those spaces as well almost as a justification um to kind of justify that oh it's not discriminatory but we don't believe that's true and we don't believe it should be Target in any community this lack of visibility this lack of awareness in The Wider UK Society about this prevent program but also the criticisms against it has that made it difficult for people like yourself critics of this program to speak out publicly yeah I think there are layers of opaqueness so there are certain things that you cannot gain access to with regards to prevent um everything was very very secretive initially even the statistics for example they started publishing that in 2015 2016 even though you know prevent was although it was made statutory at that time it was actually operating a good few years before that um so even when they try to act as if they're being transparent there's still layers of opaqueness in there it's quite deceptive so for example um the transparency around age you know if you look at the age range that they're describing um 5 to 15 year olds for example being referred to prevent and then 16 to 21 or 16 to 25 I can't remember the other range but I do know that it captures what are legally children right so the 16 the 17 year olds they are still children so the true picture of how many children are referred by prevent or referred to prevent should I say you don't know that nobody can actually tell you the real figure for that because the way in which they produce the statistics and demonstrate them doesn't reveal exactly what the impact is so it's very difficult from one sense in terms of to get a true picture of who's targeted when how you know a lot of the concerns are never ever mentioned unless we mention them through our stories and people expose that and they say okay this is what happened this is the example of a prevent referral this is what really happened otherwise you you will never see that in a government document and when we've put in Freedom of Information requests people have been very you know councils for example when we were doing the people's review of prevent which was an alternative to this Government Review we put in fois to every single local Authority almost 300 local authorities across the UK and we were asking very basic questions which people should know like are you a prevent priority area I.E do you get extra funding to do prevent because there are some areas that have extra funding to do prevent and if so can you tell us you know how much you get extra to prevent and what was the criteria that you had to meet in order to get this extra funding and a lot of the responses were all the same or same sentences and they said we do not hold this information how can you not know if your prevent priority area if you're local Authority you would know you're prevent priority yeah because you would have been told that you would have been given extra money for it right so and then so surely they know whether they're getting extra money exactly and some even worse said yes we are prevent priority area and then on the question of how much funding we don't hold that information how can you not know how much more money you got to do it so it's there are layers of opaqueness to try and understand how prevent works okay who's getting money why um all of these things are very difficult and then there's an additional layer that we see often as prevent watch sometimes we have clients who want to come forward with their story and they want to share their story and they're up for doing you know mainstream media and so we take their story to a journalist and we say look we have this person they want to they want to talk um you know can you facilitate that you put in your Journal whatever it is and then the silence and you would think that some of these stories would you know people would want to hear about them um but they seem not it's not so much from the journalists it seems to be from the editorial position that they go to their editor and they say look there's this about prevent are you interested and they're not they're not interested in showing this and I think one of the examples really good example is the Trojan Horse Affair yeah that podcast series um you know it had to be done in the states it wasn't even covered here until everyone realized how good the podcast was and we're raising questions and then there were some very like lukewarm coverage about it in the UK why did it take for it to be made in the states and to be published there and then to go viral there before anybody started to kind of respond here in the UK and even then when they responded actually When government responded they responded with a report by a right-wing Think Tank I won't even justify the name for but um they they put out a report and Michael Gove said in here I think he gave the forward to that report and he said this is the final word on what should be said on Trojan Horse like this is it that's it I don't want to hear any more argument about it it's almost like a parent like it that's it I don't want to hear it uh I don't want to hear anyone talking about anything else my word is final here you go this is the report which is ridiculous because it's completely shutting down any concerns any criticisms and anyone else's Voice Even though Michael Gove was deeply entrenched in that Trojan Horse Affair and the reason the Trojan Horse Affair is so important is because it happened just before the introduction of prevent on the statutory Duty because they were saying by the way guys you know our children at school are being um are being subjected to these views that are really problematic you know they're trying to islamicize kids in Birmingham schools this is a safeguarding issue and then they will Implement uh and and stuck it onto safeguarding at around about that same time just after that uh it's interesting that you bring up the the Trojan Horse Affair the podcast but also the incident itself uh which relates to this this uh a letter that was linked to the media that appeared on surface level uh at least to suggest some kind of conspiracy happening in in UK schools and that try to radicalize or or islamicize these schools that then was proven uh or at least highly suggested by both the podcast but others who have seen it as well that the letter itself was fabricated or fake and yet it had had a uh tremendous impact on the counter-terrorism policies on the way the media has treated the counterterrorism but also the way that the media and the government and the Michael Gove