Gendered Perspectives on Preventing Violent Extremism: Women and 'Prevent' 9781529221602

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Title page
Copyright information
Table of contents
List of Figures and Tables
List of Abbreviations
About the Author
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Terrorism and extremism as political constructs
1.3 The study: women and Prevent
1.4 Reflections on working as an outsider
1.5 Research design
1.6 Case study areas
1.7 Research method
1.8 Documentary data
1.9 Interviews
1.10 Sampling
1.10.1 Prevent professionals
1.10.2 Muslim and Black and minority ethnic women, and right-wing women
1.11 Outline of the book
2 Women in Terrorism and Extremism in Theory and Practice
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The relationship between women and violence: feminist and other viewpoints
2.3 Women in terrorist and extremist groups: joining
2.4 Functions of women terrorists and extremists
2.5 Women terrorists and extremists in the media
2.6 Conclusion
3 Prevent: A Policy Overview from 2006 to 2018 and Beyond
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The development of Prevent
3.2.1 2006 and 2009
3.2.2 2011
3.2.3 2015: the Counter-Extremism Strategy and the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act
3.2.4 Summary: Prevent in 2018
3.3 Key concepts and components in Prevent
3.3.1 Channel and the Desistance and Disengagement Programme
3.3.2 Ideology, safeguarding and radicalization
Discussion
4 Women in the National Policy Framework
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Overarching themes
4.2.1 A key target for Prevent?
4.2.2 Women: the rationale for engagement
4.2.3 Tackling oppression?
4.3 Occasional themes
4.3.1 2006 and 2009
Projects and interventions: inclusion, exclusion and barriers to participation
Women in the family, home and community
Patriarchy and misogyny
Culture and religion
Summary: 2006 and 2009
4.3.2 2011 and 2018
Women in the family, home and community
Culture and religion
Women’s rights
Violence against women
Summary: 2011 and 2018
4.4 Conclusion
5 National Projects Post-2011: Shanaz and Prevent Tragedies
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Shanaz
5.2.1 Development
5.2.2 Structure
5.2.3 Objectives and delivery
5.2.4 Promoting Prevent
5.2.5 Beyond Prevent
5.2.6 Representing women in Shanaz
5.2.7 Dissolution
5.3 Prevent Tragedies
5.3.1 The development of Prevent Tragedies
5.3.2 Objectives and structures
5.3.3 Delivery
5.3.4 General content and messaging
5.3.5 Mothers and daughters
5.3.6 Radicalization: spotting the signs
5.3.7 Promoting Prevent: what to do and how to do it
5.4 Conclusion
6 Delivering Prevent Locally
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Prevent in Townsville: Pathfinder year
6.3 Prevent in Townsville: 2008–2011
6.3.1 Structure and objectives of Prevent in Townsville, 2008–2011
6.3.2 At risk groups in Townsville, 2008–2011
6.3.3 Project funding for Prevent in Townsville, 2008–2011
6.3.4 Women in Prevent in Townsville, 2008–2011
6.4 Prevent in Townsville: 2011–2021
6.4.1 Structure and objectives of Prevent in Townsville, 2011–2021
6.4.2 At risk groups in Townsville, 2011–2021
6.4.3 Project funding and objectives for Prevent in Townsville, 2011–2021
6.4.4 Women in Prevent in Townsville, 2011–2019
6.4.5 2020–2021 projects
6.5 Conclusion
7 How do Prevent Professionals Understand Women?
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Is Prevent gendered?
7.3 Challenges to including women
7.4 Involving women in practice
7.4.1 Access
7.4.2 Women’s groups
7.5 Women and the family
7.6 Radicalized women
7.6.1 Radicalization and romance
7.6.2 Radicalization, patriarchy and abuse
7.6.3 Radicalization and ideology
7.7 Conclusion
8 Women’s Perceptions and Experiences of Prevent: Muslim and Secular Black and Minority Ethnic Women, and Right-wing Women
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Muslim and Black and minority ethnic women
8.2.1 Families and mothers
8.2.2 Infantilization and depoliticization of women
8.2.3 The hijab and self-censorship
8.2.4 Prevent and women’s projects
8.2.5 Prevent and domestic violence
8.3 Women on the right
8.3.1 Prevent: just for Muslims?
8.3.2 The threat to women’s rights
8.3.3 Strengthening and cooperating with Prevent
8.3.4 Misogyny on the right: missed opportunities?5
8.4 Conclusion
9 Conclusion: Ideologies and Counterterrorism Practice
9.1 Understanding and including women in Prevent
9.2 Receiving and engaging with Prevent
9.3 Ideological State Apparatus: a framework for understanding Prevent
9.3.1 Motherhood ideologies
9.3.2 Producing the mothering subject: interpellation
9.3.3 Mothers and materialism
9.4 Epilogue: theoretical and policy implications, and future research
Appendix
Chapter 6
Interviewees: Prevent professionals
Interviewees: Muslim and BME women
Interviewees: right-wing women
Notes
References
Index
Back Cover

Citation preview

GEN DERED P ER S PECTI VES ON PRE V E N T ING VI OLEN T EXT RE M I S M WOME N AND ‘PREVEN T ’ S AM AND REWS

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM Women and ‘Prevent’ Sam Andrews

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1–​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +​44 (0)117 374 6645 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2022 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2155-​8 hardcover ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2159-​6 ePub ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2160-​2 ePdf The right of Sam Andrews to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Nicky Boroweic Front cover image: iStock/Normform Bristol University Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents List of Figures and Tables List of Abbreviations About the Author Acknowledgements

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1 Introduction 2 Women in Terrorism and Extremism in Theory and Practice 3 Prevent: A Policy Overview from 2006 to 2018 and Beyond 4 Women in the National Policy Framework 5 National Projects Post-​2011: Shanaz and Prevent Tragedies 6 Delivering Prevent Locally 7 How do Prevent Professionals Understand Women? 8 Women’s Perceptions and Experiences of Prevent: Muslim and Secular Black and Minority Ethnic Women, and Right-​wing Women 9 Conclusion: Ideologies and Counterterrorism Practice

1 23 42 66 97 122 151 174

Appendix Notes References Index

215 220 222 262

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195

List of Figures and Tables Figure 6.1

Prevent within the Townsville Community Safety Plan structure135

Tables 1.1 Participants 6.1 Pathfinder year projects in Townsville 6.2 Breakdown of expenditure in Townsville, 2008–​2011 6.3 Projects funded by type and target, Townsville, 2008–​2011 6.4 Projects with women as a primary or secondary target, Townsville, 2008–​2011 6.5 2011–​2019 grants to Townsville 6.6 Projects funded by type and target, Townsville, 2011–​2018/​19 6.7 Projects with women as a primary or secondary target, Townsville, 2011–​2018/​19 6.8 Projects with women as a primary or secondary target, Townsville, 2019–​2021 6.9 Projects with women as a primary or secondary target by year, Townsville

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18 123 124 129 130 133 143 144 147 149

List of Abbreviations ACPO ACPO-​TAM BF BME CGT CTSA CTU DCLG DDP DI EDL FGM FOI GT ISA NI35 NMWAG NPCC OSCT PVE RICU RSA TACT VAWG WRAP

Association of Chief Police Officers Association of Chief Police Officers –​Terrorism and Allied Matters Britain First Black and minority ethnic Constructivist Grounded Theory Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 Counter-​Terrorism Unit Department for Communities and Local Government Desistence and Disengagement Programme Detective Inspector English Defence League Female genital mutilation Freedom of Information Grounded Theory Ideological State Apparatus National Indicator 35 National Muslim Women’s Advisory Group National Police Chiefs’ Council Office for Security and Counter-​Terrorism Preventing Violent Extremism Research, Information and Communications Unit Repressive State Apparatus Terrorism Act 2001 Violence Against Women and Girls Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent

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About the Author Sam Andrews is Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Lincoln. His research interests include terrorism, extremism, gender and the internet. His recent publications include ‘Prevent, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus: Analysing Terrorism Prevention Policies Using Althusser’s Framework’, published in Millennium: A Journal of International Studies.

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Acknowledgements This book is dedicated to all who supported me during my studies. In no particular order: thanks to Joshua and Andrew for supervising my PhD; thanks to Irene for supervising my life; thanks to the SBS for improving my tastes; thanks to my family for your life-​long support; thanks to everyone in Brussels, Bristol, Birmingham, Helsinki and Berlin for being cool; and thanks to everyone who participated in the research.

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Introduction 1.1 Introduction According to Walker (2004), the UK has ‘encountered more configurations and episodes of political violence than any other polity’ (p 312). This experience has generated an architecture of counterterrorism that not only rivals most other countries, but also from which many draw inspiration (Skoczylis and Bartolucci, 2016). The current counterterrorism framework, CONTEST, was created in 2003 following the 9/​11 attacks. It was kept secret until after the 7/​7 attacks in London, when the government was compelled to reveal the strategy to the public (Omand, 2012). At that time it was in a fledgling stage, but nonetheless signalled a shift in counterterrorism thinking, as prior to this counterterrorism was something which concentrated on foreign threats, including Irish Republican terrorism. CONTEST shifted the focus of counterterrorism to domestic actors. Through Prevent, one of the pillars of the new counterterrorism policy, the UK expanded the counterterrorism framework beyond the simply violent actor, including also the extremist actor and the so-​called ‘vulnerable’ person (Walker, 2009). While CONTEST consists of four strands –​Prevent, Pursue, Protect and Prepare –​this book deals exclusively with Prevent, the arm of CONTEST that looks to prevent people from joining or supporting terrorist causes before the criminal threshold is crossed. Of the other arms of CONTEST, Pursue is concerned with the arrest and conviction of those engaged in illegal terrorism-​related activities; Prepare is concerned with creating rapid emergency responses to terrorist attacks; and, finally, Protect is concerned with target hardening and making terrorist attacks more difficult in general. The Prevent strategy is unique within CONTEST. While Protect, Prepare and Pursue deal with actual and criminal terrorist threats, Prevent attempts to stop terrorism by stopping people from supporting or getting involved in terrorism in the first place (Heath-​Kelly, 2017b). For this reason it is sometimes described as operating in the ‘pre-​criminal’ space. 1

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

The strategy has been updated three times since inception, in 2009, 2011 and 2018. The objectives have however remained largely the same since 2006 (O’Toole, 2012; HM Government, 2018). Much of the work of Prevent attempts to tackle extremist ideologies by changing political and social milieus so that terrorism is not supported (Skoczylis, 2015). Alongside this, it also provides support to individuals through the Channel intervention programme, which attempts to stop those who are judged to be at risk of engaging with terrorism from doing so. While pre-​2011 Prevent focused on communities and targeted mostly Muslim populations in order to tackle Islamist terrorism, post-​2011 Prevent focused more on individuals and expanded to capture multiple ideologies, including the far-​r ight (Skoczylis and Andrews, 2020). Prevent has faced a lot of criticism since it began. It has been accused of spying on Muslims, perpetuating Islamophobia and securitizing the relationship between the state and British Muslims (Kundnani, 2009; Croft, 2012; Taylor, 2018). It is also accused of being an intrusive policy which responsibilizes public institutions and violates the trust held between them and those they are responsible for (Thomas, 2017). The Prevent duty, which since 2015 has required public bodies to report suspicion of vulnerability to terrorism, has also led to the accusation that in education it suppresses freedom of speech, and in other public bodies that it puts people off getting help in case they are reported to Prevent (Open Society Justice Initiative, 2016; Heath-​Kelly and Strausz, 2018). These criticisms, and responses to them, have generated a wide body of literature. However, while the involvement of women in Prevent has been ongoing since the strategy was released, how women are targeted by and receive the Prevent policy is comparatively little studied. This isn’t exactly uncommon in the wider literature on terrorism, as will be outlined in Chapter 2. Looking at how women are included in the policy underscores quite how deeply Prevent penetrates British society. With women, Prevent becomes concerned with motherhood, domestic violence, childrearing, sexual health and a whole manner of things which aren’t generally thought of as concerning counterterrorism. Whether this is right or not is sometimes judged by the standard of whether it works, in that it prevents terrorist attacks. This is not the argument taken throughout this book. Instead, this book looks at counterterrorism as something political. This draws on some of the work on policing done by Neocleous (2021), arguing that police and security work does not function to protect us from individual threats, but rather seeks to shape society and preserve the social order. Inspiration is also drawn from the work of Althusser (2014), which is revisited in the final chapter. Taking this stance necessarily requires a discussion of what terrorism is, and whether it is something concrete that can be protected against, or rather that it is what the state says it is. 2

Introduction

1.2 Terrorism and extremism as political constructs To the general public, ‘terrorism’ appears as a common-​sense idea. People are not hard-​pressed to identify an incident of terrorism, although some might debate about whether certain events are terrorism, such as very low casualty attacks (Githens-​Mazer, 2012). However, within academia the concept remains contested, with many definitions in use (Schmid, 2004). Many of these consider the political and communicative nature of violence, with the threat of harm primarily targeted at non-​combatants, and the audience being removed from the target, to be unique to terrorism (Schmid and Jongman, 1988; Della Porta, 1995; O’Keefe and Coady, 2002; Stephen, 2002; Crenshaw, 2011). Whether each condition is necessary and/​ or sufficient to the definition is however a matter of debate (Schmid, 1992, 2012; Ganor, 2002; Phillips, 2015; Holbrook, 2019). Whether terrorism is limited to non-​state actors also remains under discussion (Ramsay, 2015), with a number of authors arguing that the discipline remains too wedded to state-​centric notions of security (Jackson, 2005; Shanahan, 2010; Stampnitzky, 2013; Pain, 2014; Fisher, 2015). Most definitions however recognize the highly political and ideological nature of terrorism (Crenshaw, 1995) and the fact that terrorism usually seeks to radically disrupt dominant forms of social and political organization (Gaita, 2002). Terrorism is then thought of as something that disrupts the ‘normal’, in contrast to ‘everyday’ violence which is considered to be part of the normal function of society (Pain, 2014). States tend to worry less about watertight definitions and create their own legal frameworks to control what they consider to be terrorism (Wilkinson, 2007). As terrorism challenges the state, and in order to govern or control something, one needs to be able to point it out (Heazle, 2010; Martin, 2014). Being able to demonstrate knowledge in this way also allows governments to respond to the pressure to ‘do something’ which often occurs in times of national crisis (Ullman and Wade, 1996; Bauman, 2006; Heazle, 2010). By passing legislation, showing expertise and calling out actors as terrorists, the government creates ‘knowledge’ and demonstrates that it knows what it is doing, and therefore has the capability to act and to contain crises (Dean, 2010; Fisher, 2015; Wittendorp, 2016). A common factor in government actions against terrorism is the painting of terrorists as ‘evil’, with the state as the ‘good’ opposing them (Howell, 2007; Theodossopoulos, 2014). The disconnect between academic debates about terrorism, and the dominance of the state in producing hegemonic and legal understandings of it, underscores the social nature of the concept (Valeriano, 1982). No one can definitively point it out, but governments will legislate against it anyway, and the public usually has a rule-​of-​thumb definition about what it is. Thrackrah (quoted in Horgan, 2014) argues that this dynamic means that we can never really 3

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

create a comprehensive definition of terrorism, because it is so caught up in the political and ideological struggles of the day. The political and subjective nature of terrorism means that the framework of securitization is useful in analysing what ‘becomes’ terrorist through government intervention (Buzan et al, 1998). Securitization is concerned with threat construction, and understands the process of naming an object as a threat as a social process formed of small movements, created through security-​linked speech acts (Huysmans, 2011; Vaughn-​Williams, 2014). By ‘naming’ something as a security problem, political actors can bypass normal political functioning and thereby subject an object to security logic (Wæver, 1995). In the UK, the use of securitized discourses has allowed the government to link terrorism with immigration (Fisher, 2015) and to implement policies which severely curtail civil liberties in the name of security (Bright, 2012). However the ‘threat’ here is not necessarily objective –​the speech act which names it can be applied to things quite mundane, highlighting that ‘threat’ is what we make it (Balzacq, 2011). It is therefore something that is a necessarily social process which results in the subjectification of our understanding of terrorism. Thus, Jackson notes that the ‘language of the “war on terrorism” is not simply an objective or natural reflection of reality. … Rather, it is a deliberately and meticulously composed set of words … myths and forms of knowledge … that is designed to achieve a number of key political goals’ (Jackson, 2005, p 2). Extremism is something which discursively is closely linked to terrorism and is similarly bound up with politics and difficult to define. Schmid (2013) defines extremists as anti-​democratic, intolerant, rejecting the rule of law and believing that the ‘ends justify the means’, including the use of violence. They are political actors who sit at the edges of the political world, which is inherently defined by the ‘centre’ of politics at that time. Drawing on this, the far-​r ight are defined by Mudde (1996) as normally sharing a nationalist, xenophobic, racist, anti-​democratic, authoritarian worldview, theoretically placing them on the edges or outside of the dominant liberal-​democratic order. Similarly, Midlarsky (2011) defines Islamist extremism as believing in a ‘complete, theologically sanctioned belief system’ (p 146) which requires Muslims to engage in jihad in order to actively fight non-​believers –​including those Muslims who do not engage in jihad –​until all of the world is brought under Sharia law. This places Islamist extremists in opposition to most Muslim thought (Maher, 2017). Berger (2018) considers this absolute opposition against another to be a necessary part of the extremist identity. However, Mudde further remarks that ‘we know who they are, even though we do not know what they are’ (1996, p 233), demonstrating a similar definitional problem to terrorism. This has also plagued those trying to govern the phenomena. The proposed UK Counter-​Extremism and Safeguarding Bill, which would have defined who or what an extremist is, 4

Introduction

was successfully challenged on its excessive scope and ambiguity (Townsend, 2017). Anderson (2017) likewise noted that an inability to define extremism has led to confused policing responses, with at least three working definitions of ‘domestic extremism’ used in the UK. This assertation is reiterated by Walker and Cawley (2020) who found the lack of agreed definition for extremism to be one of the biggest obstacles in generating legitimacy and operationality for Prevent. Much of the literature recognizes that such definitional problems arise because ‘extremism’ as a social idea is in a dialectical relationship between the political centre (as mediated by the state) and its extremes (Midlarsky, 2011). This has led Godin, Mammone and Jenkins (2012) to recognize that ‘definitions and classifications may be useful as a starting point if they help delineate some of the most general traits … but they may well prove too crude to account for the phenomenon’s complexity and dynamism’ (p 3). This is largely because of the phenomenon’s necessary relation to the social world. Extremists are therefore not static individuals who can be captured and studied outside of a social context; they are, like terrorists, so intimately tied up with the order of the day that they are meaningless outside of it (Neumann, 2013; Lowe, 2017; Williford, 2019). The use of the terms ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism’ in this book should be taken within this framework. I understand both terrorism and extremism to be concepts necessarily tied to both the state and the ‘state of things’ (Butler et al, 2000). This means that ‘counterterrorism’ is ideological, in that it seeks to uphold the hegemony of the state and its associated ideological structures (Skoczylis and Andrews, 2020). This relates directly to Althusser’s concept of the ‘Ideological State Apparatus’ (2014), in that the rhetoric of terrorism, being dominated by state institutions and directed primarily against those that threaten it, functions as a kind of discursive regulatory ideal.

