The British taxpayer has allegedly been handed out to radical Islamist organisations that have “promoted extremist narratives”, according to leaked draft excerpts from an independent review on the government’s counter-terrosism programme.
A long-awaited review conducted by former Charity Commission Chairman Sir William Shawcross on the efficacy of the government’s Prevent strategy has found that the government itself was funding groups that have supported the Taliban and Islamist organisations that have been banned in Britain.
Excerpts of the review, which was submitted to the Home Office in April but has been delayed while the government supposedly conducts fact and legal checks, were leaked to the Daily Telegraph, the British broadsheet with deep ties to the ruling Tory party.
According to the paper, the Shawcross review found that money distributed by Prevent — the programme which seeks to prevent people from becoming radicalised by terrorists organisations — was in some instances handed out to radical groups themselves including some that had “promoted extremist narratives”.
“During the course of the review, I became aware that some Prevent-funded groups promote extremism or have links with extremists,” Sir William wrote. “I found unacceptable examples of some of these organisations promoting Islamist extremist sentiments, or of validating and associating with Islamist extremists.”
One example highlighted in the draft report included Prevent giving taxpayer money to a civil society organisation, whose leader had publicly made “favourable and supportive” statements about the Taliban. The group had also made claims that banned militant Islamist groups were merely “legitimate resistance groups” and that Muslims in the British armed forces should disobey orders.
Another group to have received taxpayer money from Prevent was said to have within the ranks of its senior leadership members that had ties to Islamist networks.
“Prevent lets the vast majority of Muslims in this country down when it gives legitimacy and influence to those which promote Islamist narratives,” the report stated.
Shawcross also reportedly chastised the government programme for placing a disproportionate focus on the threat from far-right terrorists, which he claimed was in response to politically correct fears after Muslim organisations accused the government of “stigmatising minority communities” by trying to tackle Islamic extremism.
“It is correct for Prevent to be increasingly concerned about the growing threat from the extreme Right. But the facts clearly demonstrate that the most lethal threat in the last 20 years has come from Islamism, and this threat continues to endure,” the report says.
This backs up claims from the government’s independent adviser for social cohesion Dame Sara Khan, who said earlier this year that Islamic extremism was being overlooked by local authorities throughout Britain over fears of being called racist.
They felt that somehow they were going to be offending Muslims, somehow it was being racist and Islamaphobic,” Dame Sara said, adding that it was actually a form of discrimination as government officials are “more concerned about political correctness and the fear of being labelled racist [than] actually helping Muslims.”
A report last year from the Henry Jackson Society think tank found that although Islamic extremists accounted for 90 per cent of those on security service watch lists, the number of far-right suspects referred to Prevent (22 per cent) nearly matched the number of Islamists referred to the programme (24 per cent).
The Prevent programme has also come under criticism for its failure to stop several high-profile Islamist terrorist attacks, including the assassination of former Member of Parliament Sir David Amess, whose killer Ali Harbi Ali, was reportedly deemed by the programme to have not posed a serious danger and therefore had his 2015 case closed. significant danger and his case was closed.
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