specifically treated the Muslim Community and it's interesting uh because this report that you mentioned that that came out and government back report uh responding to the New York Times podcast that was looking at this event um in that report there is a large list of people that were highlighted as criticizing uh the program itself criticizing the government's counter-terrorism response and speaking about the Trojan Horse in some instances people that had tweeted about the podcast were mentioned by name their tweets were printed in that report and there is a parallel that I see with this prevent review because there was a fear by yourself and others that this would be the similar case in this report in this review um where does that fear come from and does it really suggest a kind of uh relationship or a lack of relationship between the Muslim Community and this program but the government itself I think that fear it's it's not really a fear as such as it is a fact of every time um a story has been put forward whether it's the client's own testimonial whether it's stats and evidence they'll put forward by ourselves or other ngos um it's always rubbished and it's always seen as a myth and it's always um you know we're told we're fear-mongering this isn't true uh and somebody else comes out and says no no this never happened I mean so many of the cases like the cuckoo bomb case where a child a four-year-old child said um he drew a picture of a cucumber of his dad cutting a cucumber and he pronounced it cuckoo bum or at least that's what the nursery teacher heard and she referred that that was one of the very early cases that was published around prevent and it was very embarrassing you know for counter-terrorism offices to see oh my God it really is this what is this what prevent is doing it's it's referring four-year-olds for mispronouncing cucumber um and when that happened you know it was seen as no this is this is not true this case just isn't true and there are various other cases that have been you know we've been told this isn't true even cases where we have worked on the documents like we have seen the initial prevent referrals and we're being told by people who are pushing prevent a completely different story and we're like we saw that we know this case intimately and other ngos are in a similar position where if you raise concerns around prevent it is part of the problem and actually I think that's one of the recommendations that I saw very quickly on my way here was um you know to to make sure that there is a specific response I think there's like some home Securities response there needs to be a specific group I think is what uh sure cross is advocating to shut down and and deal specifically with these people raising concerns which is hugely problematic um not only because we're already being smeared um and and labeled as like extremists or enablers of terrorism in fact the previous PM uh David Cameron wrote forward to another report by the same Think Tank government back Think Tank and he said that people raising concerns essentially were enabling terrorism so that really makes ngos think twice because they're thinking well hold on if I raise concerns about this about prevent specifically then I'm going to be labeled what an enabler of terrorism and that is a serious charge like terrorism is a serious offense so for you to be enabling terrorism I mean that's like the worst label somebody could give you um other than a terrorist itself but your enabler so I don't know how that is any better but um so that is where the fear comes from and I think that is why prevent watch We're conscious um specifically that we may be mentioned because in the other review The People's review of prevent um because we had put all the evidence forward because all the ngos had supported it because it had um forwards from the UN special Rapport on protecting freedoms while countering terrorism as well as konigerty Professor konagerty um who is a lecturer and and KC now in human rights it was a very strong report and so they couldn't attack the arguments in fact they have never attacked the arguments and the evidence that we've put forward what they do is they just go for the organization as their age or tactic you know smear the messenger don't engage with the message because you can't engage with the message because you know that the message is right you know that the evidence is there and it backs up everything that we've put forward so that's where the photo came from William shawcross has led a superb independent review of prevent for which I am very grateful prevent has shown cultural timidity and an Institutional hesitancy to tackle islamism for islamophobia these are false charges that spread fear and misinformation within communities so we're taking a look at these findings together it's still a very fresh look but already we can see um some of the the things that you've highlighted here in the recommendations there are two recommendations at least that specifically take a look at the critiques of preventing the people that are criticizing prevent so one calls for the establishment of a dedicated unit and Homeland Security Group that is in charge of of uh rebuting misinformation about preventing challenging inaccuracies on social media and other one uh calls for civil society organizations that receive prevent funding to be tasked with challenging and exposing groups that promote this information again on social media even in the conclusion itself it says very clearly that that the government has to do more has to go to Greater lengths to instill this public sense of Pride but also take on this information is and demonization campaigns that are led by bad faith actors do you consider yourself a bad faith actor I mean I might be the wrong faith for putting any evidence forward because as a Muslim um inherently my uh somehow my objectivity and my credibility is automatically questioned because I'm raising things that are discriminatory towards Muslims and I did have this question asked to me previously you know or why are you doing this and is there a conflict of interest and yeah there's a conflict of interest because I'm a visibly Muslim woman so if that's what you're referring to then yes if you're referring to the fact that I work at prevent watch and I have listened to directly over 200 people who have been impacted by prevent and seen the evidence as to what is happening to them and the harms then of course like there is a conflict of interest because I've actually seen the