1.3 The study: women and Prevent This book looks to outline the relationship between women and Prevent, looking at a number of aspects of the policy. Specifically, the book rests on the research question: How does Prevent understand and include women in its policy framework and what impact does this have on women aligned with targeted groups? This includes looking at different groups, including Muslims, Black and minority ethnic (BME) women and right-​wing women, recognizing that the way Prevent is received by these groups is not the same. The different levels of implementation, including the national and local levels, are also included in this analysis, recognizing that policy is different when implemented at the street level. To answer this question, 39 interviews were conducted and 517 documents gathered between 2015 and 2021. Documents gathered looked at national policy, national police projects and one case study area in detail. Interview 5

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

data was collected from persons working with or for Prevent, and with women from two groups which are targeted by the policy –​women who are, or are racialized as, Muslim, and women from the far-​r ight or radical right milieu. Drawing on the insights of Skoczylis (2015), that Prevent delivery is localized, how Prevent delivery in relation to women differs at the national and the local level is also analysed. The argument of this book is that Prevent is gendered in delivery, and that it contains gendered assumptions about the peaceful and politically naive nature of women. Being seen as peaceful, they are useful to Prevent as pacifying agents. This role is most prominent when women are considered as mothers and as interlocutors with community members, providing the policy with access to and influence in these spheres. The value of women to counterterrorism efforts has also seen the instrumentalization of women’s rights, linking terrorism with the degradation of these rights and thus arguing that women must support counterterrorism if they want to see their rights protected. This latter point echoes prior studies of Prevent, which criticized Prevent for taking advantage of women’s struggles to encourage their compliance with Prevent (Quigley and Pratten, 2007; Allen, 2014a). The book also highlights that shifts in Prevent are largely reactionary. After many women migrated to Islamic State-​held territory in 2014, Prevent was challenged in its conception of the ‘pacific female’. Thus, it changed so that young women could be thought of as a risk. However, women were still largely seen as peaceful –​those women who left for Islamic State were framed as ‘brainwashed’, meaning they could still be inherently peaceful, but just led astray. Those who were ‘brainwashed’ are talked about in relation to a romanticism or religious naivety thought to be inherent in women. Women were also still key to the policy as mothers, who were enlisted to help stop daughters migrating to Syria. It is worth nothing here that these theses are subject to rapid change; as women are not well represented in counterterrorism, there exists the massive potential for upheaval when received wisdom is challenged. This of course happened in 2014, and ongoing public and media scrutiny of the government’s decisions after this time means that upheaval is liable to happen again. Undoubtedly, the many women held in Kurdish-​run prisons in Iraq will be an ongoing challenge to counterterrorism policy.

1.4 Reflections on working as an outsider Before outlining the book more, it is worth taking a brief aside to consider my own positionality in relation to both the project and my research participants. Although I have a gender-​neutral name (Sam), I am male. This has led to some confusion in the past –​my PhD supervisors, when interviewing me for the research position from which this book is drawn, expected a woman 6

Introduction

to turn up to the interview. Thankfully this didn’t scupper the interview, but it did give me a lesson in being careful about how I present myself in this study. To avoid such confusion with my participants every participant was made aware of who I am by being given an information sheet at the initial point of contact. Still, a few participants ventured at interview to ask why exactly I, as a man, would be interested in studying women? And how exactly I could pretend to understand their perspectives? The participants I interviewed largely accepted my position here; that women are understudied in the field, and thus it would be an interesting and viable project, and that the method used should give them a voice in the study. This never seemed to cause a real problem with those who I talked with, but there is always the possibility that there were persons I didn’t talk to because they didn’t think a man was an appropriate person for this job. My initial suspicions were that a small number of Muslim women might not be comfortable talking with me if they followed strict rules of purdah, in that sex-​segregation might mean that either they wouldn’t meet with me, or would only do so with a male family member accompanying them, although I never got the chance to test that theory. I reflected on that initial position later and realized that there were probably quite a few women who were less comfortable talking with men, for instance because they might have suffered male violence. This was something which became apparent a little later in the work, when I began talking with more feminist participants who pointed out that Prevent would likely be interested in women who had suffered such attacks. Generally, as I got to talking with various people, and reading more, my interest in the subject developed beyond the academic and found that a more engaged answer to this question tended to get a more engaged response. This involved a move from a more ‘passive’ interview technique to a more ‘active’ one, which was also more engaging. Interviews became more like conversations than reading from a script, and thus they flowed better, and felt better. Sometimes the relation between the researcher and the research is referred to as ‘positionality’ within the methodology literature –​that is, being aware of who you are, and what that brings to both the research and to the analysis. Positionality is supposed to bring more inclusivity to research, and to ensure that power differentials between researcher and participant are mitigated through awareness (England, 1994). While my positionality did develop as the study went on, it was also built into the project from the start, having grown from an interest in the philosophy of constructivism and some prior work with minorities in the Middle East. I approach positionality in a few ways in this work. Firstly, I use an epistemological framework that assumes that full objectivity is not possible, and that the social world is largely constructed (here, I use 7

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

a ‘thin constructivist’ perspective.) Secondly, I use a grounded theory methodology to try and position the voices of my participants at the front of the research, and thus to draw data from their own observations, rather than my observations of them. The former forced me to think about how talking with me might affect my participants, and the latter was to ensure that I did justice to the voices of those I spoke to. The actual methodological framework used to try and acknowledge and overcome positionality is outlined next. This section gives more details on the former point, and serves as more of a personal reflection on the research, and one which I hope might give some scholars thought as to how they can approach research with different groups. The core question of this study concerns how women of different groups interact with the political and social world, and how Prevent interacts with these worlds. As has been argued, both terrorism and extremism are political, constructed concepts. It is difficult to take these concepts outside of the social world in which they are born and see them ‘objectively’. In fact, many of the facets of our social world can be seen in this way –​we give meaning to social objects, and thus shape how they act and how we interact with them, and from this begin to feel ourselves shaped by these interactions. This is the crux of constructivism, which holds that the social world which we know is not concrete, but is rather the sum of our interpretations and perceptions, as affected by the reception of inputs from the world around us (Silverman, 2006). What is argued broadly about society is also argued about gender. It has been established in feminist theory for some time that gender is a constructed phenomenon which cannot be isolated from the social world (Spelman, 1988). The different identities we hold can be understood intersectionally, in that the other politicized identities we hold intersect with one another in complex ways (Crenshaw, 1988, 1993; Hill Collins, 2009). These identities interact in ‘simultaneous, interrelated systems of inequality based on social (group) relations of power … affected by both macro … and micro systems’ which lead to ‘multiple, invisible, intersecting forms of oppression’ (Ramsay, 2014, pp 455–​456). Thus, layers of identity can come to interact and jostle for primacy both internally and in relation to external factors (Butler, 2005). This interaction is important to acknowledge as it can lead to situations where, for instance, one identity becomes prioritized over another. For example, women might abstain from struggling for full equality in exchange for short or medium term gains, such as economic or social advantage against immigrants (Tatari and Mencutek, 2015). This study deals mainly with women, but also with Muslims, those who are not White, those who hold political identities other than my own, and those who are involved in sensitive matters of national security. I am an ‘outsider’ to all of this, and thus my positionality here must recognize that. 8

Introduction

As a White male, I am an outsider not only due to my gender, but also due to my ethnicity. I am an outsider as a non-​Muslim; with the ‘right-​wing women’ sample group, I am an outsider for not sharing similar political views. I am also an outsider to those working with Prevent, in that I am not a government employee, limiting the amount of sensitive data that can be shared with me. This is also relevant as the heated argument surrounding Prevent has seen some research faced with accusations of being part of an ‘anti-​Prevent’ agenda, preventing access to some documents (Netpol, 2018). Recognition of this is important for a number of reasons. Outsiders are trusted less, which can make it difficult to collect valid and reliable data (Bucerius, 2013). Outsiders also do not always have the necessary cultural understanding of groups to correctly interpret data or even to ask the correct questions (Shah, 2004). Care needs to be taken to avoid ‘misaligned perceptions’, which can be particularly problematic in that ‘any effort to understand culture-​related phenomena … may lead researchers to either make false assumptions, or to perceive differences as an oddity, both of which can misdirect the research interview, the nature of the data, and the interpretations’ (Shah, 2004, p 7). My initial position in this research was to recognize this fact: there are some things I simply won’t understand. I also understood that there are some things I won’t empathize with, mainly with regards to political positions that I don’t agree with. Therefore, I am a guest in the worlds of my participants, and have to work hard to remind myself that my interpretation is that of an outsider. This isn’t always a bad thing though. Being an outsider has advantages, letting the researcher see things that perhaps for the insider are so mundane as to be missed. The need to maintain a positive self-​identity can also impede insiders from being self-​critical (Škulj, 2003). Thus, outsiders can offer new understandings through their ability to look at concepts from different perspectives (Bucerius, 2013). Groups are also sometimes more willing to break cultural rules in speaking to an outsider, especially when trust in participant protection is high (Bucerius, 2013; Sanders-​McDonagh, 2014). The outsider can also act the fool a little, and ask questions that an insider might consider to be stupid (Arksey and Knight, 1999; Bucerius, 2013). This is of course a rather general overview of my positionality, but one which hopefully outlines a little of the perspective from which this research comes. It is worth pointing out, also, that being an ‘outsider’ is something that holds different currency for different persons. One right-​wing participant I interviewed invited me on a march at a later date; I joined a Muslim participant for a burger at the takeaway she worked at after the interview. Others, however, disappeared shortly after speaking with me, had some suspicions about me, or simply treated me with professional courtesy and subsequent distance. Therefore being an ‘outsider’ is not something which is universal, and received the same way by every person interviewed. The 9

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

way that this difference is dealt with is outlined in the following section on research design.

1.5 Research design The research for this book was qualitative and followed a grounded theory methodology. The main reasons for choosing such a design and method are twofold. Firstly, not much work has been done on women and Prevent, and thus an exploratory design would be useful (Stebbins, 2001). As an outsider, a design which afforded deep, inductive knowledge generation would also be most appropriate, so that knowledge is not ‘imposed’ on the subject and misaligned perceptions are avoided (Keddy et al, 1996). That the research would be done with minority communities meant it was also important that they had a measure of control over the knowledge produced (Olesen, 2007). A qualitative research design was also appropriate given the research questions. The questions demanded data on the development, implementation and reception of policy. The development of Prevent since 2003, and its reception since then, present further demands and problems to be considered. Firstly, Prevent has been through four iterations since its public release in 2006. As the study is concerned with how women are understood within the policy, this fact means that a simple review of the current state of the policy would not cover the development of women’s role since 2006. A more historical view is therefore necessary (J. Anderson, 2014). Additionally, while Prevent is developed strategically at the national level, it is delivered by a mixture of different actors at the national, regional and local authority level (HM Government, 2011b; Acik et al, 2018). The local authority level is also divided by ‘Tier’. ‘Tier 1’ denotes the highest priority and these areas receive funding and a Home Office appointed coordinator. ‘Tier 2’ receives project funding, but not coordinator funding. ‘Tier 3’ areas are expected to deliver Prevent, but are not provided with funding or a coordinator, and instead are expected to deliver Prevent using their own resources (Mastroe, 2016). This creates structural differences in delivery, which is explored further in Chapter 4. Studies of policy make it clear that policy delivery is not always what is intended at the development stage (Rose, 1973) and that this differentiation is affected by local policy actors and the local context (Lipsky, 2010). The project took all this into account by analysing Prevent from three vantage points. I drew on documentary data from: (1) the national Prevent policy literature; (2) national police projects; and (3) from one case study area. In this book the national documentation provides an overview of the Prevent strategy, its development and the core conceptual ways in which Prevent thinks about women. These documents were analysed from the years 2006 to 2021, which provides a historical overview of the development of 10

Introduction

the policy. The national police projects provide two case studies of women-​ focused projects, demonstrating how Prevent operationalizes itself on a national level. The local case study provides an example of how local risks, structures and policy delivery mechanisms affect the delivery of the policy, and how the national strategy’s understanding of how women should be included becomes translated to the local level. A qualitative design allows for the unpacking of concepts from the national policy, and comparing how they appear in different local and national delivery contexts. The qualitative design allows us to understand the reason for these differences. Importantly it also allows the study to consider where women are missing, and explore what this means for how women are understood in the policy. The research questions also demanded data which interrogates how people understand and experience Prevent. This can be accessed through interview (Arksey and Knight, 1999). Taking this into account, this study draws on interview data from three groups, from five different areas. As delivery of Prevent varies by local authority (Skoczylis, 2015) interviews were conducted over five different locations. More on this is found in the section on case selection. The interviews include two groups of women: Muslim and BME women who are commonly racialized as Muslim (Sharma and Nijjar, 2018); and women within the far-​r ight and radical right milieu (Mudde, 1996). It also draws on interviews with those working to deliver Prevent (henceforth ‘Prevent professionals’), which includes government employees working on Prevent and third sector organizations who deliver the Prevent policy. More on these groups can be found in the section on interviews. While interviews are necessary to understand the experiences and motivations of both women and Prevent professionals, Prevent is contentious and this creates problems. Previous research on Prevent has highlighted that the policy is perceived to be stigmatizing and Islamophobic by some (Mythen et al, 2013; Abbas and Awan, 2015). Previous work has found that this has led to some participants refusing to take part in research (Skoczylis, 2013). However, some argue that much of this negative affect is displaced, and that an ‘anti-​Prevent’ lobby pushes misleading information (Khan and McMahon, 2016; Bell and Greer, 2018; Clements et al, 2020). This has resulted in the misrecognition of Prevent, with the policy being blamed for negative outcomes that it had no hand in (Citizens Commission on Islam, Participation and Public Life, 2017). Prevent is also confusing –​at times confused with Pursue (Skoczylis, 2015) or other safeguarding mechanisms (Lundie, 2019). Local contexts also change how policies are delivered on the ground, meaning the data found in documentary analysis might not always be fully accurate. While interview methods are appropriate in that they can build trust, access vicarious knowledge and interrogate ambiguous claims, there are also problems that need to be overcome. This is partially done by using two types of data, ‘triangulating’ the study (Flick, 2004) and accounting 11

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

for some of the problems discussed (Bradley, 1995). These problems are also accounted for in the analysis.

1.6 Case study areas As this study is building comparisons between the national and local level, case selection was vital. There is only so much time available for research, and so not every case could be studied. Cases were therefore carefully selected in this study, not least because the local nature of counterterrorism means that one area will be different to another. Case studies were selected here because they could provide comprehensive information, answer the research questions and complement each other in outlining the operation of Prevent across different sectors, areas and timeframes. This section provides more information on case selection. Chapter 4 deals with the national policy literature. The literature surveyed had to be policy, reports, research, review or guidance related to Prevent from any ministry, agency or institution that deals with Prevent on a national basis, from between 2005 and 2021. Regional documents were included when directly referenced in national documents. Thus, it includes documents ranging from the working groups used in 2005 to develop Prevent policy, the debates conducted by the Metropolitan Police Authority in 2007, to guidance for the NHS issued by the Department of Health. This chapter attempts to be as comprehensive as possible within the limits of what can be accessed in relation to sensitive government reports. As such it looks to provide the foundation for the later analysis of how women appear in national and local work. However it is clear that there will be a number of documents missing, given the secretive nature of some Prevent related work. The two case studies of national Prevent projects appearing in Chapter 5, on Shanaz and Prevent Tragedies, were selected for relevance and the availability of information. While there are many nationally implemented Prevent projects, this chapter looked to analyse projects that dealt specifically with women. This would provide an analysis of how women appear in projects which are not affected by local practices, which can distort policy. The cases were selected after research was conducted into national Prevent projects that targeted only women. Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were sent relating to seven relevant projects that were identified. While some data was collected on all projects identified, requests for data regarding Shanaz and Prevent Tragedies were the most successful, and these projects were used as case studies. Therefore these case studies represent a convenience sample (Henry, 1990) and are not representative of all national projects. They also do not provide an analysis of how women might appear in ‘gender-​blind’ national projects. Such analysis does however appear in Chapter 6, albeit only at a local level. 12

Introduction

Chapter 6 provides a case study of how Prevent policies relating to women have been implemented in one local authority area. The area has been given the pseudonym ‘Townsville’. Only Tier 1 areas were investigated, for three reasons. In 2015 there were 30 Tier 1 and 7 Tier 2 areas (Home Office, 2014a). By selecting Tier 1 areas, there would be more areas to select for study. In addition, Tier 2 areas operate ambiguously in relation to funding and oversight by the government, being given most of what a Tier 1 area is given, but not all. Townsville was selected after data was collected on the available documentation of 30 Tier 1 areas. I was specifically looking for areas that had previously published local strategy documents either through FOI or publicly, and the level of information available in those documents. Townsville was identified alongside five other areas as possible Tier 1 areas for investigation. Those areas were sent FOI requests for strategy documents. Townsville returned the most information through those documents, and thus was selected as the case study area. Townsville itself has been a Tier 1 area since 2006, and has seen a number of local persons charged under the Terrorism Act 2006. It is also an area with a young, diverse population, and with a high rate of inequality and unemployment. There is an active citizen journalism scene, as well as a prominent ‘anti-​Prevent’ lobby. The documents in this chapter had to be directly related to Prevent, or Prevent must have had a direct influence in the writing of that document. For instance, Townsville’s Violence Against Women Strategy is included in the analysis. This is because the Townsville Community Safety Strategy ties the two policies together, and Prevent is listed as influencing the strategy. All other agencies or bodies listed in this strategy were investigated, and included if Prevent influenced them. Chapters 7 and 8 include interview data from the five case study areas. These areas correspond to local authorities which deliver Prevent at the ground level. These areas remain anonymous to protect the participants. These interviews were carried out between 2016 and 2018. Two of these areas were designated Tier 3 during the interview period, and three were designated Tier 1. That each area is able to create its own local strategy, and the structural differences between Tier 1 and Tier 3 areas, meant that a comparison between different areas of the same tier, and areas of different tiers, was necessary to build an accurate picture of how Prevent is delivered across England. The study areas are a convenience sample, based on the availability of research participants. Thus, the interviews are not generalizable, but provide a comparison between Tier 1 and Tier 3 areas, and this was considered the most important point for comparison.

