24 July 2012

As long as the term "Islamophobia" is bandied about .... strategies like Prevent will struggle to make an impact

.... last Monday when the General Secretary of the London School of Economics (LSE) Student Union shared an update on Twitter stating “Big day with the new sabbs [sic] in office, lots of inductions, and preventing Prevent”.

In response to this, the Education Officer at Swansea University Student Union tweeted back “can you drop me some stuff about preventing Prevent”.

Since then, the LSE Student Union General Secretary has confirmed her view on the matter, tweeting that “Prevent IS Islamophobic” and that it is “a gvmt [sic] strategy to 'prevent extremism on campus' which consists of victimising Muslims”.

Intrigued by the suggestion that Prevent is a racist policy I spoke to a senior figure at the National Union of Students (NUS) about the issue and he told me that “the view that prevent in general is problematically Islamophobic, and that the way the police often handle issues locally is unhelpful, is relatively common”. [The Commentator] Read more