evidence and I have at my fingertips over 600 clients who have been impacted by prevent I have that resource on the database I can see all that information and I can see the the different types of harms that have happened but essentially um what this these recommendations show is that the government is unwilling to take any criticisms or concerns I mean part of the remit part of the remit of this report was to put recommendations forward for how to deal with concerns and criticisms around prevent and this is the answer you know we've been waiting four years for a report and the answer is shut it down part of the issue that I see here and correct me if I'm wrong is that there was very little uh if any Muslim organizations that took part in this review that were that were um involved in recommendations or involved in in the process of of pulling together this report I mean 450 Muslim organizations of which 350 mosques and imams boycotted this review almost right from the beginning why was that nobody felt that this was even an attempt to put forward a truly independent reviewer so after they appointed Lord Carlyle initially so Lord color was initially appointed he was seen as bias because he had previously been involved in some of the recommendations when prevent was like partially reviewed in 2011. and not only that but the way they appointed him did not follow the protocol that they should have followed so there was a legal challenge he stepped down he didn't he didn't go through the legal challenge he stepped down and this opened the door for somebody else to be appointed and you would think that after the legal Challenge and after all of the concerns raised once he was appointed the government would have a look and think okay this is an important you know we're saying this is an important part of our counterterrorism strategy and we want it to be independently reviewed and we want people to feel that there is an independent reviewer and instead they did the exact opposite it was a slap in the face to anybody who had raised criticisms by putting William shawcross there he has made publicly you know well-known statements about how Islam is a problem um he he has constantly supported every single war and Terror policy for the last 20 years so there is no reason to suggest that he would do anything other than re-support prevent and if you look at one of the recent fois put in by rights and Security International they revealed that the home office has been interfering with this report since April so there's been huge interference and he's essentially written exactly what they wanted to hear or perhaps they've written it during the editing process we don't know but they've definitely been meeting William shawcross has definitely been meeting with the home office repeatedly since April um and there has been you know maybe some rewriting of the report I'm not sure what has happened with the report maybe it was such a shambles in the first place that they had to try and get it back to a point where it was actually Justified to put in front of parliament so you have concerns about just how independent this process has been oh absolutely the independent Reviewer is not independent that's why everyone boycotted I mean we're talking about Muslim organ like 450 organizations then there were an additional 100 experts and and people well known you know well-known individuals in the community who had concerns and they were mainly Muslim you don't get 500 Muslims to agree even when aide is let alone to agree that Shore cross is not the right person to be doing this review right so you had that agreement plus you had the mainstream ngos the Liberties that amnesty is the running mates who also boycotting this saying we're not going to engage we're not going to give it credibility and we didn't and then instead of giving that credibility on our own terms right so that people didn't say well you know nobody could hear your evidence because you boycotted on our own terms we put forward the people's review of prevent which captured all the reports and all of the testimonies from those clients and we put it into one report and that has been sent to everyone so nobody can say well we didn't see it right that's been out there for a year okay that's been out there since February of 2022. and I think it's important because essentially nobody wanted to engage with shawcross so who did he engage with what is his evidence for these recommendations I mean I haven't gone through the report fully but that is exactly what I'll be looking for what is the evidence and what do the actions mean now that you're going to take forward because I can see that just from the brief thing of the actions around concerns and criticisms it's very clear what he wants actions to be just make them shut up we don't want to hear it we don't want to engage with it and we don't genuinely want to improve it so he does seem to highlight a few things that do need to be changed or altered about the program but by and large the tone of it is and I can read from his conclusion here it is impossible not to be impressed by those who work on this program some of whom face intolerable abuse and intimidation for their efforts and the other uh strong theme of this report and this was highlighted in the leaks that we saw a few months ago was that showcross believes that there hasn't been enough of a focus on islamist extremism and that prevent needs to prioritize that what does that mean to you I mean I think his sympathies are misaligned he is sympathetic towards people who are receiving prevent funding to do a job and go and do that job but has no sympathy to the thousands of children who are being interrogated and these are innocent children right even by prevents own flawed logic we know the logic of prevent is flawed okay let's accept that flawed Logic for a second even by prevents logic these are innocent children who are being traumatized but his sympathies lie with the people who are carrying out prevent we know that organizations and individuals have been shut down people have shut their accounts down academics who thought that they had a certain immunization because their academics and because you know freedom of speech and within universities will shut down their social media accounts because the minute they have spoken out about prevent they have been trolled and they have been abused online right and these people do not have the support of the government people who are receiving prevent funding do have the support of a government