1.7 Research method This project looked to generate inductive data that would be appropriate in an outsider context. As such, it uses a Constructivist Grounded Theory 13

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

(CGT) methodology. CGT argues that we need to understand how people construct meaning before we can understand their actions, as the latter are mediated through the former (Charmaz, 2017). As such CGT seeks to locate analysis within the data, using a process of inductive reasoning to create knowledge (Corbin and Strauss, 1990). This method emphasizes the immersion of the researcher into the constructed world of others, and uses an iterative process to encourage the exploration of unfamiliar ground. Therefore, it is useful in overcoming the outsider’s perspective. The process of CGT involves data being collected and analysed in ‘spirals’ –​ data is collected and coded, and those codes are analysed. New data is then collected using theoretical sampling, with participants selected so as to saturate those codes and to generate more codes. Analysis is finalized when theoretical saturation is achieved (Hood, 2010). Data analysis and data collection therefore happen side by side in a process of ‘constant comparison’ (Lauridsen and Higginbottom, 2014). As the process ends with saturation, sample size is based on the density of data collection rather than sample representativeness (Morse, 2007). As such, this methodology is explorative of an under-​researched topic, rather than claiming wider representation (Kelle, 2007). Data collection emphasizes trying to draw out participants’ understanding of terms, situations and events in order to understand their assumptions and the meaning they assign to their experiences (Glaser and Strauss, 2009). In this way, the study starts ‘moving from the particular to the more general … it implies moving up from the more detailed descriptive to the more abstract, conceptual level’ (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007, p 15). The analysis took into account the constructivist epistemology. After being collected, the data was assigned in-​vivo codes, and the most frequent and theoretically useful were grouped into categories. As data was added, categories were further grouped into concepts –​theoretically rich and explanatory datapoints.

1.8 Documentary data Documentary data forms the basis of Chapters 4, 5 and 6. In total, 517 documents were collected and analysed. The documents collected pertained to the national level, including national Prevent strategy and guidance documents, to nationally implemented Prevent projects, and the local level, in relation to a single area given the pseudonym ‘Townsville’. Documents were collected through open source research and the use of FOI requests. The majority of the national strategy documents were available publicly, and were retrieved by using Google searches and from relevant government websites. Documents which were not available in this way were collected through FOI requests (see Information Commissioners Office, 2017). 14

Introduction

Chapters 5 and 6 contain the majority of documents collected via FOI. Document collection for both chapters began with advanced Google searches, looking for mentions of relevant pages across the internet. This included operators searching for project names, locations and agencies relevant to the chapter. In Chapter 6, documents for both projects were collected by performing Google searches across the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and Home Office websites. These documents revealed names of relevant persons, who were then contacted for interview, and who also gave advice on retrieving more documents. For the Shanaz project, it was advised that every police force ran their own Shanaz network. Forty-​ one police forces were then sent a FOI request for their relevant Shanaz documents. Six were successful, with the rest stating that either no documents were held or refusing the request under section 12 or section 24(2) of the FOI Act. Twenty-​eight documents related to Shanaz were retrieved in total. The Shanaz website was also accessed and each page downloaded for analysis, although little remained of the original site (Shanaz Network, 2020). However the documents retrieved via FOI, including project strategy documents, project outlines, newsletters and annual general meeting minutes, were substantial. For Prevent Tragedies, requests were made to both the Metropolitan Police Service and the NPCC. Five internal documents were retrieved in this way. The Prevent Tragedies website was also accessed, and each page downloaded and saved for analysis (Prevent Tragedies, 2020). Documents for Townsville were collected in a similar way. The Townsville council website was searched for related documents. The online records of Townsville’s council and committee sessions were searched, and older FOI requests were collected. The latter included strategy documents from 2009 to 2011. This process allowed me to ‘map’ the Prevent landscape within the area, highlighting organizations, persons and projects that had prior involvement in Prevent. Townsville was then sent a number of FOI requests which asked for the release of local Prevent plans from 2011 until 2021; any evaluation or scrutiny documents related to Prevent; and a list of Prevent funded projects. All Prevent delivery plans were released, and any gaps in information were filled in as far as possible through additional research. This including looking through the Companies House accounts of local organizations known to be working with Prevent and searching internet archives for project websites. This enhanced the ‘map’ of the area’s activities beyond that which the local authority released. Two-​hundred and fifty-​one documents were collected in this way, spanning 2009 to 2021. Varying amounts of information was found for every project undertaken in Townsville. This information ranged from adverts and news reports, to full internal case study reports and online archives of delivered projects. Townsville remains anonymized as while no interviews were used for this chapter, regional Prevent professionals with responsibility for Townsville were interviewed. 15

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

1.9 Interviews Interviews were semi-​structured, and this data appears in Chapter 5, 7 and 8. The three participant groups –​Prevent professionals, Muslim and BME women, and right-​wing women –​were interviewed in the five case study areas noted previously. Interviews were chosen as a data source as they are best positioned to generate data on perceptions and experiences. They are able to ‘find out what is in and on a person’s mind … to access the perspective of the person being interviewed [and are able to] examine the context of thought, feeling and action’ to uncover and explore meaning in detail (Arksey and Knight, 1999, p 32). Thus, interviews were used to understand the perspectives and experiences of both of sample groups. This project used semi-​structured interviews as a way of using a constructivist epistemology, while still maintaining a measure of reliability and comparison (Foddy, 2003). Interviews were selected as they are both flexible and rigorous. They can be sensitive to the needs of the participants, allowing rapport to be built while also being able to talk about difficult subjects. This was helpful in approaching difficult subjects. The interviews were planned using a funnel sequencing method, which began with shorter, easier questions to aid confidence and rapport, before moving on to more difficult questions. However in practice the interviews were led by the participants –​after reading the information sheet, many came to the interview with an idea of what they wanted to say, and after a brief introduction by myself typically began talking at length about their thoughts and feelings on the subject. Some interviewees talked at length from the start –​one talked for 20 minutes before I managed to look at my question sheet. While the planning of questions was needed for ethical approval for the project, the attitude and openness of the participants meant that the interviews were a lot more unstructured than initially planned. This was however an advantage, as it allowed new topics to spring into the study without any prompting, as recommended in grounded theory. More than anything, the question sheet ended up functioning as a reminder sheet that was used to check off any missed topics after the initial conversation had died down. This meant that I didn’t miss any of the original topics that I wanted to talk about, but ended each interview with a wealth of new information and insights to feed into the grounded theory analysis.

1.10 Sampling This study used snowball and theoretical sampling to find interview participants. Theoretical sampling was used to flesh out interesting emergent categories in the analysis, following CGT methodology (Charmaz, 2014). 16

Introduction

Snowball sampling was used to find new participants. There is some concern that snowball sampling can introduce bias (Goodman, 2011; Ellard-​Gray et al, 2015), particularly where participants will not pass on the information of participants they feel to be too vulnerable, or irrelevant to the study (Heckathorn, 1997). Building trust and rapport is important to overcoming this (Foddy, 2003), and I found that the more open I was with participants, the more likely they were to pass on information. This was most relevant with the ‘women’ sample groups, who had no professional reason to speak with me. Participants were gathered via snowball and theoretical sampling until saturation of categories occurred (Guest, 2006). Problems were anticipated when sampling each group. Women who hold far-​r ight views were thought to be difficult to find, as they might not express their views publicly, as such views are generally frowned upon within wider society and they could fear the ramifications of doing do (Feinberg, 2017; Poulter, 2018). This would make them less visible in the general population and possibly less willing to participate. Within the Muslim community some women might also be unwilling to talk with a male researcher or a researcher looking into Prevent (Ahmed, 1992; Barlas, 2002; Guru, 2012; Hillenbrand, 2015). People affected by counterterrorism also tend to shy away from participating in research on it (Ellard-​Gray et al, 2015). Some Prevent professionals, particularly those working in the third sector and receiving Prevent funding, might want to mask this to avoid the backlash that comes with working on a contentious policy, or to avoid being misrepresented. These problems are associated with hidden populations, where no sampling frame exists, or members of the population avoid participating in research (Heckathorn, 1997). Such populations might want to remain hidden for privacy reasons, or to avoid the possible negative social, economic, political or legal consequences of revealing themselves (Heckathorn and Salganik, 2004; Ellard-​Gray et al, 2015). Participants might remain hidden when the researcher simply looks in the wrong place for them, or does not commonly enter or have knowledge of their social space (Heckathorn, 1997, 2002; Ellard-​Gray et al, 2015). While it was hoped that a chance to offer an account which challenges assumptions would overcome these problems, further steps were also taken (Corbin and Strauss, 1990; Keddy et al, 1996; Sanders-​McDonagh, 2014). Participants were ‘mapped’ early into the research. This involved researching the populations under study to understand their demographics, locations and any noted problems with contacting them. Then, the internet and personal contacts were used to locate community, political and social organizations which represented the populations or within which they could be found (Mammone et al, 2012; Ali, 2015; Sutherland, 2020). As the research continued, this task was made easier with the assistance of snowball sampling and recommendations from the participants. For instance, the knowledge of a 17

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

Table 1.1: Participants Participant type

In national delivery

Prevent professional

5*

Right-​wing women Muslim and BME women

In Tier 1 area

In Tier 3 area

Total

9

5*

18

n/​a

7

2

9

n/​a

12

12

*One participant worked both nationally and in a Tier 3 city, and so appears twice. They are counted once for the total.

local Prevent officer meant that those ‘hidden’ Prevent-​funded organizations became known to me, and through vouching were willing to talk. As a further way to overcome hidden populations and to increase the theoretical power of the sample, some women were approached as representatives of Muslim community organizations, speaking on behalf of themselves as well as giving the perspectives of women who had approached their organization. This includes organizations working on Prevent related issues. This allowed some voices from the more hidden members of the Muslim population to be heard. Organizational affiliations are included in the Appendix. A number of right-​wing women were also members of political or journalistic organizations and gave similar perspectives. The organizational and/​or political affiliations of the right-​wing women are included in the Appendix. In total, 39 participants were involved in this study. More details on participants, and any group-​specific measures taken, are provided in Table 1.1. A full table of participants, with corresponding interview codes, is provided in the Appendix.

1.10.1 Prevent professionals Eighteen Prevent professionals were interviewed as part of the research. To ensure anonymity, the locations in which these professionals work are referred to simply by the ‘tier’ under which their locale falls in Prevent. Prevent professionals were contacted either by their office email address, or through social media. After interview, participants were asked to recommend other Prevent professionals working in the local area. The endorsement of the local Prevent officer meant that most affiliated organizations cooperated. However, full access was not granted to the entire network of Prevent-​affiliated organizations –​statutory organizations such as schools and hospitals were the least likely to give access beyond an assigned Prevent 18

Introduction

officer. Some organizations also did not reply to any contact. However, the open source and FOI techniques used in documentary data collection was sufficient in revealing background data on them, providing additional local context. Almost all Prevent professionals interviewed were dedicated Prevent staff, or part of an organization that gets a substantial amount of funding from Prevent.

1.10.2 Muslim and Black and minority ethnic women, and right-​wing women The populations of ‘Muslim women’ and ‘right-​w ing women’ are understood in a particular way in this study. Women referred to as ‘right-​ wing women’ are women who are active in the far-​r ight and radical right milieu (Mudde, 1996). This captures nationalists and right-​wing populists as well as Identitarians and counter-​jihadists. This descriptor was chosen after conversations with right-​wing interviewees indicated that they would be unwilling to participate in the research should they be called ‘extremist’ or ‘far-​r ight’. Additionally, not all the participants in this category could be called ‘far-​r ight’ or ‘extremist’, but rather are active in that milieu without necessarily holding extreme views. However, they were referred to the research by other participants because of their mutual participation in demonstrations or organizations that involve some far-​r ight actors. Their inclusion is appropriate as Prevent is not necessarily interested only in ‘extremists’, but also in people who are beginning to involve themselves in radical networks and activism (Skoczylis, 2015). Thus, the descriptor of ‘right-​wing women’ is used, and the information in the Appendix can be used to understand more about the participants’ political views. ‘Muslim and BME women’ are understood as those persons racialized as Muslim, and thus encompasses practising Muslims as well as ‘Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian people’ who are commonly associated with Muslims and terrorism (Husain, 2020, p 4). This is important as ‘cultural and religious markers are used to distinguish bodies associated with terror threat’ and thus persons who are not Muslim but ‘look Muslim’ come to be suspicious in this way (Cainkar and Selod, 2018, p 170). As such, this sample includes practising Muslims as well as women who are ex-​Muslim, and women who are British Asian and not Muslim. These women are involved in communitarian politics and are frequently affected by Prevent’s focus on Muslims. This is because they are either racialized as Muslim or find that Prevent has affected how their political and social lives function as a side effect of its focus on Muslims. Other participants who are not Muslim or BME are included as they represent organizations that deal with Prevent related, BME or women’s issues. For brevity they are referred to as ‘Muslim women’ henceforth, even though they are not all Muslims. 19

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

Participants did not have to have had direct contact with a Prevent professional, or have been referred to Prevent, to be included. Since 2015 the Prevent duty has made Prevent ubiquitous in society (Blackbourn and Walker, 2016). The ‘whole of society’ approach of Prevent means that even those who have not been referred or been in direct contact with a Prevent professional can have a legitimate opinion about it. However, as noted previously, confusion about Prevent is rife. Each participant was asked about their level of contact with Prevent, their level of knowledge and where they get their information from during questioning to understand how they construct the policy. Twelve Muslim and BME women and nine right-​wing women participated in the research.

1.11 Outline of the book This book is going to look broadly at women in Prevent; how they are thought about, how they are included, and what this means for the women targeted. It will also look at how those women feel, and whether they think it is right and good what Prevent is doing. Each chapter also delves more deeply into a specific part of how Prevent includes and engages women. Chapter 2 provides a literature review of women in terrorism, extremism and counterterrorism. It surveys the literature and outlines the stereotypes and practices concerning women within this sphere. It demonstrates that there is a significant gap in counterterrorism regarding women, who are generally under-​theorized. It also demonstrates that this is a mistake, providing evidence for the fact that women do get involved in terrorism, and more attention should be paid to this. It also surveys the feminist literature on political violence, underscoring the interaction between gender and violence, and the fact that social structures and attitudes affects involvement in violent action. Chapter 3 provides a detailed overview of Prevent. It argues that changes to Prevent have formed two distinctive ‘eras’ of the policy, 2006–​2011 and 2011–​2022. It also outlines some of the key assumptions behind the policy and looks at how Prevent is related to the reproduction of dominant ideologies. In providing an overview of Prevent, it also explores the various criticisms of the policy and contextualizes them. It explores how the notions of risk and safeguarding, which have become prominent in the policy, are important terms in understanding how Prevent functions in relation to both the community and the individual. Chapter 4 presents an analysis of the national policy documents of Prevent. It utilizes documents drawn from FOI requests, and documents drawn from open sources. It provides a comprehensive overview of how women have been included in the policy at the national level, from 2006 20

Introduction

to 2018. The chapter demonstrates how Prevent has been gendered since inception, and how this gendering has changed over time. It shows that at the policy level, Prevent has consistently thought of women as advantageous to counterterrorism. It demonstrates that Prevent’s engagement with women goes far beyond that of a counterterrorism programme, encompassing family life, sexual health, schooling and employment. It also shows how since 2011, the language of women’s rights has been utilized in order to generate support for the policy. Finally, it begins to trace the outlines of how the post-​2011 safeguarding approach will affect women, especially in relation to motherhood and domestic violence. Chapter 5 looks at two national-​level Prevent projects –​ Prevent Tragedies and Shanaz. It uses documents drawn from FOI requests and original interview data. These projects both exclusively targeted women and have been little explored before. It thus provides an overview of how the national policy translated into practice. This chapter demonstrates how the assumptions found in national policy appear in national projects. It also demonstrates how mothers and women’s rights are instrumentalized in policy, and how Prevent seeks to capture women’s support by providing funding and infrastructure for political work beyond counterterrorism. Chapter 6 looks to understand how the national strategy unfolds in local practice, using documents drawn from FOI requests to outline how women are included in one case study area. Women are found to be conceptualized as peaceful in much the same way as in national policy and are instrumentalized similarly within the community and the family. The chapter also identifies a shift in policy from 2014 onwards. That women were found to be joining Islamic State forced a rethink in the policy. Thus, young women were from 2015 onwards thought of as ‘risky’. However, they were not thought of as violent –​rather, they were thought of as naive and as manipulated. Chapter 7 uses interview data with Prevent professionals to see how policy decisions are carried out with regard to women. This chapter demonstrates that local practitioners are more aware of the possibilities of women’s radicalization than is outlined in policy. Thus, it provides an indication of how Prevent professionals understand radicalized women. It also demonstrates some of the challenges of working with women, and how these challenges are thought of and overcome. While this chapter demonstrates some nuance in practice, it also shows that Prevent professionals work within the framework developed by Prevent, and that women are largely conceptualized in line with national policy. Chapter 8 uses interview data with women to understand how the Prevent policy affects them. This chapter explores the views of Muslim and secular BME women, and right-​wing women. Despite arguments that Prevent is largely benign and helpful, these women outline a number of reasons to be suspicious of the policy. While Islamophobia is a recurring theme for the 21

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Muslim and BME women, they also consider the policy to be damaging to both Muslim and BME women in that it views communities that are racialized as Muslim through a faith lens. This leads to the defunding of secular women’s services, and the assumption that women from these communities only view policy from a faith viewpoint. Additionally, they highlight the burden that Prevent places on mothers, and consider the assumption that women are too politically naive to be damaging. Women on the right-​wing consider Prevent to be illegitimate, policing their views beyond what should be allowed. They also consider Prevent to be too soft, refusing to properly alleviate their fears and meet their needs. This chapter argues that the debate around Prevent should expand from a simple argument as to whether it is Islamophobic and consider its intersection with wider social structures and attitudes. Chapter 9 argues that the data presented previously demonstrates the functioning of an ideological apparatus. This apparatus has a number of functions. In the first instance, Prevent seeks to create liberal subjects. These are subjects that identify with the state and the dominant ideology, and thus do not look to overthrow it, but at most, reform it. Prevent also fashions a counter-​ideology out of the myriad groups and ideologies that oppose it. Ideologies and groups that seek to overthrow the state are extremist, or terrorist, and therefore illegitimate. Women appear in this framework within a specific role; either they function as peacekeepers, or as ‘groomed’ persons. The former are stereotypically pacific, nurturing women who fit within the ‘mother’ archetype of femininity. These women provide a caring face to counterterrorism and the state. The latter are also stereotypical women, in that they are emotional and easily manipulated by men. They lack understanding of politics, and therefore any political violence they engage in is not because they look to overthrow the state, but rather because another has manipulated them into this action. This lack of understanding means that their actions are not legitimate. By providing funding and direction to women’s groups, Prevent creates spaces where women’s rights are used in service of the state. This provides the basis for criticisms of ‘carceral feminism’, which argues that feminist alliances with the state necessarily reproduce patriarchal violence, since the state is both a violent and a patriarchal actor. It also notes that women’s rights cannot be fully realized when they are attached to counterterrorism, particularly since the goals of the two differ wildly. The outcome of this can be seen particularly in the intrusion of Prevent into domestic violence spaces. By including policing in these spaces, marginalized women –​in particular irregular migrant women –​will be less able to use these services. Finally, this chapter argues that due to these insights, we should not simply analyse counterterrorism through the lens of ‘what works’. Instead, we should recognize it as political and ideological. 22

