According to documents seen by the Guardian, the government is planning to move its counterextremism "prevent" strategy from targeting those that promote violent extremism to those that endorse extremist ideas in general but condemn violence. The idea being that there is a "conveyer belt" from people finding extremist ideas appealing to then becoming violent extremists themselves, and that by the government working with non-violent extremists (which the government has apparently been doing) to tackle violent extremists simply legitimises and emboldens the world view of said extremists and hence makes their followers easier prey for the violent extremists. Got it?
But who is an extremist? To provide us with the answer, the state will do your thinking for you and will apparently provide a checklist against which you can tick off the various criteria. Anyone calling for an Islamic state, who believes in Jihad, who thinks sharia law is important or who considers homosexuality to be a sin becomes an extremist. What about just going all the way and extending it to anyone who believes God is the sovereign of the heavens and the earth, and that Islam is his chosen religion? Or maybe it would be easier to just get al-Qaida to draft the manual on "How to categorise every Muslim as an extremist".
There is much debate in Muslim communities on what an "Islamic state" actually is or should look like in the modern world; what is the nature of Jihad; what does sharia law actually mean; how Islam and other Abrahamic faiths view homosexuality and so on. To circumvent and undermine the evolution of Islamic thought and simply opt for al-Qaida's definitions shows a government that has lost its marbles in pursuit of counterterrorism (fuelled by a threat that is being exaggerated, as Stella Rimington reminds us again today). The government is being driven by short-term political expediency than the longer term view necessary for our collective safety.
The excessive throwing around of the term "extremist" or "Islamist" by certain groups with such broad brush definitions will turn every Muslim activist into a defacto Islamist and render the word "extremist", an otherwise vital term, meaningless. Any Muslim active in community work is going to have derived at least some of that sense of community spirit from Islam. What on God's earth is wrong with that? Isn't that sense of faith-based decency a good thing?
The government already has precious little trust in grassroots British Muslim circles on their preventing extremism agenda – and if the suggested plans are true then that disconnect will simply extenuate the circumstances, making us all that much less safe.