and yet somehow the sympathies should be for them and they are the people who are insulted the entire Muslim Community is being targeted by the by this and there is a justification of that islamophobia right in this report as well as all the leaks that have come out so far there is actually a justification to say well actually the reason why we're talking Muslims because Muslims are the biggest threat right but there's no sympathy there and instead we're supposed to so that's the first thing I want to mention the second thing is that this whole idea that there's not a big enough um a big enough focus on islamist extremism firstly there isn't there isn't an extremism okay we need to be talking about Terror Acts we need to be talking about what the experts are saying and the experts are saying actually if we want to start talking about different groups far right is posing a huge fret but always surprised that somebody who said that Islam is one of the greatest problems that Europe has to face has said oh we need to refocus on on Islam No we don't we're not surprised by that also we don't believe that prevents should be focused on anyone because it is not working we need to stop thinking about okay which Community is going to come out of this worse off because nobody's winning like nobody is winning by having prevent in place and the real question should have been is prevent working not who should it be focused on who should something that like something isn't working who should we focus on no okay go back to prevent and interrogate prevent and ask whether it's working or not and I don't believe for a second that he can at any any point in this report point to evidence that prevent has saved lives because you can't but we can show what we can show what we do have the evidence for is that prevent has been there even when lives were lost so many of the people who have committed terror terror acts have been known to prevent right and they were also known Beyond prevent because prevent is like somewhere over here on the Spectrum in that pre-crime space and then you know they were known by MI5 they weren't owned by people who had more power more authority to actually engage them and stop them and they weren't stopped so I think some honesty needs to be in this report which clearly isn't um but yeah we're not surprised by any of that and we think that the whole idea of it being not focused enough on islamist is is a joke because when you look at the evidence actually enough money is being pumped into these priority areas and these priority areas have higher numbers of Muslims and that is why that is the criteria for which they are chosen as prevent priority areas what do you make of the government response which we've already seen the Home Secretary Suella breverman has come out saying that she wholeheartedly accepts all 34 recommendations and that prevent will now ensure focuses on the key threat of islamist terrorism what do you make of that I mean we knew that she was gonna endorse all the recommendations because this had been mentioned previously we knew that this was one of the recommendations because um one particular newspaper Outlet seemed to have the unredacted report like a couple of months ago strangely enough even though it hadn't been laid in front of parliament so questions need to be asked about how you know this isn't just a leak a few days before the the thing is being published we've waited about two months um and it looks remarkably similar right it's very similar to verbatim on some that they didn't even try to change the language but we're not surprised by this kind of Hardline approach I think the government that is sitting in the UK today is extremely authoritarian um know that they can get away with being quite openly islamophobic and the problem is is that when they do so they don't even back it up with evidence and they chop and change in terms of which numbers they want to use to justify things so when you want them to talk about terrorism actual terrorism because this is what is supposed to stop terrorism they don't speak about terrorism they speak about extremism and all these terms to try and confuse you and then when they're speaking about certain acts they try to trigger the emotional response and speak about a specific terror act for example that involved a Muslim finally Dr Layla this seems like a very clear breakdown in trust between the Muslim Community and not only the prevent program but the UK government itself where to from here how can this relationship be healed I mean I think the first thing is to understand the real implications of what this report means because we've seen all the bait and we've seen the leaks but what does it mean in its operation you know what does this mean we knew they were never going to scrap it right they weren't going to come out and say we scrap prevent in fact they didn't even put that down as part of the terms of reference it was never in the terms of reference for it to be even considered so we knew that I think this is not just a breakdown in trust between the Muslim Community and government I think this is a breakdown in trust in every part of civil society and government I think it's a breakdown in trust in terms of how this country is treating children because those are the people predominantly impacted by prevent these are innocent children being harmed in every element of life from their mental health to the actual like education and work prospects um so I think the way forward from this is essentially that people realize it might be a very good thing because maybe people will realize across the board there's been a lot of division there's been a lot of oh it's islamist oh it's far right so the far right are looking at going oh it's a Muslims our problem you know the Muslims are saying oh it's good that there's more far right right it's not just us that's the wrong way to be looking at this this does not work is harmful and we cannot leave that door open for a refocus to go back to the Muslim Community and for other communities to fill and for other civil society actors to feel that this is not their problem it is because once it is cemented again via the Muslim Community it will get extended again for whoever is going to be labeled extremist of the day so I think the only way forward now and maybe it is much more obvious is that everyone comes together to push back on all of these recommendations and demand for a truly independent review of prevent thank you very much for joining us today thanks [Music]