2

Women in Terrorism and Extremism in Theory and Practice 2.1 Introduction For a long time, terrorism has been assumed to be a male phenomenon. While history has given us a few women famously involved in terrorism –​ Leila Khaled, Aafia Siddiqui and Ulrike Meinhof are immediate e­ xamples –​ we have generally thought of these women as exceptional. Siddiqui, for instance, was given the moniker ‘Lady Al Qaeda’, marking her as someone special and interesting because of her presumed uniqueness. This presumption is based on long-​held attitudes towards women, wherein we think of them as primarily peaceful, maternal and caring. This means that we assume they are unlikely to engage in violent actions. This assumption has also been held by those in the counterterrorism profession. Further to this, terrorism is a political phenomenon, and we have only just begun to think of women as ‘political animals’ in recent decades. Because of this, the idea that women might be involved in political violence is even more of a challenge. Recent years have begun to challenge this notion, however. The Islamic State attracted the support of significant amounts of women, enough to cause concern for Western governments. While feminist scholars have for years studied the role of women in political violence, mainstream or ‘orthodox’ terrorism scholars have begun to take this role seriously. What was once a niche in the study of political violence is slowly becoming mainstream, with both scholar and practitioner both now taking the role of women in terrorism seriously. However, there is still some way to go before we understand and properly integrate gender and sex into studies of terrorism and extremism. A broad survey of the literature conducted by Phelan (2020) supports this notion. Women are underrepresented in the terrorism literature, and much of it implicitly sees women in terrorism and extremism as uncommon or as inconsequential. Mostly women do not appear at all, leading to the finding that there has been an under-​utilization of gender analysis in mainstream 23

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terrorism studies. An example is found in one of the most influential books on terrorism in the past decades, Marc Sageman’s Leaderless Jihad. The book profiles 500 terrorists, all of whom are men. From this he builds the ‘bunch of guys’ theory of radicalization (Sageman, 2008). Similar approaches are found in other mainstream works on terrorism, with the tendency being that only men are investigated and/​or gender is not analysed as a variable of interest (Moghaddam, 2005; Post et al, 2009; Doosje et al, 2012, 2013; Schmid, 2013; Byman, 2015; Gambetta and Hertog, 2016). The more recent theory of ‘radicalization’ has a similar problem, not paying much attention to gender (Neumann, 2013; Edwards, 2015). The result of this, as argued by Cook (Cook, 2020), is women are found to be absent in many counterterrorism efforts. The literature on extremism is similar (Couture, 2014). As the leaders of extremist groups are frequently male, much of the literature ignores the role of women within extremist groups, concentrating on the history of the group in the context of key (male) players within the movement (Mudde, 2005; Kopecek, 2007; Trilling, 2013). There are notable exceptions, including Blee (2002), Rippenyoung (2007) and Sanders-​McDonagh (2014), who explore the social and political contexts of women in extremist groups. In this, Rippenyoung (2007) notes that stereotypes of right-​wing extremists usually involve ‘angry young men’ (p 380), but notes that women are becoming more prominent within such movements. A likely reason for the first point is that extremists are prone to using physical confrontation as a strategy which frequently leads to a concentration on destructive, hyper-​masculine behaviour (Caiani et al, 2012). It is at this point that extremism turns from something which is frequently derided, but (usually) legal, to illegal action. This brings our attention to the male, violent, actor. While women and gender are both largely absent from the wider literature on terrorism and extremism, gender is becoming an increasingly interesting variable in accounting for far-​r ight voting, and looking to explain a so-​called ‘gender gap’ in the votes these parties receive. Many far-​r ight parties exist legally. As such, the attitudes, preferences and socioeconomic backgrounds of the women who vote far-​r ight is explored in far more detail than those women who are active in or support extremist groups and terrorist groups, who are harder to access (Blee, 2007). Research has also shown that there can be a close link between political parties and terrorist groups (Weinberg et al, 2009) and that ideology is important in a political party’s turn to terrorism (Weinberg and Eubank, 1990; Danzell, 2011). Thus, the attitudes of women to extremist political parties are important, and illuminating. While voting for a far-​r ight political party is not equal to being an active member of a far-​ right organization, the research reveals interesting commonalities between women and men which challenge certain assumptions about the inherent tolerance of women (Eatwell and Goodwin, 2010). Research reveals women 24

Women in Terrorism in Theory and Practice

to be enthusiastic supporters of far-​r ight political parties (Immerzeel et al, 2015). For instance, there is ‘no significant gender gap in terms of radical right attitudes’ (Harteveld et al, 2015, p 105). Women are also found to be more nativist than men (Mayer, 2013). Many of the studies find the reason for the ‘gender gap’ in far-​r ight voting behaviour to be down to multiple affects including socioeconomic status, education, political interest and issue salience (Harteveld et al, 2015; Immerzeel et al, 2015). Spierings et al (2015), however, note that despite the increasing interest in female support for far-​ right parties, there remains an assumption that these parties are primarily male-​dominated and male-​supported. The question of the paucity of women in the literature, despite the interesting evidence unearthed by studies of far-​r ight parties, is an important one. Given that many of the contemporary assumptions of sociology and political science –​that men and women are differently affected by the social, economic and political structures that permeate society (Collins, 1993; Weber, 1998; Austen et al, 2003; Meer et al, 2010; Harteveld et al, 2015; Immerzeel et al, 2015; Spierings and Zaslove, 2015) it is clear that more attention should be paid to gender in the study of terrorism and extremism. This is an issue that feminists have taken note of, and application of feminist theory provides both interesting avenues of research and explanations of why women are absent. Frequently the case is made that stereotypical ideas about women being endowed with ‘passivity, submissiveness, emotion, caring, gentleness, warmth, sensitivity, receptiveness, expressiveness and biological economy’ (Babatunde and Durowaiye, 2015, p 67) remain active within society, and that this leads to the conclusion that women are somehow not ‘naturally violent’ or are naturally more tolerant, accepting and caring of others (Galvin, 1983; Connell, 2001). Sjoberg (2012) notes that while women are doing more of what is traditionally male, the stereotypes about what women should and should not, or can and cannot do in public and in private have not been disappearing at the same pace. This leaves many people in society seeing women who occupy ‘men’s spaces’ as deviant individuals rather than as part of a social shift. The women who then occupy positions which were once exclusively male become ‘women who have become men’, rather than women in their own right. Analysis becomes concentrated on such individuals as ‘singularities’ rather than as representatives of their gender; as such, violent women can come to be seen as special cases rather than as something which anyone can become (Sjoberg, 2012). Some women interviewed in the feminist literature on political violence espouse this view themselves; activists in the Basque separatist group, ETA, interviewed about their experiences in political violence, spoke of stereotypes of the ‘masculinized woman’ or ‘the girlfriend’ being applied to female ETA members, with political violence by women being linked not to agency, but rather to the women’s relationship with men, sexuality or masculinity (Hamilton, 2008). 25

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This trope of the non-​violent women is common in accounts of female violence. Assumptions about men being aggressive and women being passive permeate deeply within society to the point where women who commit violent acts are judged as ‘doubly deviant’, breaking both social norms of non-​violence and of women being somehow inherently peaceful (Evans, 2012). Such stereotypes apply across the spectrum of political affiliation and become reinforced the more violent political action becomes (Naaman, 2008; Hoggett, 2009). The omission of women from many of the established theories and models is then perhaps reflective of wider societal ideas about the place of women in society and their capacity for violence (Naaman, 2008; Rowbotham, 2014). While women’s movements have made great strides in overcoming oppression, ideas about ‘proper women’ shying away from public life still prevail, remaining an undercurrent of thought in Western societies (Carter, 2013). This binary of the male dominating public life and the female being confined to the private sphere is just one of the stereotypes that result from what Bourdieu calls the ‘masculine domination’ of social life, in which social constructions about men and women as opposites dominate. These constructions see men as strong and women as weak; men as rational and women as irrational; and men as violent and women as non-​violent (Bourdieu, 2001). He further argues that ‘the strength of the masculine order is seen in the fact that it dispenses with justification’, leaving few people to question the truth of the construction and, importantly, these constructions to prevail as the assumptions of seemingly neutral ideas (Bourdieu, 2001, p 9). Harders (2011, p 114) follows this view that violence and gender domination is a social rather than natural fact, stating that ‘the capacity to use violence is –​in many societies and throughout much of history –​an integral part of the male habitus’, this being something which has developed from attempts to maintain male economic and political domination. These ideas are reflective of both traditional conceptions of women, which have survived from an era where women were considered as passive and emotional beings who required defending, as well as more modern ideas about biology which link testosterone with the predominance of male violence across the spectrum of criminal action (Schick, 2012). According to this primordial view, sex and race are natural and given aspects of human existence which have their own inherent biological determinants of behaviour, and as such are irrelevant to social forces such as terrorism (Alexander and Hawkesworth, 2008). While it is true that a high percentage of assaults and murders are by men (Connell, 2001) the idea that only men are violent is an aberration. Women are capable of and willing to use violence, even if it might be contextually different (Berns, 2001; Dutton and Nicholls, 2005; Mehta, 2015; Thomas and Bond, 2015). A cursory review of terrorist action across the last century reveals support for this notion; women have been and continue to be active and at times violent members of terrorist and 26

Women in Terrorism in Theory and Practice

extremist organizations. Women have been involved in organized political violence and extremist groups as diverse as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Christian Identity, the Tamil Tigers, ETA, the Red Army Faction, Hamas and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2011). Carter (2013) even finds evidence of an all-​woman far-​r ight extremist organization in Norway, and women are increasingly visible in the media as supporters of groups like Islamic State (Hafez and Mullins, 2015). In the realm of suicide attacks, Bloom (2011) reports that between 1985 and 2010 women were behind 257 suicide attacks, one quarter of the total. The recent cases of Hayat Boumeddiene and of Hasna Ait Boulahcen, alongside the some 550 women who have ‘migrated’ to Islamic State (Saltman and Smith, 2015) provide a contemporary example. Both Hayat and Hasna provided supporting roles in the attacks on both the Charlie Hebdo offices and across Paris in November, with Hayat providing logistical support and Hasna hiding one of the attackers in her apartment (Shorer, 2018; Pokalova, 2020). The women in Islamic State have likewise provided support, this time in the form of online propaganda and recruitment, providing advice and urging others to join the group (Hoyle et al, 2015; Huey et al, 2019). Clearly ‘gendered beliefs about violence … [that] imply that men fight and women don’t’ (Harders, 2011, p 141) are a social construction which reflects how we want to see society, and how we wish to structure power, rather than how it really is. This brief review demonstrates that women do take part in political violence. The remainder of this chapter surveys the literature that includes women, much of it from feminist scholars. It looks at how women are represented in the academic literature on terrorism, counterterrorism and extremism thus far, and compares it to how women appear in the wider literature on terrorism and extremism, arguing that women are mostly ignored or side-​lined. It also draws on the rich feminist literature in order to understand what our assumptions about women mean, politically and socially. This analysis finds that women who are included in counterterrorism measures are usually only done so in a heavily gendered way, which emphasizes traditional understandings of femininity, seeing violent women as deviant. This ignores the varying roles that women have played in terrorism and extremism over the years, and thus fails to accurately capture how women become and are involved in terrorism today.

2.2 The relationship between women and violence: feminist and other viewpoints The question of why to study women has been briefly covered. Here we look at how to study women in this context. A key starting point for this 27

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is the assumption that, reflecting the social environment in which violence is enacted, ‘political violence is gendered all the way down; violence is gendered, actors are gendered, impacts are gendered’ (Sjoberg, 2012, p 261). Gender itself is also something which is understood as political (Butler, 2011; Firestone, 2015). The key points of analysis produced by terrorism and extremism studies should then be considered in light of this point. This includes the idea that extremism and terrorism are complex and non-​linear, involving multiple factors which do not always lead the individual in an orderly fashion towards an extreme or violent position (Hafez and Mullins, 2015). Evidence also indicates that radicalization is intrinsically linked to identity and material conditions, a perceived threat from the ‘Other’ to social identity groups, and perceived relative deprivation (Doosje et al, 2013). As argued before, subjectivity is also important here –​in the words of Bernholz (quoted in Moghaddam, 2005, p 161), ’subjectively interpreted values and beliefs often serve as the most important basis for terrorist action’. Indeed, as already argued, both terrorism and extremism are inextricably linked to the social world. Wider perceptions of women’s place in society, and how this affects women’s involvement in terrorist and extremist groups, are then also considered here. Feminist scholars of social movements have argued that gender is a key organizing principle in social life, guiding social interactions and being the basis of structural inequalities (Massoumi, 2015). Gender is understood as ‘a system of symbolic meaning that creates social hierarchies’ which organizes social and political life and places a higher value on men and masculinity (Sjoberg, 2009). Gender in this context is considered to be different from sex, which is innately fixed to a person’s biology, and is therefore something that one is born with; in contrast, gender is theorized to be socially constructed around ‘normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one’s sex category’ (West and Zimmerman, 1987, p 27). Following de Beauvoir (2015), one is not born a woman but rather becomes one. Through gendering, sex becomes associated with certain gender roles which are ‘produced based on the expectations of the ability of each sex, as well as the moral correctness of certain tasks for each sex’ (Babatunde and Durowaiye, 2015, p 66). In general, men are associated with traits such as ‘assertiveness, independence, confidence, activeness [and] aggressiveness’ which legitimize their monopolization of political, economic and social power, and women are associated with ‘passivity, submissiveness, emotion, caring [and] gentleness’ (Babatunde and Durowaiye, 2015, p 67). Such associations assume that even if women were afforded power, they would be too inept to use it (Mitchell, 2015). This division of labour between the sexes, as well as the attendant attitudes regarding the ability of each sex to perform certain tasks, solidifies over time into social, economic and political structures which delineate power between 28

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men and women (Rowbotham, 2015). This translates into gender oppression that is institutional, symbolic and individual, which typically manifests as the marginalization of women in the public sphere through factors such as –​but not limited to –​unequal employment, unequal representation in politics and unequal education attainment, and through this being pushed into the private sphere of the home, which is, according to those who uphold traditional gender norms, the rightful place for women (Crenshaw, 1993; Immerzeel et al, 2015). Such an understanding would call into question why gender does not have a larger place in the analysis of terrorism and extremism. If we take the ideas of dominant theories –​that grievance, social networks, ‘othering’, perceived identity threat, poverty, political power, occupation and perceived injustice, among numerous other factors, are contributory or causal (Crenshaw, 1988; Della Porta, 1995; Moghaddam, 2005; Schmid, 2005a, 2013; Sageman, 2008; Doosje et al, 2012) –​then the structuring power of gender necessitates its inclusion. Galvin (1983) in her socio-​psychological account of female terrorists draws on this in writing that ‘the decision to engage in terrorist activity … is often quite different for a woman than a man’ (p 30), arguing that the social forces and power structures that work to affect men in general society also affect women, but do so differently by consistently favouring men. As Gonzalez-​Perez (2008) writes, ‘we must recognise that women comprise a self-​conscious, dynamic sector of our society which often perceives itself to be an oppressed majority … that oppression mirrors all of the … classic conditions conductive of terrorist violence’ (p 15). As women become more successful within society, they may then begin to perceive the reality of blocked rewards and the ‘glass ceilings’ which constrain them as women, and as such begin to demand social change (Gonzalez-​Perez, 2008). Women thus have a legitimate political grievance which they can call upon to mobilize for action, and perhaps the only reason that we do not recognize it is because of inherent attitudes about women’s place in the world and their capacity for violence and extreme political action. However, a charge frequently levelled at liberal feminism is that it is hampered by its (supposed) colour-​blindness (Ware, 2015; Savali, 2016). Crenshaw (1993, p 1243) strongly follows this line in writing that ‘contemporary feminist and anti-​racist discourses have failed to consider intersectional identities such as women of colour’, leading to the movement prioritizing White women’s experiences as the dominant identity over those of women of colour. It also leads to the kind of essentialized constructions of race and ethnicity that led liberal feminism to align with neoliberal interventionism (Fraser, 2013; Riley, 2013) thinking that all oppression of women is essentially the same and ignores difference within the group, or analyses them as a problem of culture and not of gender or class (Manuel, 2006). 29

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As race, gender and class are considered by many to be fundamental traits determining identity it would be unwise to not consider how each identity can intersect and interact ‘with exiting vulnerabilities to create another dimension of disempowerment’ (Crenshaw, 1993, p 1250). Locating oppression within intersectional identities allows for a more nuanced analysis that can understand how gender problems can be compounded by racism or classism, and that one can be ‘situated within at least two subordinated groups that frequently pursue conflicting political agendas’ (Fraga, 2005, p 417). Islamophobia has, for instance, led to Muslim women being marginalized within society as well as within some feminist discourses which have argued that veiled women are ‘giving free reign to … the highest patriarchy on the planet’ (Delphy and Broder, 2015, p 139) and, as such, exclude them from women’s rights campaigns as persons who have internalized oppression and cannot be trusted. As ‘images of veiled women are deployed to confirm the need for white man’s protection’ (Salime, 2007, p 8) those Muslim women who genuinely suffer from oppression and coercion are pushed out of the very movement that could protect their rights and their agency. Evidently such practices also ignores those women who choose to veil (Sperry, 2013). They also prevent minority women from organizing effectively against the strong social forces that require banding together to overcome, leaving them at the wayside to pick up the scraps left behind by more successful and more dominant women who are able to take advantage of the organizing power of feminism (Kandiyoti, 1988). Returning to the theses of terrorism, radicalization and their causes, evidently a complex phenomenon which is reliant on several contributing factors will not be better explained by simply ‘adding women and stirring’, but rather by understanding gender as one factor which itself is affected by other factors in parallel. As terrorism and extremism are, essentially, concerned with political power, such an analysis of power both within and between groups is necessary to understand the why and the how of terrorism and extremism, especially when returning to the concepts of grievance, perceived injustice and perceived group threat.

2.3 Women in terrorist and extremist groups: joining Following the assertation that women do get involved in political violence, but that their involvement is contextually different, the question of why and how women get involved is due scrutiny. This section surveys the literature that explores this question. As politics is a profession traditionally cornered by men, terrorism too remains a ‘male engineered and a male dominated activity … [t]‌he male terrorist struggling for power is not about to share it with the female, though he welcomes her aid and actively seeks to co-​opt it’ (Galvin, 1983, p 30). Considering political power has only been extended to women very recently, it is perhaps understandable that one of the last 30

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vestiges of male-​dominated politics is one which is inherently violent and able to defend internal power structures with force. The strong relationship between extremism and violence also lends itself well to the maintenance of male-​dominated power structures, with groups being more able to police membership and leadership through violence or intimidation (Ellis et al, 2015). That extremists are typically opposed to compromise and equality means that such policing is more likely to go unopposed (Schmid, 2014). That said, as feminist ideals become mainstream and as women pursue equality, it is likely that the social norms constraining violent women will fall away just as other political and social constraints have. If the work of the terrorist is to gain power through violence, there is little real reason to exclude women, ‘[f]or as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest’ (Hobbes et al, 2014, XIII.1). Despite the incorrectness of thinking a certain pacific femininity prevents ‘normal’ women from engaging in terror, structural differences between men and women in society, as well as interpersonal and attitudinal differences, do create different contexts for man and women joining terrorist groups (Galvin, 1983). While women, in the same way as men, join political groups in order to assert their rights, air grievances, support their goals and articulate preferences (Thomas and Bond, 2015), these grievances and goals are quite different due to contrasting structural, institutional, interpersonal and individual factors, each of which is influenced by gender (Massoumi, 2015). For instance, ‘fear of crime’ for women is vastly different than for men; from a woman’s perspective this usually involves fear of sexual assault by male intimates or strangers (Spalek, 2005). Being exposed to sexual violence –​while not uniquely female –​is something which is overwhelmingly experienced by women and begins to highlight why women might have different reasons for joining terrorist or extremist groups to men (Alexander and Hawkesworth, 2008). For instance women in Palestine have joined terrorist groups to utilize the increased social and political power that comes with joining an armed group to overturn familial control of women’s bodies (Yarchi, 2014). Zahira Kamal, former Women’s Affairs minister for the Palestinian Authority, takes the similar view that women fighters are challenging both the second class nature of women within Palestinian society as well as the Israeli occupation (Naaman, 2008). These reasons are gendered, in that they are unique to women. Studies of women’s involvement in the Northern Ireland conflict further illustrate how gender can affect political mobilization and the choice to engage in or support political violence. It is clear from the wealth of data on this conflict that women not only provided both material and ideological support to both the nationalist and the loyalist paramilitaries, but that they did so while being aware of their position as women within the conflict. One female IRA volunteer states that: 31

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[M]‌y decision to become a volunteer was actually to do with my feminist background … the thing that actually influenced my decision was the women on the ground, the women who were running their homes single-​handedly, running their kids, going to the jails, and were very instrumental in the political campaigns on the streets. (Corcoran, 2006, p 144) Indeed, a number of accounts of the conflict given by women include a gendered perspective on their decisions to support or oppose the paramilitaries or the associated nationalist or loyalist parties. This is not surprising given the highly gendered nature of Northern Irish society at the time, dominated by the Catholic church and its traditionalist ideology (Aretxaga, 1997). Women becoming involved in the conflict –​whether through choice or by simply being caught up the militarization of everyday life –​would experience this gendering interact with violence through the practices of both the paramilitaries and the state forces. In a society where the woman’s body is to be jealously guarded for the husband or for God, and in which the household is the sphere of women’s control, the experience of strip searches, house raids and sexual violence were interpreted by nationalist women as ‘violations of their bodies and personal integrity’ (Aretxaga, 1997, p 52). Likewise, the smuggling of weapons in prams and in women’s bodies, dirty protests with menstrual blood and the defiance of women on ‘hen patrols’ would highlight gender within society and resistance by turning its logic on its head (Fairweather et al, 1984). That is not to say, however, that women simply accepted the gender roles within society and simply suffered under them or toyed with them for gain. Becoming politically aware also meant becoming aware of gender roles, and this awareness often gave rise to a want for more equality. In some cases this led to tension within political movements; for instance, the Northern Ireland Women’s Movement ‘tended to condemn what they perceived to be the dual oppression of women through “State patriarchy” and paramilitary violence’ (Corcoran, 2006, p 146). Those that did support republican or loyalist groups were able to make demands in exchange for their activism –​ as they lent a strategic advantage alongside their value as a human resource, demands for equality could not simply be swept away (Aretxaga, 1997). However male domination at the leadership level often meant that women would repress their gender consciousness in order not to split the nationalist or republican movements (Corcoran, 2006). The interactivity of gender, politics and society means that one cannot be understood without the other, and that the gendering of society runs deep enough to be analysed at all levels of political and social action. Women also are typically lower earners and hold fewer positions of power within society compared to men (Harteveld et al, 2015). They frequently face 32

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arbitrary blocks to political positions and assaults on sexual and reproductive rights (Lovenduski, 2005). Women having less wealth can make terrorist and extremist groups more attractive for material reasons; where one cannot earn a decent living through legal means, illegal options evidently become more attractive (Harteveld et al, 2015). Women have been attracted into working with Pakistani Islamist militants as couriers due to the offer of financial reward; the prevalence of the burqa in the region gives women a certain amount of anonymity which facilitates this kind of work, bolstered further by social attitudes which can prevent the searching of women (Cunningham, 2003). A lack of political power can also mean that certain ‘legitimate’ pathways for seeking political change which are open to men are not necessarily open to women, or that such pathways are narrower and more difficult to navigate. Della Porta et al (2012) believe that violence can only be understood in the context of a broader repertoire of protest, of which it is one part. In this sense, violence is a strategy, and is understood as being deployed in a rational way to meet goals. Many radical feminists in the 1970s utilized direct action and violence when they found traditional political institutions closed to them, with more liberal feminists from previous decades becoming radicalized as they realized that simple legal equality did not preclude equality of outcome (Massoumi, 2015). The networks that radical feminists drew from were also highly contextual to women, as such groups were built for women, at times excluding men (Rowbotham, 2014). A commonality between many theories is the idea that social networks play a role in an individual’s decision to join a terrorist group or in the process of being radicalized (Della Porta, 1995; Heath-​Kelly et al, 2015). Social networks can be different for men and women; in some Muslim communities, mosques are considered to be central social sites in which networking and socialization takes place, but the segregation of many mosques means that women will not be subject to the same social influences as men (Fraga, 2005). Women are also likely to form different social networks by virtue of different occupations or through ‘domestic networks’ of mothers who stay at home to look after children (Milardo, 1988). These struggles can frequently give rise to anger and frustration, which is a key formative power in social movements (Della Porta, 1995). The emotion of anger, particularly in reference to an event, is frequently seen as something which can create a ‘cognitive opening’ (Blee, 2007; Saltman and Smith, 2015) in which ‘responses to threats … are faster, stronger and harder to inhibit than response to opportunities and pleasures’ (Midlarsky, 2011, p 30). Many political groups are adept at channelling these emotions to recruit followers and sustain membership (Wolfreys, 2013). One can look to a number of contemporary feminist movements for evidence of the function of these emotions in bringing women together as a group to challenge patriarchal power (Rowbotham, 2015). 33

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These emotions are also channelled by extremist groups. Research on women within racist movements in the US have highlighted both the rational and the non-​rational aspect of joining such groups, with interviewed women’s ‘accounts of becoming a racist … filled with action, agency, and self-​empowerment’ (Blee, 2002, p 46). Highlighting both aspects in her account of women joining neo-​Nazi groups, many women ‘talk of bodily harm [which] underscores the vulnerability that justifies their entry into organized racism’ (Blee, 2002, p 53). In the context of fears of sexual assault and the racist portrayals of Black men as sexual predators of White women (Ware, 2015; Fekete, 2018), this can be understood as a uniquely feminine reason for being involved in an extremist group.

2.4 Functions of women terrorists and extremists To fully understand the role of women in terrorist groups, one needs to move beyond the narrow view of terrorists as simply the actors who commit the violence. Terrorist groups rely on networks of supporters, intelligence and logistics management to function, and as such it is necessary to understand these multiple functions in order to understand terrorism (Blee, 2002). This expansion also allows us simultaneously to look at the ‘invisible’ actors in the background who are more likely to be women. These women are more likely to be non-​combatants, even if they want to fight (Reinares, 2009). This observation can be seen more widely across groups which maintain a culture of masculinity –​Riley (2013) argues that women in state military organizations are normally confined to areas which reflect their labour in wider society –​cooking, clerical work and nursing are the most common occupations of military women. Gentry and Sjoberg (2015) illustrate this well with an account of a ‘female revolutionary who returned to the shared house one day to find a list of things to do that ended with “don’t forget to clean the fridge” ’ (p 74). This section provides an overview of the literature regarding women’s roles in, and in supporting, terrorist and extremist groups. Challenging the stereotype that women do not get involved in violence, groups such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Shining Path have utilized militant women to deadly effect; the latter even boasts a female membership of around 40 per cent, who are known to be just as engaged in violence as the male members of the group. It cannot be said that they simply act on the orders of men, either, with 8 of the 19 members of the Central Committee being women (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2011). It is more illustrative of the fact that women’s involvement in terrorist groups is strongly correlated with group demand, rather than supply (Thomas and Bond, 2015). As such, the fact that some terrorist groups do not contain any women at all is not necessarily an indication that women do not want to join such groups –​perhaps they are simply not able to do so. Considering 34

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that many theories or models of terrorism, extremism and political violence utilize case studies and profiles of terrorists and terrorist groups as their dataset, the dominance of demand in terrorism recruitment for women likely means that conclusions drawn –​or, not drawn –​about gender based on these studies are backwards. It is not necessarily women being inherently less violent that accounts for the lack of women in terror groups, but rather misogyny and sexism acting as a barrier to their advancement. Fairweather et al’s (1984) research into women in the nationalist movement in Ireland found that many women were blocked from joining or advancing in the IRA’s women’s organization, the Cumann na mBan, because ‘they didn’t take divorced women, they didn’t take women who were living with men or who had illegitimate babies … these things don’t accord with what the pure image of an Irish woman is’ (p 237). Alongside this, women play a role within the private sphere of the home as supporters of terrorism and extremism, and as providers of recruits. In Afghanistan, providing a son to an armed group ‘may be the most influential role women have. Sacrificing her man becomes her jihad and may even necessitate her participation on the battlefield’ (Dearing, 2010, p 1092). Women are additionally able to use their role in the home as ‘defenceless’ wives and mothers to shame men into fighting (Bloom, 2011). Women as wives and mothers maintain and are able to manipulate similar power structures within far-​r ight movements as they ‘embody’ the nation through purity and through birth, and as such they are able to call upon others within the movement to defend them as the literal mothers of the future race (Blee, 2002). With families being commonly understood as key sites of identity construction and socialization, they are now also being increasingly drawn into counterterrorism frameworks (Milardo, 1988; Guru, 2012). Within this space, the woman again appears as highly important in her role as a mother. It is commonly expected that women are the ‘natural’ carers of children, and are the persons in the family that not only provide the majority of care, education and socialization, but also are attuned to the emotional wellbeing of their children and partner (Barrett and McIntosh, 2015). It is in this space that the figure of the ‘mother’ appears as a person who can influence others within her family, either radicalizing or making resilient (van San, 2018; Ahdash, 2019). This is also the most common framing for women’s role in preventative counterterrorism programmes (Winterbotham, 2020). Again, it is important to remember that women taking on ‘non-​violent’ roles in such organizations does not mean that women are themselves non-​ violent; in the case of Islamic State and Al-​Qaeda, it is clear that group ideology and circumstance are the factors that ultimately dictate what role a person takes on, rather than the wishes of women themselves. While Islamic State originally forbade women from engaging in combat due to a strict interpretation of Sharia law (Saltman and Smith, 2015), increasing 35

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pressure on the group later saw them ‘reinterpret’ the Sharia in order to allow women to fight if necessary (Winter and Margolin, 2017). Both Al-​Qaeda in Iraq and Hamas undertook such a move when external pressures and the draw of strategic advantage forced them to widen their recruitment pool for fighters and bombers to include women. In doing so, they found many willing volunteers (O’Rourke, 2009; Saltman and Smith, 2015). Thus, it is noted that as conflicts go on, the more women will become involved in violent action –​necessity can simply force action (Brugh et al, 2019). That in general women are as ideologically motivated as males in joining terrorist groups (Cook and Vale, 2018), and were found to be more ideologically committed to Islamic State than their male counterparts (Schmidt, 2020) means that there is a pool of untapped recruits for those willing to use them. Groups that use this pool can take advantage of the widespread belief that women are essentially non-​violent by nature, and the fact that they are largely overlooked by security forces (Cook, 2020). This oversight has seen women approaching checkpoints in Iraq being passed through without a search by US army personnel, allowing them to smuggle weapons and goods (Bloom, 2011). Women have also occasionally been profiled in counterterrorism policy literature as non-​threatening and not worthy of surveillance (Carter, 2013). It is, then, not surprising that terrorist groups have begun to see the value in using female operatives in field operations, including the smuggling of weapons, intelligence gathering, assaults and bombings. In fact, ‘female participation in suicide attacks is expanding ideologically, logistically and regionally’ (Dearing, 2010, p 1081) and it is likely that their ability to evade security plays a role in this growth. The willingness for groups with an extremely ‘traditional’ perspective regarding gender relations to involve women is seemingly matched by the growing willingness of women to take up arms; asked about the permissibility of females joining combat, one female migrant to Islamic State replied ‘not at the moment … but maybe one day soon, it just might happen … which I cannot wait for’ (Saltman and Smith, 2015, p 35). It should be noted, however, that increased female participation does not necessarily mean that such groups are becoming less sexist. An increase in recruitment does not necessarily result in an increase in women leaders, or even an increase in women’s role in the planning of operations they will take part in. Women are less likely on average to hold leadership positions. In both street-​level movements and political parties, leadership positions are dominated by men (Harteveld et al, 2015). Massoumi (2015) argues that this is typical of movements and parties across the political spectrum, prevailing attitudes being that women are ill-​suited to the pressures of leadership. Within the far-​r ight, hyper-​masculinity and misogyny further limit how far a woman can rise. Side-​lining of women’s places within such movements is compounded by the ‘glorification of raw masculine violence 36

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that attracts young male recruits’ (Blee, 2007, p 124) and the typically masculine rhetoric of these groups (Caiani et al, 2012). This is reflective of far-​r ight ideas about the place of women in society –​as the bearers of the next generation, a woman’s place is in the home serving her husband and her nation by ‘transmit[ting] the blood, tradition and language, and be[ing] prepared to fight if necessary’ (Blee, 2002, p 118). Similarly, Islamist extremist rhetoric places women solely in the private sphere (Ispahani, 2016). The role women play in terrorist groups also seems to differ when broken down by group type. It appears that ‘high levels of female terrorist activity appear predominantly in domestic terrorist groups because the characteristics of these groups is more conductive to the rejection of traditional gender norms’ and in internationally oriented terrorist groups, ‘women function in primarily supportive roles … women may participate, but their activity is controlled and limited by the entrenched gender norms of their culture’ (Gonzalez-​Perez, 2008, p 6). That women choose to join such groups is usually puzzling to many, and likely leads to the extensive use of the ‘victim’ trope in media reports on women terrorists. There are, however, very few uniquely female terrorist or extremist groups for women to join. Most established movements are built by men, who are able to mobilize already existing political power more easily and are better accepted as ‘leaders’. Internalized gender roles also affect how militant women are seen by other women; talking about the decision of an Irish nationalist woman to join the IRA, Fairweather et al (1984) writes ‘if she were to be openly militant as a woman, with whom could she possibly identify? The women in her small ghetto would frustrate and anger her with their timidity and passivity, their readiness to be victims’ (p 177). As few people of any gender are willing to take the risk of starting their own illegal or extremist organizations, that leaves women to join established movements in order to access the political, economic, ideological and social resources that these groups have accumulated. However, many of these groups –​not limited to, but especially Islamist and far-​r ight groups –​are misogynistic and at times actively pursue an agenda which would reverse the social, economic and political gains made by women in the last century (Cowden and Sahgal, 2018). While it is somewhat odd that women would join movements so opposed to their interests, understanding terrorism and extremism as political rather than a purely social, cultural or psychological malady may shed some light on this (Abu-​Lughod, 2002). As explored previously, many Irish women struggled with balancing Irish republicanism with the patriarchal values of republican groups. Many of these women fought the battles for gender equality within their groups where they deemed it appropriate, but side-​lined their gender identity when it risked undermining republican unity, their political identity overriding their gender identity (Fairweather et al, 1984). Similarly, the ‘Muslim Sisters’ of the Muslim Brotherhood also 37

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navigated a complex ideological environment where gender rights had to be balanced with or subordinated to broader political goals to which the Sisters were aligned (Tadros, 2018). Such a move is not uncommon in politics, with people as a rule holding more than one identity and side-​lining conflicting identities in favour of the one which they consider to be most salient, whether emotionally or rationally. Exploring seemingly irrational voting behaviour can give some insight into this. The Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, for instance, supports what it calls the ‘traditional family’ and accepts the underrepresentation of women in the labour market as a natural occurrence. It also provides for large families as a way of discouraging abortion (Akkerman, 2015). Such positions are typical of far-​right political parties. Despite the positions of far-​right parties being misogynistic, women do vote for them. In seven surveyed countries, Spierings and Zaslove (2015) found that 8.2 per cent of women vote for the far or radical right, compared with 11.6 per cent of men. Evidently despite their positions towards women, a number of women consider the positions of the far-​r ight to be salient enough to vote for them. Cutts et al (2011) identify five key drivers of extreme-​r ight voting: political dissatisfaction; Euroscepticism; homophobia; anti-​immigration; and racism, with hostility to out-​groups being the most frequent marker of extreme-​r ight voting. Understanding such voting behaviour in the context of other forms of political participation, in addition to the non-​rational drivers of voting behaviour, we might understand women as engaging in strategic or tactical voting behaviour alongside other political behaviours in order to meet their goals. As such, a women can subordinate one of her preferences –​gender rights –​to others that she deems more important at one time, or while meeting that preference with other political action. For these reasons, we can understand that ‘the increase in woman [terrorists] reflects neither a progressive attitude towards women nor gender equality’ (Gonzalez-​Perez, 2008, pp 97–​98). Al-​Qaeda sought to increase its stock of female recruits following increased pressure on the organization in 2002, and in doing so used specialized, gendered language to locate the mission of the female terrorist strictly within traditional gender roles (O’Rourke, 2009). After the civil war in Algeria, women who fought alongside Islamist-​nationalist groups returned to the home, in spite of their role in supporting the liberation of the country (Ali, 2006). Those women who do conduct operations as part of a conservative group are usually there because the group needs them, and that group represents a powerful section of society which is judged to be the most effective group to align oneself with to achieve one’s goals (Kandiyoti, 1988). It should be understood that ‘it is the terrorist group, not the individual, that determines suicide bombing behaviour’ (Gonzalez-​Perez, 2008, p 98). That said, we should also be aware that the presence of women within groups gives them some 38

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bargaining power and access to group resources which will allow them to push for changes if they so wish.

2.5 Women terrorists and extremists in the media Terrorist groups using violence as a form of political communication frequently places them at the top of the news agenda. This section considers the difference between representations of male and female terrorists and extremists in the media. As men are normally the operative committing violence on behalf of the group or alone, men inhabit the popular imagination of whom we think of when we think of terrorists. Women committing attacks are rarer. When it happens, media and society tend to fawn over the women who commit political violence (Evans, 2012). Undue attention is given to women who engage in political violence, as they are seen as somehow ‘special’ when compared to men (Warrington and Windfeld, 2020). Such women are normally framed as victims of male violence or manipulation or as ‘masculine women’ who have adopted a male way of life and are therefore no longer typical women (Weare, 2013). The trope of the ‘sneaky’ woman also comes into play at times, depicting women as sexual beings who flaunt their femininity as femme fatales, being glorified in their sex rather than stripped of it or denigrated (Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015). Many reports following Kurdish female fighters –​many of whom are listed as being part of a terrorist group by Turkey and Europol –​ are highly sexualized, with one Daily Mail article carrying the headline ‘ “If we die, we want to look pretty”: Defiant Kurdish soldier girls refuse to go without makeup while gunning down ISIS fighters in Iraq’ (Brown, 2016), managing to place the attractiveness of the women fighting Islamic State above their accomplishments on the battlefield, and marking them out as somehow ‘different’ from the male fighters. Such accounts are not a-​typical, with the media usually found to be fetishizing women terrorists one way or another (Bloom, 2011). All of these constructions interplay with generalized accounts of women within society, where the stereotypical feminine woman is submissive and caring (Babatunde and Durowaiye, 2015). Violent women do not fit this framework, and hence explanations for their behaviour must be found, or their behaviour reconstructed to make sense within existing social frameworks (Naaman, 2008). Focusing on the sexuality of women usually occurs in the context of ‘terrorists’ being framed as ‘freedom fighters’, when women are used as recruiting tools by terror groups, or more recently, when women are framed as manipulated subjects (Gentry, 2020). In the same way that male revolutionaries exude a certain ‘cool’ that leads them to feature on t-​shirts and posters years after their death, female terrorists can enter into myth through their sexuality or their denial of it (Galvin, 1983). This sexuality is used 39

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by the group as a recruitment tool, as an ideological marker of the group’s beliefs and practices, or as a way of entering the popular mindset of society by grasping onto the idea of female terrorists as a novelty. Women who are not particularly notable as operatives are frequently lauded simply for the fact that they are female and more easily stick in the mind of society; Leila Khaled, who rose to prominence as the first female to be involved in a plane hijacking, and whose face now adorns parts of the separation barrier between the West Bank and Israel and is also the subject of numerous works of art, was in fact only involved in two operations, one of which was unsuccessful. Nonetheless, she remains a popular face of Palestinian resistance, seemingly only due to the fact that she is a woman (MacDonald, 1991). Understanding terrorist attacks as a form of political communication that uses violence to send a message to wider society (Schmid, 2005b), the fetishization of female operatives by the media evidently has propaganda value. It is clear that groups understand this, and utilize women strategically to gain notoriety, coverage, to shame the enemy, to symbolize valour, or to increase the propaganda value of victory (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2011). Thus, while women are supporters and perpetrators of political violence, the media presents those women involved as somehow ‘special’, perpetuating the notion that women do not really get involved in terrorism or extremism.

2.6 Conclusion This chapter has argued that women’s role in terrorist organizations mostly reflects the social divisions of labour in society –​the men undertake violent, physical, intellectual and leadership roles, while women undertake logistical and nurturing roles. However, reflecting society, women are increasingly undertaking roles previously reserved for men, including leadership roles and violence. In contrast to contemporary terrorism and counterterrorism narratives, many women see themselves as active and willing participants in political violence, constrained not by a pacific ‘female nature’ but by sexism. Rather than thinking of women as exclusively victims or manipulated persons in terrorism who were somehow coerced into the act by a man within their male-​dominated society (Zia, 2011), we should instead recognize that women seek the same change in society as men and are just as willing to use violence to achieve it when they feel that it is strategically and/​or morally correct to do so. Thomas and Bond (2015) note that women join terrorist groups to assert their rights, air grievances, support their goals and articulate preferences, and that there are few uniquely female factors motivating women to take up political violence. However, we do need to understand that there are factors which are more likely to affect women than men: lower political and economic power; differentiated social networks; and gendered 40

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understandings of women’s place in society which will affect how they interact with politics and with extremist and terrorist groups. ‘Women and men who commit political violence live in gendered worlds that structure their violence, and that reifications of the significations that differentiate women’s violence and men’s violence constitute the difference’ (Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015, p 143). This makes them relevant and differentiated as subjects of counterterrorism. This chapter also highlighted several gaps in the literature. Firstly, it identifies that an analysis of gender in relation to the study of terrorism and extremism is lacking. This needs to be rectified if we are to fully understand the nature of terrorism and extremism. The feminist literature provides a framework for understanding and analysing terrorism, extremism and, by extension, counterterrorism. The role of social stereotypes, gender ideology and masculine domination in social life evidently needs to be understood and taken into account as part of the dynamic process of recruitment to and involvement in terrorism and extremism. These factors can also be applied to counterterrorism interventions, and in understanding the gendered missteps taken here. The next chapter begins to look at Prevent as a policy, outlining it from inception to date. As a counterterrorism policy, Prevent is particularly interesting in that it mostly doesn’t deal with terrorists. Rather, it deals with those who might become terrorists, and seeks to stop them from doing so.1 This gives Prevent a massive remit –​some have spoken about the ‘whole of society’ approach, implying that Prevent is some kind of massive social engineering programme. This is a little exaggerated, and most will live their lives coming only into marginal contact with Prevent. For women, however, it has some broad consequences. As noted in this chapter, we don’t really think of women as violent. Rather, we think of them as nurturing. They give birth to and raise children; some see this as an indication that they have some natural inclination to grow, rather than destroy. This attitude is seen throughout Prevent, and a lot of Prevent activities seek to utilize that ‘care’ notion as a counterterrorism tool. If women were able to be more influential, would this mean that we would have a more peaceful society? If people were better cared for, would this mean that they are less likely to lash out, and to join violent groups? Certainly we can see indications of these ideas throughout Prevent policy and activity. What this means for women is that, as per more ‘traditional’ ideas, their value is in the home, and in providing care to the family and community. The next chapter provides an outline of Prevent, mapping how far exactly it extends into society, and what the purpose of this is. The coming chapters will look to see whether it reproduces any of the stereotypes noted in this chapter, and how it fits into a wider society governed by gender and sex relations. 41

3

Prevent: A Policy Overview from 2006 to 2018 and Beyond 3.1 Introduction The first chapter argued that terrorism and extremism are both terms that are widely debated and are intensely political. Thus, any conceptions of terrorism or extremism in government policy will too be inescapably political and subject to the critique that it does not quite capture all of what terrorism is or should be. Due to this, a policy on terrorism will always be imperfect. Prevent is no different. The concept of terrorism in CONTEST and Prevent is understood through the prism of UK legislation, most importantly the Terrorism Act (2000):

(1) In this Act “terrorism” means the use or threat of action where—​ (a) the action falls within subsection (2), (b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organization or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and (c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause. (2) Action falls within this subsection if it—​ (a) involves serious violence against a person, (b) involves serious damage to property, (c) endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action, (d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or (e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.

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(3) The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied. […] (5) In this Act a reference to action taken for the purposes of terrorism includes a reference to action taken for the benefit of a proscribed organization. (Terrorism Act 2000) Since this time a number of Acts have been passed relating to terrorism. Walker (2014) and Hamilton (2019) both provide overviews of these legislation. Particularly important is the Terrorism Act 2006, which adds further the offence of glorifying or encouraging terrorism, and the dissemination of terrorist publications. Additionally the Counter-​Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 additionally makes it an offence to download or stream information which might be useful for the preparation of acts of terrorism (Awan et al, 2019; Walker, 2011). The key objective of Prevent, throughout all its iterations, is the prevention of support for or engagement in acts which violate the Terrorism Act 2000. Each reference made to terrorism or radicalization should be understood as referring to this definition. Additionally, Prevent is located in the ‘pre-​ criminal’ space. Thus, any assessments of persons of interest to Prevent are made with reference to this legislation. If during an assessment of such a person they are found to fall foul of this legislation, action is likely to be moved from the Prevent space and criminal investigations and possible charges might follow (HM Government, 2011b). This logic has remained consistent throughout the various Prevent iterations, although the exact implementation of the policy has developed and changed over time. This chapter will outline these changes. The next section deals with the development of Prevent and the wider changes to its implementation that have happened. Based on the literature and documents analysed, it argues that the Prevent policies of 2006 and 2009, and the Prevent policies of 2011 and 2018, are similar enough policies that we can consider the periods governed by the four policies to be in fact two ‘eras’ of Prevent. The first era, delivered by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and governed by the Prevent policies of 2006 and 2009, encompassing the years 2006–​2011, focuses on Muslims and on community cohesion and integration work. This era introduced many of the concepts which are key to Prevent and was also the source of much of the criticism of ‘spying’ that continues to be levelled at the policy. Being focused only on Muslims, the policy was also accused of being Islamophobic and securitizing the relationship between Muslim citizens and the state. 43

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The second era, governed by the Prevent policies of 2011 and 2018 and encompassing the years 2011–​2022, shifted the focus away from community cohesion, broadening its targeting to include the whole of society, and looked to risk as something that is located in individuals and ideology. This era also saw the Home Office and the Office for Security and Counter-​Terrorism (OSCT) taking over responsibility for policy delivery. A further major change came in 2015 with the introduction of the Prevent duty, which created a statutory duty for public bodies to implement Prevent, and the publication of the Counter-​Extremism Strategy, which created a dichotomy between the British state’s ‘values’ and extremist ideology.

3.2 The development of Prevent Prevent forms one of the four pillars of the CONTEST policy, alongside Pursue, Prepare and Protect. Prevent and Pursue are mostly associated with policing, being concerned with the prevention of persons becoming or supporting terrorists (Prevent) and the arrest and conviction of those engaged in illegal terrorism-​related activities (Pursue). Prepare is concerned with creating rapid emergency responses to terrorist attacks. Protect is concerned with target hardening and making terrorist attacks more difficult in general (Skoczylis, 2015). This framework has remained consistent throughout the different policy iterations. While each pillar of the policy is distinct, the fluid nature of the terrorist threat means that frequently the different pillars overlap or come into friction with each other (Skoczylis and Bartolucci, 2016). This overlap between Prevent, operating in the ‘pre-​criminal space’, and Pursue, which operates in the criminal space, has meant that these policies and their implementation have sometimes been confused with one another (Kundnani, 2014). Prevent was initially developed under a Labour government as part of CONTEST in November 2002. It was adopted in 2003, although at that time the policy nor its development were made public (Omand, 2012). It was also not fully operationalized until after the 7 July 2005 bombings (Busher et al, 2017), following which a public consultation was carried out in 2005 and a policy document was released to the public in 2006. While Prevent was developed within the CONTEST framework from 2003, references to Prevent will begin from the public consultation and release of information to the public in 2005 and 2006.

3.2.1 2006 and 2009 Prevent was initially mentioned in the 2006 CONTEST strategy, and in a series of documents providing case studies of the ‘Pathfinder’ fund for Preventing Violent Extremism. The 2006 strategy provided only a 44

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brief outline of the strategy, stating that it ‘is concerned with tackling the radicalisation of individuals, both in the UK and elsewhere, which sustains the international terrorist threat’ and that to do this, it sought to understand ‘experiences and events in a person’s life cause them to become radicalised, to the extent of turning to violence to resolve perceived grievances’ (HM Government, 2006, p 9). The strategy was given more detailed treatment in 2008, with Prevent more comprehensively outlined in its own document. This included a series of objectives, including: • challenging the violent extremist ideology and supporting mainstream voices; • disrupting those who promote violent extremism and supporting the institutions where they may be active; • supporting individuals who are being targeted and recruited to the cause of violent extremism; • increasing the resilience of communities to violent extremism; and • addressing the grievances that ideologues are exploiting. (HM Government, 2008, p 16) This was supported by two strategic enablers, ‘developing understanding, analysis and information; and … strategic communications’ (HM Government, 2008, p 16). Prevent was thus outlined as a communications, pastoral care and community-​interventionist programme of work. It mainly looked to fostering a state-​positive mindset in the Muslim community and intervening in cases where persons might be considered vulnerable to radicalization, referring them to the fledgling Channel programme which would intervene directly to prevent radicalization in individuals, or otherwise deradicalize or disengage them. Prior to the 7/​7 attacks much of counterterrorism policy in the UK focused on ‘external’ communities, including Irish nationalist terrorism and Al-​Qaeda, primarily overseas (Hewitt, 2008). The London attack brought focus upon a possible domestic threat which prior to this time was not well considered (Walker, 2009). The British Muslim population, which in 2009 was largely from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh (Bolognani, 2009), were, however, already considered to be part of a ‘risky’ group following riots and unrest in northern English towns (Millings, 2013). The Cantle Report, which sought to understand and create a policy response to this unrest, argued that a lack of integration and community cohesion was a part cause, and policies that encouraged cohesion between White working-​class and Asian communities would therefore be a viable solution to reducing violence (Cantle, 2001). Following this logic, Prevent came to see community cohesion as part of its own policy response to terrorism (Thomas, 2015), arguing that a key part of its preventive work would consist of ‘working with local communities to identify other areas where radicalisation may be taking 45

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place and to help communities protect themselves and counter the efforts of extremist radicalisers’ (HM Government, 2006, p 13). It is through the lens of the Cantle Report that multiculturalism, integration, identity and cohesion came to be developed and securitized into a counterterrorism policy. The work done under Prevent in this era involved a wide variety of interventions which were delivered by the DCLG, in partnership with local government. Implementation involved national projects, including roadshows of government-​approved religious seminars and national Muslim advisory bodies (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2007a). More prominently it involved locally developed and managed projects fronted by local government. To run these projects, local governments were allocated Prevent money if 5 per cent or more of their population was Muslim (Thomas, 2014). Tensions occasionally arose between the DCLG and local government about how best to implement this policy, especially considering the pushback that was being experienced at the local level (Thomas, 2017). Some local governments were especially concerned about Prevent funding due to the mixing of cohesion and counterterrorism, with Bradford, West Yorkshire councils and the Local Government Association noting concerns. Bradford initially refused to accept any Prevent funding on the basis that it would undermine and securitize integration work (O’Toole et al, 2016). This would be a problem for Prevent, as the policy was –​and remains –​ voluntary, and concerns around the policy would come to reduce trust and legitimacy, and be detrimental to the functioning of Prevent (Shepherd, 2008; Skoczylis, 2015). Many of the criticisms of Prevent during its first iteration were ones which would remain with the policy throughout its life. This included being criticized as a ‘responsibilization strategy’ which shifted the responsibility for policing on to Muslims (Thomas, 2015). Additionally, concerns were raised that Prevent amounted to ‘spying’ on and securitizing Muslim communities (Kundnani, 2009) and that it created a monolithic ‘Muslim’ group in policy which did not accurately reflect the diversity of Muslims in the UK (Tatari and Shaykhutdinov, 2014). The focus on cohesion and belonging created the impression that terrorism was a phenomenon created by failing to build a positive identity (Jarvis and Lister, 2017), an idea which pushed politics to the wayside. The wide variety of interventions done under Prevent, which were not always clearly linked to countering terrorism, were also considered to be something which might promote envy among those communities who did not received the lucrative Prevent funding (Birt, 2009). On a more local level, some also criticized the policy for over-​reliance on imams as ‘gatekeepers’ to the Muslim community, arguably blocking off youth, women and Muslim minorities such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and related (LGBT+​) persons from having input into the policy (Awan, 2012; Cowden and Singh, 2017). Indeed, Huckerby and Fakih argue that ‘ethnic minority women 46

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may become more vulnerable because Prevent and cohesion policy puts more power and authority into the hands of religious leaders and interfaith networks which are predominantly male’ (2011, p 109). This criticism is revisited in later chapters that look directly at Prevent’s approach to women. Despite these criticisms, the 2009 iteration of Prevent continued to see community cohesion as an important empowering device, supposedly allowing communities the strength to isolate extremist messages and to reach out for help (Martin, 2014). The revised policy was a continuation and expansion of the 2006 policy, described in the policy documentation as being improved by virtue of including ‘more Departments; has more thoroughly integrated the significant contribution of policing; aims to link local and international delivery; is based on better metrics; and has a significantly larger budget’ (HM Government, 2009b, p 83). This policy outline clearly drew on older documents and projects as best practice, and the objectives were almost identical: • Challenge the ideology behind violent extremism and support mainstream voices • Disrupt those who promote violent extremism and support the places where they operate • Support individuals who are vulnerable to recruitment, or have already been recruited by violent extremists • Increase the resilience of communities to violent extremism, and • Address the grievances which ideologues are exploiting. (HM Government, 2009b) Minor changes, of note, include expanding the focus of the policy from institutions to places and expanding the remit to include individuals vulnerable to recruitment, rather than only those who are being targeted and recruited. Thus, through subtle changes to wording, Prevent expanded its reach from a limited space to one which was largely unbounded (Hart, 2014). The use of the term ‘vulnerability’, in particular, is a sign of things to come, with it becoming ubiquitous in future iterations of Prevent (Heath-​Kelly, 2017b). Here the term expands the policy by creating a more fluid space for intervention between the radicalized and non-​radicalized subject. In the 2006 policy, radicalization was understood as a broad process influenced by radical ideas, alienation and disadvantage, and a sense of grievance and injustice which was framed in terms of misunderstanding of British foreign policy (HM Government, 2006). The target of the policy was however the community, through which resilience and an understanding that individuals who might be vulnerable should be referred to Prevent could be built. According to the policy documentation, individuals were only targeted by Prevent when they themselves were already radicalized or were targeted by 47

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extremist recruiters (HM Government, 2006). The language of vulnerability introduced in 2009 allowed for the targeting of those persons who had not been knowingly approached by recruiters, but who might nonetheless be ‘vulnerable’ to such a recruiter should they approach. Thereby a person might not be radicalized but would nonetheless be a candidate for Prevent support based on a potential to be radicalized. This expansion further responsibilized the Muslim community for increasing resilience to terrorist ideologies as well as watching for vulnerable persons as per this logic (Thomas, 2017). Thus, 2009 Prevent argued that ‘[e]‌xperience has shown that violent extremism can emerge from even the most cohesive communities; but extremist messages are less likely to find support and are more easily isolated in a cohesive environment’ (HM Government, 2009b, p 84). This further focus on resilience and vulnerability also opened the door to looking further at politics and foreign policy as a source of grievance that might be a factor in radicalization (HM Government, 2009b). The solution proposed was to ‘explain’ foreign policy to Muslim audiences, positioning this not as a theatre of debate and democracy, but rather as something that was just not understood properly, and therefore could be taken advantage of by ideologues (HM Government, 2009b). At this stage, the vulnerability framework was not fully developed. Guidance advised that practitioners should look out for persons who are already exposed to extremist beliefs through peer groups or extremist literature, and the expression of these extreme beliefs. Additionally, ‘the influence of a charismatic ideologue (either direct or via the internet); under achievement at school or in employment; and criminality’ would be factors which might also contribute to vulnerability (HM Government, 2008, p 37). Further sources cited within Prevent guidance underscored that a lack of knowledge and a search for identity were two key factors in vulnerability (Choudhury, 2007). While Prevent would not have the time to fully develop this framework before the review of 2011, we can see here the seeds of the Vulnerability Assessment Framework which would later be published as part of the 2011 Prevent strategy, which largely sees vulnerability as a problem of people being misguided or taken advantage of by recruiters. This is explored more in the following section.

3.2.2 2011 Following the formation of the Conservative-​Liberal coalition government in 2010, the Prevent policy underwent its first changes under the stewardship of a new party. Speaking in parliament, the then-​Home Secretary Theresa May outlined the government’s intention to review the policy, stating that it ‘confused government policy to promote integration, with government policy to prevent terrorism’ (May, 2011). May argued that ‘we must be much 48

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more assertive about our values’ and that ‘the ideology of extremism and terrorism is the problem’ (May, 2011). In doing so, she laid the framework for changes that would come to reformulate Prevent as a policy that focused more heavily on ideology, British values, and the individual as the key focus point. These changes were reflected in the objectives, which were substantially reduced, removing references to communities and grievances, being to: • Respond to the ideological challenge of terrorism and the threat we face from those who promote it; • Prevent people from being drawn into terrorism and ensure that they are given appropriate advice and support; and • Work with a wide range of sectors (including education, criminal justice, faith, charities, the internet and health) where there are risks of radicalisation which we need to address. (HM Government, 2011a, pp 59–​60) Following these changes, the 2011 Prevent policy brought substantial changes to the structure of Prevent, its practices and the framing of risk. It moved the framework of Prevent from a community cohesion policy to one which focused on ‘risk’ and ‘vulnerability’ emanating from an individual (Mythen et al, 2017). No longer being formally only concerned with Muslims, Prevent was now concerned with the whole of society. Islamist extremism, however, retained the majority of the policy focus (HM Government, 2011b, 2017). Ideology in particular was elevated to a key position in the policy, being the catalyst for terrorism (Skoczylis and Andrews, 2020). The other driver, radicalization, remained intact, described in the 2011 Prevent strategy as ‘the process by which a person comes to support terrorism and forms of extremism leading to terrorism’ (HM Government, 2011b, p 108). While remaining rhetorically important, radicalization thus became more of a descriptive point, outlining the journey towards adopting terrorist ideology. In addition to these conceptual changes, Prevent would also no longer be run by the DCLG, but rather the Home Office and OSCT (Thomas, 2014). Priority status would now also be allotted based on a local risk analysis completed by the OSCT, and projects would be standardized and delivered by a local Prevent officer who would be funded by and accountable to the OSCT (Mastroe, 2016). In 2011, there were 25 Prevent priority (Tier 1) areas (HM Government, 2011a). This rose to 30 in 2014, and an additional 14 areas were designed ‘supported’ (Tier 2) areas, which would receive part funding (Home Office, 2014a).1 Those that were not priority or supported areas (Tier 3) were still expected to deliver Prevent, but funding would have to come out of their local budget, rather than from a central Home Office fund, and local government would have to employ their own staff 49

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in managing the projects (Mastroe, 2016). Prevent would also no longer engage with ‘non-​violent extremist’ organizations as part of its work to prevent support for or engagement in terrorism (HM Government, 2011b). Thus, organizations which were Salafi or Islamist, such as STREET, were excluded from Prevent after 2011 (Elshimi, 2017).

3.2.3 2015: the Counter-​Extremism Strategy and the Counter-​Terrorism and Security Act Further changes to Prevent would follow after the 2013 Woolwich attack, in which Fusilier Lee Rigby was murdered by two converts to Islam (Telegraph, 2013). In response the British government set up an anti-​terrorism task force to look further at the issues of radicalization and extremism. In spite of Prevent only focusing on Muslims prior to 2011, the task force argued in their report that a major weakness of counterterrorism in the UK up until that point had been a reluctance, or inability, to tackle extreme Islamist ideologies ‘in part because of a misplaced concern that attacking Islamist extremism equates to an attack on Islam itself ’ (Cabinet Office, 2013, p 2). In response, the Extremism Analysis Unit was set up in 2015, leading to the publication of the Counter-​Extremism Strategy. The military success of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq in 2014 and the revelation that several British citizens had joined the group created an additional imperative to strengthen counterterrorism legislation. As such the Counter-​Terrorism and Security Act (CTSA) gained Royal Assent on 12 February 2015 (Blackbourn and Walker, 2016). Although not new iterations of the Prevent policy, both the CTSA and the Counter-​Extremism Strategy had a substantial impact on how Prevent was delivered. Most importantly for Prevent, the CTSA introduced a duty upon public institutions, covering schools, colleges, universities, health, local authorities, police and prisons, to have ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’ (HM Government, 2015c, p 18). This has resulted in thousands of people being trained by Prevent officers or third parties on how to spot the signs of radicalization, with at least 1.1 million online training packages being completed (HO News Team, 2018). Workers in these sectors are asked to use their ‘knowledge and intuition’ in making judgements about whether a person is vulnerable to radicalization and would be obliged to refer those they suspected to Prevent (Heath-​Kelly, 2017a). This draws on the assumption outlined in Prevent guidance that radicalization and vulnerability can be spotted, and that the training required to make such judgements is minimal (Ragazzi, 2017). The duty has been extensively criticized. Studies concentrating on the impact of Prevent within statutory institutions have found that it can have

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a negative effect on the relationship between the practitioner and the subject (Heath-​Kelly, 2013, 2017b; Davies, 2016; Kyriacou et al, 2017), although this effect is not universal. Variability in this effect is likely due to the different ways in which employees in statutory institutions are inducted into Prevent, with the need for ‘due regard’ to Prevent as outlined in the CTSA and the broad interpretation of this duty across different geographic areas meaning that institutions frequently end up with different knowledges of the duty and what it entails (Skoczylis, 2015; Acik et al, 2018). Thomas (2017) argues that it is the responsibilization aspect of Prevent that was further developed under the statutory duty that is most damaging to civil society. This responsibilization disrupts the civil relationship between persons and brings the security state into private relationships. Further, despite the expansion of Prevent to the whole of society, this responsibilization remains as a general imposition on Muslims, as the demographic still most associated with terrorism risk (Andersen and Mayerl, 2018). Prevent asks them to be responsible for their fellow Muslims’ behaviour as it gives them the responsibility to perform the duty of being vigilant watchers in their mosques, neighbourhoods and families (Thomas, 2017). The Counter-​Extremism Strategy augmented Prevent chiefly through its framing of the opposing ideas of ‘British values’ and ‘extremism’. It binds together radicalization, extremism and terrorism, stating that ‘a vulnerable person will be introduced to an extremist ideology by a radicalising influencer … who in the absence of protective factors, such as a supportive network of family and friends, or a fulfilling job, draws the vulnerable individual ever closer to extremism’ (HM Government, 2015b, p 21). The strategy then makes repeated references to terrorism and Prevent throughout, drawing on multiple examples to argue that extremist ideology is used as a radicalizing influence and is causal in terrorist attacks (HM Government, 2015b). British values are then posited as the counterpoint to extremist ideology. Being values, they are non-​ideological and become naturalized, and can be asserted or expected, not necessarily needing to be political (Wilson, 1992). The effect of this is to position the Prevent policy as a social good or service rather than a policy involved in policing politics. Therefore, this dichotomy serves an ideological function in that it creates ‘[t]‌he notion of a subject morally and criminally fully “responsible” for his acts’, concealing the role of the state in producing these subjects (Žižek, 2012). Thus, Prevent, through the use of a values–​ideology dichotomy and the focus on individuals, places responsibility for ideological incompatibility with the state fully upon individuals. According to Younis (2021), this results in the ‘psychologization’ of Prevent, where ‘political violence [is] … an … “illness” essentialised within vulnerable individuals’ (p 5). This is further reflected in the shift towards ‘safeguarding’ language discussed in section 3.3.2.

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3.2.4 Summary: Prevent in 2018 Prevent was reviewed and updated in 2018, after terrorist attacks in London and Manchester, and framed as a policy which was ‘building on progress made since 2011’ (HM Government, 2018, p 3), indicating that the policy was not a substantial step away from the previous iteration. The new policy outlined that it would continue working as it had before, and that the government would invest in more research and better targeting of extremism online (HM Government, 2018). The objectives of the 2018 policy outline this continuity, with the three objectives of 2011 being sublimated into two objectives. A new addition would appear in the third objective, relating to a further expansion of the policy into the deradicalization of individuals who have already committed terrorism offences: • Tackle the causes of radicalisation and respond to the ideological challenge of terrorism. • Safeguard and support those most at risk of radicalisation through early intervention, identifying them and offering support. • Enable those who have already engaged in terrorism to disengage and rehabilitate. (HM Government, 2018, p 31) Slight institutional changes affected the delivery of Prevent, with the newly created Office for Students overseeing Prevent delivery in universities (Office for Students, 2018). Increasing referrals received in relation to the far-​r ight also reflected a change in how training is delivered, with an ideological focus broader than Islamic terrorism (HO News Team, 2018). An attempt was also undertaken to better understand extremism and to separate it from the Prevent policy with the creation of the Commission for Countering Extremism in 2018. This led to the publication of the report Challenging Hateful Extremism (Commission for Countering Extremism, 2019). However, Prevent in 2018 continues to understand extremism as part of the process of radicalization, indicating that little has changed as a result of this exercise (McCann, 2019). A major addition to the policy is the Desistance and Disengagement Programme (DDP), outlined in the final objective point, which focuses on returnees from Syria and those already convicted of terrorism offences and attempts to either deradicalize them or have them disengage from illegal behaviour. This is discussed further in section 3.3.1, dealing with Channel and the DDP. Thus, the 2018 version of Prevent can be seen as a continuation of the 2011 version, thereby constituting an ‘era’ of Prevent; likewise, Prevent in 2009 was a continuation of Prevent in 2006. In each case, the focus of the policy remained consistent in each era. In 2006 and 2009, Prevent looked to community cohesion as the answer to radicalization and focused solely 52

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on Muslims. Prevent in 2011 and 2018 looked to ideology and individuals and broadened the focus to the whole of society. These eras are reflected in how the objectives of each policy era are evolutions, rather than revolutions. Changes are introduced, but these changes come in the form of the development of concepts and practice within the logic of that era.

3.3 Key concepts and components in Prevent While the previous section outlined the wider changes to the Prevent policy over the years, this section will look in more detail at some of the aspects of the policy, arguing that they are key to understanding its function within the wider political sphere. Namely, that Prevent is a policy that is interested in political policing. This argument draws on those made in Chapter 1, whereby terrorism, extremism and radicalization are understood to be unavoidably political. They cannot exist outside of the current framework of doing politics. Therefore Prevent, as a counterterrorism policy, is an ideological policy that seeks to find those persons who might be radical enough to engage in action to undermine the state outside of the liberal-​democratic framework. It then seeks to reshape those persons into either liberal or cynical subjects –​either subject is preferable, as neither will any longer threaten liberal democracy (Skoczylis and Andrews, 2020). Simultaneously, it creates a situation where liberal democracy is accepted as the natural way of things, positioning it as a system which is outside of political contestation.

3.3.1 Channel and the Desistance and Disengagement Programme Channel is a key part of the framework of Prevent, introduced in 2008. It provides tailored interventions to persons who are judged by a Channel panel to be vulnerable to radicalization. The intention of Channel is to ‘support vulnerable individuals’ (HM Government, 2008, p. 28), in order to divert them from the risk of radicalization (HM Government, 2012). It is a kind of pastoral element of Prevent, in that it focuses on interventions which aim to shepherd a person away from violence or support for terrorism. These individuals are referred to the Channel programme after someone believes them to be at risk of radicalization. Since its introduction in the 2008 Prevent policy, the programme has grown substantially. Between April 2007 and December 2010, 1,120 people were referred to Channel, with 286 being judged as in need of an intervention (HM Government, 2011b). Comparatively, between April 2019 and March 2020, 6,287 individuals were referred. This massive rise in cases can in part be attributed to the introduction of the Prevent duty, which has made Prevent awareness a statutory duty across public bodies. Of those 6,287 referrals, 1,424 cases were discussed at a Channel panel, and 53

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697 cases were accepted as necessary for intervention (HM Government, 2020b). Referrals can be made by anyone, but most commonly come from statutory agencies. The highest number of referrals come from the police (1,950) followed by the education sector (1,928). The most referrals were received for the mixed, unstable or unclear ideology category (3,203; 51 per cent). Of identifiable ideological categories, Islamist radicalization was the most common in this period (1,487; 24 per cent), followed by right-​wing cases (1,397; 22 per cent) and other (210, 3 per cent). Right-​wing cases were however more likely to be adopted as Channel cases –​302 right-​wing cases were adopted in this period (43 per cent), compared to 210 Islamist cases (30 per cent), 127 mixed cases (18 per cent) and 58 other cases (8 per cent). Demographically the majority of cases referred, and those accepted for intervention, are male and young, with median ages for referrals from all sectors being below 31 (HM Government, 2020b). This data indicates the growing importance of Channel. The increasing and large number of referrals which are received, compared to those that go on to be identified as ‘at risk’, is considered by some to be a strain on the limited resources that local councils and police forces have (Mastroe, 2016). Since 2018, Prevent has also included the DDP (HM Government, 2018). This functions in a similar way to Channel, providing tailored interventions. In DDP cases, however, the persons referred have already been engaged in action related to terrorism. There is little information available on the DDP, but of what is known, it seems to function in a similar way to Channel, with a key difference being that as it is used to disengage or deradicalize offenders and it is not voluntary (Grierson, 2019a). After receiving a referral, cases are evaluated at a Channel panel meeting where a ‘joint risk assessment of each individual case is then made by panel members and any issues of concern are identified. A programme of intervention tailored to the needs of the individual is then developed and implemented’ (HM Government, 2008, p 28). Currently these panels are ‘chaired by the local authority and include the Channel police practitioner and other relevant statutory partners’ (HM Government, 2012, p 7). The partners included are drawn from the list of agencies and institutions that have a statutory duty to implement Prevent and can either be drawn from an existing panel created for other referral mechanisms or created to reflect individual needs (HM Government, 2012). Panels assess whether an individual needs support by assessing them against a ‘Vulnerability Assessment Framework’ which includes 22 indicators broken down into three dimensions: ‘Engagement with a group, cause or ideology; Intent to cause harm; and Capability to cause harm’ (HM Government, 2012, p 11). These are further described in a later document which describes engagement factors as ‘psychological hooks’ that ‘include needs, susceptibilities, motivations and contextual influences [that] together map the individual 54

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pathway into terrorism’ (HM Government, 2015b, Annex C). Intent is referred to as a ‘mindset that is associated with a readiness to use violence’ and capability is referred to in the context of skills, networks and ‘criminal capability’. If a referral is deemed in need of intervention, then they will need to give their consent to receive a Channel intervention. If a referral is deemed inappropriate for Channel, or if the referee turns down a Channel intervention, then the panel must consider referring onwards to social or health services (Blackbourn and Walker, 2016). Those who accept an intervention are given a course of action decided by the Channel panel, including ‘help with education or career advice, dealing with mental or emotional health issues, drug/​alcohol abuse, and theological or ideological mentoring from a [specialist mentor]’ (Home Office, 2017). As of 2017 there were 37 male mentors and 12 females.2 Interviews conducted with mentors indicated that there is a discrepancy in the workload of mentors, with some taking on up to ten cases at a time, while others have significantly fewer or none, due to the local nature of referrals (Saltman and Smith, 2015). Weeks (2018) discusses the nature of the work of these mentors, noting in particular the highly contextual environment in which they work, with particular difficulties relating to balancing short-​term risk management with long-​term rehabilitation, as well as with being unable to effectively measure success in each case. Despite these difficulties, Channel is considered by some Prevent officials to be the ‘jewel in the crown of Prevent’ (Pettinger, 2020, p 977), being a flexible and dynamic policy that can create bespoke solutions for problems. Data on how Channel impacts individuals is sparse and contained to a few publications and anecdotal accounts. This is largely because data on the programme is considered sensitive information. As such, little is known about how effective the programme is (Cherney, 2018). Much of the known data comes from a few government sources and public documents. The process is for instance given detail in the CONTEST strategy published in 2018 with two case studies. One describes a process which involved the ‘police, social care and a local youth group … providing [the subject] with careers advice, and connecting [the subject] to an ethnically diverse local youth group’ (HM Government, 2018, p 39), while another involved providing psychological support and chaplaincy. Both cases involved the subjects rejecting an extremist ideology. While little overall is known about the programme, some case studies are available publicly which shed light on how it works in practice. The case of Ahmed Hassan is one such case, and provides some further insights into how Channel functions at an individual level. Hassan was an asylum seeker from Iraq, who arrived in the UK aged 16, and at age 18 was arrested for an attempted attack on the London Underground in 2017 (Casciani, 2018). Prior to this Hassan was referred to Prevent when concerns were raised by 55

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Surrey council in 2016. This is described as ‘usual practice for minors without a legal parent or guardian’ (Rutnam, 2018, p 2), and Channel accepted his referral based on the fact that he claimed that Islamic State had captured him in Iraq and trained him to kill. There is no indication of how Hassan reacted. The case highlights how interventions are based on a Channel panel’s assessment of what constitute ‘protective’ and ‘vulnerability’ factors. ‘[P]‌rotective factors included stable foster care provision in Sunbury, mental health support and commencement on a Head Start Education Programme at college’ (Rutnam, 2018, p 2) and were deemed substantive enough that Hassan was not given an intervention provider. His progress at college was considered a significant protective factor. Again, there is no indication of how Hassan reacted to any of these interventions. It is however of note that the Channel process failed in this case (Casciani, 2018). Further anecdotal evidence is available from accounts published by Prevent officers. A case relayed by William Baldét, then Prevent Officer for Leicestershire, talks about how an 11-​year-​old boy was referred to Channel for claiming ‘that Bin Laden was the saviour of Muslims and that the West was only painting him in a bad light to defame Islam [and claiming] that killing non-​Muslims was a good thing’ (Baldét, 2017a). After investigating the case, it was found that the boy’s father had left, leaving him responsible for round-​the-​clock care for his mentally ill mother and disabled sibling. He was also being bullied as a ‘terrorist’ in school. The Channel panel assigned to the case concluded that ‘significant changes in his behaviour and provocative statements were a … cry for help’ (Baldét, 2017b) and that his extreme statements were a manifestation of his social issues. The panel decided on an intervention process which included finding family and mental health support for the boy’s mother to relieve him of the pressures of care and finding the boy a new school where he would receive pastoral support. The story matches other statements made by practitioners on numerous occasions in which Prevent is presented as a holistic programme, focused on safeguarding, which provides individualized, non-​criminalizing solutions to the complex social problem of radicalization (Baldét, 2017b). However in many cases it is a programme which is filling holes in social care and welfare, which has been under strain since the introduction of austerity in 2010 (O’Hara, 2015). Channel has been highlighted by many as a particular point of concern in the Prevent policy. Speaking at the Home Affairs Committee in 2015, Sara Khan noted that there is anxiety in some sectors of the Muslim community related to Prevent, including ‘the idea that if you do not consent to Channel programmes, the state will take your children away’ (Home Affairs Committee, 2015a, pp 18–​19), although she dismissed these ideas as based on false information. Channel has also come under scrutiny for the risk assessment framework used in assessing cases. Pettinger argues that there is 56

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a high level of subjectivity and imagination in making referrals to Prevent and risk assessments (Pettinger, 2019). The majority of persons making both referrals and assessments will have received only a basic level of training, too. Channel panel members must have completed the government provided Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent (WRAP) and e-​Training, which has come under criticism for its rather basic information (HM Government, 2015a; Sian, 2017). Public sector workers are simply required to pay due regard to the duty, and many will not receive any training. Therefore much of a person’s knowledge of radicalization and terrorism will be drawn from ‘common sense’ –​‘that is, the prevailing and pervasive ideology of present-​day culture’ (Ramsay, 2015, p 225). It is here that debates about the place of religion in modern life, immigration and political organization are increasingly infused with racialized thinking and Islamophobia (Jamin, 2013; Fekete, 2018). Crawford goes as far to argue that ‘the ideology and assumptions of racism are so deeply entrenched in the socio, legal, and political structures of Britain, that it is viewed as “natural” and “ordinary” ’ (Crawford, 2017, p 198). This is because ‘Islam is constructed as threatening to the prevailing values in liberal democratic societies and Muslims are represented as a “fifth column” force’ (Ali and Whitham, 2021, p 3). Using this as a baseline would then inevitably result in racist outcomes, reflected in the fact that Muslims are still disproportionately referred to Prevent, even if intervention numbers are falling (HO News Team, 2018). Indeed there is evidence that the ethnicity of the subject is central to the decision to make a referral, it being more likely if the referral is not White (Lakhani and James, 2021). The relationship between ideology and Prevent is explored further in section 3.3.2. Concerns about Channel have also been linked to wider concerns about Prevent, with the duty being accused of spying, being racist and stigmatizing Muslims (Awan, 2012; Hussain and Bagguley, 2012). These accusations have traction, with the UN Human Rights Council calling Prevent ‘inherently flawed’ (Greenwood, 2017), an accusation picked up by a number of groups and used as the basis for refusing to engage (NUS Connect, nd; Adams, 2016b; Ross, 2016). The Muslim Council of Great Britain has also criticized the programme, claiming that it is too broad, it casts suspicion on religious behaviour, it is discriminatory and that it leads to Muslims being viewed through the lens of security (Versi, 2015). Malia Bouattia, former president of the National Union of Students (NUS), claims that ‘[i]‌t targets Muslim students, criminalises their religious practice, and legalises the application of grossly Islamophobic practices. In addition to this, this curtailing of civil liberties is facilitated through the political and media hysteria drummed up about Muslims’ (Bouattia, 2018). Qurashi similarly finds that by looking for vulnerability to report on, Prevent ‘embeds’ surveillance into Muslim communities, with funding and assistance being offered to community 57

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groups so long as they comply. According to one youth worker, this made it difficult to run youth projects as ‘they all wanted to run the project more like a surveillance operation’ (Qurashi, 2018, p 9). While there are many critical articles on Channel written by academics and organizations, there are not enough empirical studies to truly understand its impact on individuals who have gone through the process. For instance, Open Society Foundations found that thousands of individuals were wrongly referred to Channel. The report went on to find that ‘[i]‌ndividuals … erroneously referred under Prevent experience the referral as inherently stigmatising and intensely intimidating. They also fear continued surveillance and the creation and retention of Prevent records, which may taint them and lead others to view them as “extremists” in the future’ (Open Society Justice Initiative, 2016, p 16). However, as discussed later in section 3.3.3, the lack of objective and verifiable information on Channel is not only detrimental to our understanding of it, it also allows for false information to circulate. Generally information on Channel is restricted as it deals with personal information and national security issues, and so much of what happens in Channel panel meetings, and how interventions play out, is not known. What we do know rests on information gathered in very few reports, meaning that there is large amount of missing data. While we know a lot about how someone gets referred to the Channel programme, we know relatively little about what happens when they get accepted.

3.3.2 Ideology, safeguarding and radicalization As noted in section 3.2, ideology has come to take a key position in Prevent. Ideology has appeared in every iteration of Prevent as something to be challenged, and since 2011 has been the lynchpin of Prevent’s understanding of radicalization. The 2012 CONTEST annual report underscored this by writing that ‘[w]‌e continue to believe that ideological challenge is the core of our Prevent work. ... [W]e must challenge views promoted by extremist Islamists and the far right’ (Home Office, 2013, p 21). There is little indication that ideology will be toppled from its place at the top of the Prevent agenda, being given extensive treatment in the 2018 Prevent strategy (HM Government, 2018). Despite its ubiquity, little definition or discussion of ideology is offered in Prevent. The 2011 Prevent strategy offers the first definition of the term found in the policy and understands it as something which ‘offers its believers a coherent set of ideas that provide the basis for organised political action, whether it is intended to preserve, modify or overthrow the existing system of power’ (HM Government, 2011a, p 35). The 2011 Prevent strategy argues that ideology is entirely dependent on ideologues (HM Government, 2011b, p 44), neatly sidestepping long-​standing debates about the dialectical, material 58

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or historical basis for ideological development or how ideology functions as an object of political desire (Eagleton, 2007; Copjec, 2015). Despite the relatively shallow understanding of the concept, ideology has become increasingly important to counterterrorism policy, a fact which is repeatedly espoused in political speeches. This idea is outlined in David Cameron’s speech of 2015, in which he stated ‘we must be clear. The root causes of the threat we face is the extremist ideology itself ’ (2015), and similarly in May’s 2017 speech following the London Bridge attacks (May, 2017). This increasing importance of ideology in counterterrorism discourse has come to affect the function of Prevent more so since the introduction of the Prevent duty, as we shall see later in this chapter. Although ideology is not given a full treatment in the Prevent strategy documents, they do offer detailed descriptions of the ideologies of various ‘risky’ groups (HM Government, 2011a). It is clear from supplementary documents and practitioner accounts that the differences in ideology are important to Prevent, not least because ideology seems to dictate the type of intervention received. For instance, a person referred who is considered to be adopting an Islamist ideology is likely to be given theological guidance from a Prevent-​affiliated mentor, be it an imam or other religious scholar. The increasing use of ‘formers’ in counselling far-​r ight individuals is further reflective of the importance ideology is given in interventions (Fekete, 2018). Prevent documentation describes these mentors as being ‘assigned to ensure they will be the most credible voice of supportive challenge to an individual, perhaps a counsellor, mentor or imam’ (Department for Education, 2017, p 6). While the exact dividing lines between ideologies are not made clear in the Prevent strategy, broad categories and typologies are available in supplementary documents. The Prevent statistical bulletins, within which data on referrals is made public, offers the following types ideological category: far-​right; Islamist; mixed, unstable or unclear; and other (HO News Team, 2018). Documentation produced by Counter Terrorism Policing in 2019 also makes it clear that left-​wing, environmental and animal rights groups are also a concern of Prevent (Counter Terrorism Policing, 2019; Counter Terrorism Policing South East, 2019). Beyond these guidance documents, little official information is available on the features and arguments of ideological thought. According to Prevent training, public sector workers are not expected to understand ideologies –​rather, they are expected to spot warning signs and report them. WRAP training, which is a core training module for public sector workers, states as such: ‘we don’t need to understand the ideologies or ideas that are promoted, more the way they work to hook in the vulnerable’ (Home Office, 2014b, p 2). As already noted, the low quality of the training and the lack of a real understanding of ideology tends to push people to use ‘common sense’ understandings of 59

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the causes of terrorism in making referrals, thereby linking terrorism with ideological ideas outside of the liberal order. As noted, thinking is also likely to be highly racialized, giving a pass to racism as something within the current system (Sharma and Nijjar, 2018). Given that ideology is framed as a key factor in radicalization, it is unsurprising that work in reaction to ideology forms a large part of the basis for Channel interventions. This intervention work by Prevent is currently framed as a ‘safeguarding’ practice, in which ‘vulnerable’ persons are provided with protection. The argument made by Prevent here is that extremist ideology is damaging to the individual, in that it would motivate them to commit criminal offences which would damage their life chances. Terrorist or extremist groups are framed in this discourse as actors who would then ‘groom’ a person who is ‘vulnerable’ and therefore not able to make a rational decision about their own behaviour. Government ministers have likened this to the sexual exploitation of children by paedophiles (Adams, 2016a). This assumption ends up removing agency from the individual, assuming that ‘[t]‌hose who are radicalised often lack the intellectual challenge to effectively question the falsehoods in terrorist propaganda’ (Department for Education, 2017, p 6). Documents from 2011 argue on this basis that ‘[p]reventing someone from becoming a terrorist or from supporting terrorism is no different from safeguarding vulnerable individuals from other forms of exploitation’ (Department of Health, 2011, p 6). Further common comparisons made include that of persons joining gangs or young minds being manipulated against their own interests. Thus, the departmental advice for schools states that ‘[p]rotecting children from the risk of radicalisation should be seen as part of schools’ and childcare providers’ wider safeguarding duties, and is similar in nature to protecting children from other harms (e.g. drugs, gangs, neglect, sexual exploitation)’ (Department for Education, 2015, p 5). As well as being part of the ‘risk logic’ of Prevent (Thornton and Bouhana, 2017), this framing serves the purpose of making Prevent interventions more palatable. Local Prevent officers have noted that their work is better accepted when framed as safeguarding work, thereby removing reframing interventions as a kind of care work (Pettinger, 2019). Indeed, many Prevent practitioners state that they are looking for a ‘soft’ approach that does not scare, does not intimidate, and encourages people to report their suspicions without fear of criminalizing someone (Skoczylis, 2015). As Prevent draws on the logic of strategic communications (Glazzard and Reed, 2020), we should consider that the language used across the policy is deliberately chosen with a certain outcome in mind (Research, Information and Communications Unit, 2007). While safeguarding was introduced as early as 2008 as a concept in Prevent guidance for schools (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2008) it was not until 2011 that preventing terrorism became ‘comparable’ to other 60

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safeguarding responsibilities (HM Government, 2011a, p 84). Post-​2011, work done under Prevent has been delivered alongside work to reduce drug use, curtail gang recruitment and on staying safe online (KIKIT Pathways To Recovery, 2018; Limbada, 2020). This underscores the fact that safeguarding is now not simply strategic communication. The adoption of safeguarding logics has resulted in an interlocking of already existing legal and statutory safeguarding mechanisms with Prevent, such as those in use by family courts and social services, which in some cases are beginning to view extremist beliefs of parents as a child safeguarding issue (Stanley and Guru, 2015). While debate remains within the legal and social profession as to whether ‘childhood radicalisation’ should be considered abuse, Adash (2019) makes the case that family law is increasingly fragile in the face of arguments that extreme beliefs can cause harm to children, enough to warrant the use of care proceedings in court comparable to other cases of neglect or abuse. Alongside this, Heath-​Kelly (2019) argues that the use of safeguarding logics has resulted in the bypassing of ‘the “care and support needs threshold” for safeguarding’, leading professionals to not seek consent of persons they refer to Prevent, as per normal safeguarding protocol (Heath-​Kelly and Strausz, 2018). This intersection of work can be traced back to theories of radicalization that put vulnerability and risk at their core. In Prevent radicalization is seen as complex, with ‘enabling environments’ and ‘cognitive openings’ caused by significant life changes, such as drug addiction or the death of a loved one, making a person vulnerable to changing their beliefs or open to exploitation by recruiters (Hafez and Mullins, 2015; Mythen et al, 2017). The end result of radicalization in this theory is the adoption of extreme beliefs. This theory was originally cited in a DCLG research paper (Choudhury, 2007) and by 2009 Prevent had already begun to trace the radicalization process back to an identity ‘crisis’, usually accompanied by discrimination or social disconnect (HM Government, 2009b, p 44) which would allow for the infiltration of extreme ideologies. As such the relationship between ideology and radicalization in Prevent is now one where the former is causal in the latter. While the 2008 Prevent guidance saw ideology as ‘one factor in the radicalisation process –​albeit never the only factor and seldom the most important’ (HM Government, 2008, p 17), by 2011 ideology had substantially increased in importance, with the Vulnerability Assessment Framework considering ideological engagement as one of the three indicators of vulnerability to radicalization (HM Government, 2015a). The publication of the Counter-​Extremism Strategy in 2015 likewise articulated radicalization as a process connected to ideology and vulnerability (HM Government, 2015b). This reflects and reinforces common ideas about terrorism in society wherein ideology being the cause of terrorism is now ‘considered as natural and evident by the majority’ (Germond et al, 2016, p 150), despite the fact 61

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that typically extremist ideologies are only adopted after joining an extremist group (Horgan, 2014), if at all (Alonso et al, 2008). This framework remains in 2018, with radicalization judged to be caused by ‘background factors, aspects of someone’s personal circumstances, which might make them vulnerable to radicalisers, such as being involved in criminal activity; initial influences, peoples, ideas or experiences that influence an individual towards supporting a terrorist movement; and an ideological opening, or receptiveness to extremist ideology’ (HM Government, 2018, p 32). The major effect of this shift is to move terrorism further away from politics, as argued in Chapter 1. No longer is terrorist action related to political desire or belief; rather it is related to factors which might, consciously or unconsciously, shift a person’s opinion one way or the other. This removes the responsibility that we have as a society to engage politically with political demands, even if they are accompanied by violence. Instead when a person’s beliefs are thought to be problematic or challenging, Prevent engages with those external factors which might lead them to change those beliefs to socially acceptable ones. In addition to this, that Prevent effectively fails to create a cohesive theory of radicalization ‘means that the scope of the policy has few limits’ (Richards, 2011). As Kundnani argues (Kundnani, 2015), radicalization is so focused on the individual as the source of deviance that it tends towards overdetermination and obfuscation. This then has the tendency to push policy towards risk frameworks which are used to make unknowable problems governable (O’Toole et al, 2016), leading back to the Vulnerability Assessment Framework and its 22 indicators of risk which ‘appear broad and general and could seemingly apply to anybody’ (Sian, 2017, p 3). One effect of this is that young British Pakistani males have historically been constructed as a ‘risk’ group throughout counterterrorism policy, and as such are more likely to negatively experience it. As a counter to this, they are subsequently told they should integrate more into British society, effecting a double burden (Mythen et al, 2009). A reduction of visible ‘signs of difference’ in public by Muslims, such as the wearing of traditional Pakistani dress or the wearing of the hijab or veil, is a subsequent result. This has been highlighted by some authors as a problem in schools, with pupils feeling like they are suspicious because of cultural or religious markers (Lockley-​Scott, 2019a). Further, there is debate about how the risk frameworks of Prevent might stifle radical but non-​terrorist political action, with Liberty stating that the policy has created a ‘chilling effect’ on freedom of speech (Adams, 2019), particularly in education where ‘rational and critical debate about the worth of those [radical] ideas’ is seen as key (Ramsay, 2017). This argument is reflected in fieldwork conducted by a number of authors, who note that while Prevent encourages the discussion of sensitive topics, it does not 62

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facilitate them well, which can lead to the hegemony of ‘White British’ norms and the legitimizing of state violence (Faure-​Walker, 2019; Ford, 2019; Lockley-​Scott, 2019a; Winter et al, 2021). Evidence is also found for avoidance in education, with lecturers purposefully avoiding sensitive topics so that problematic discussions will not take place (Danvers, 2021). While there is some evidence that local Prevent officers have engaged with this criticism (Leicester Prevent, 2017) and evidence that many teachers are confident in delivering the Prevent duty (Busher et al, 2017), the policy continues to receive this criticism –​one possibility for this being the disconnect between national debates about the policy in itself, and the local delivery of the policy which is largely dependent on the skill, knowledge and willingness of local practitioners (Skoczylis, 2015).

Discussion Recalling the child referred to Channel in Baldét’s story from section 3.3.1, the child had clearly either failed as a liberal subject, or the system had failed him. His extreme outbursts are traced back to his family being unable to care for themselves within the competitive neoliberal system, and his family’s failure to stay together something which made his ‘symptoms’ worse. The problem of his extremism is not analysed in the context of a National Health Service (NHS) unable to cope with the strain of cuts, a state which no longer provides adequate support to struggling families, and the mental strain of living in an increasingly competitive society (Ramon, 2008; Cain, 2018; Meek, 2018). Instead, the problem is located in the individual, who is then ‘fixed’ in an intervention. This is something which is reflected in other Channel interventions that we know about –​the vulnerable individual is so because they do not ‘fit in’, or they have been unable to mature and form a stable, British identity. Perhaps they are not smart enough to see through propaganda, or to figure out British foreign policy. They were unable to get a job, or got addicted to drugs. These things that then make the subject ‘vulnerable’ to extremism can be taken advantage of by predatory recruiters, who groom people and promise to give them what they need to become a whole, successful person. One could argue that what Prevent really does here is to patch up holes in the system, to help people along with ‘the neoliberal imperative of self-​ optimization’ which serves ‘to promote perfect functioning within the system’ (Han, 2017, p 29). Channel and Prevent then serve as micro-​interventions which help those people who, when they fall through the cracks in the welfare state, might be a threat to the state when they take up with radical groups. We could understand that as a political act. However, as Fekete argues, programmes such as Prevent tend to be depoliticizing, emphasizing the radicalization as an individual phenomenon and downplaying the 63

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political, including downplaying our own political responsibility for the rise of radical ideologies (Fekete, 2018). By framing these individuals as ‘vulnerable’ and ‘groomed’, Prevent takes away their agency and tells us that people make these choices not because they seek systemic or political change, but because they were led astray and taken advantage of during a time in their life when they were unable to make rational choices. The other depoliticization we see created is that of the dichotomy between extremism and British values as framed from 2011 onwards. Despite the centrality of ideology in Prevent, it offers no account of what is ideologically acceptable. The counterpoint to ‘extremist’ ideologies is, by 2011, that of ‘British values’ –​‘democracy, rule of law, equality of opportunity, freedom of speech and the rights of all men and women to live free from persecution of any kind’ (HM Government, 2011a, p 34). By framing these concepts as ‘values’, Prevent makes them non-​ideological moral forms. It therefore seeks a situation where an accepted morality would drive ideological engagement with liberalism, precluding political debate (Hatemi et al, 2019). Indeed Massoumi (2021) argues that Prevent should be conceptualized as a form of political repression, in that it uses stigma, silencing and interpersonal attacks as a way of controlling opposition, as well as using state-​sponsored civil society groups as a way of providing astroturfed support for the policy. As such Prevent becomes about not just preventing terrorism, but also about ‘promoting the values on which this society depends’ (Skoczylis, 2015, p 72) being as much an exercise in manufacturing legitimacy and consent for the current system of government as it is in deterrence and security practice (Neumann, 2009). By pairing ideology with safeguarding, it further removes political practice from democracy. Indeed it should be considered an effective part of what Althusser calls the ‘Ideological State Apparatus’ –​those non-​ violent structures of the state that form us into the subjects necessary for the reproduction of society (Althusser, 2014). These apparatuses effectively conceal the contradictions and failures of the state and by individualizing grievance, rob us of a wider social or political critique. However there is also evidence that much of the public information regarding Prevent is of poor quality. This could mean that much of the public reaction and criticism of Prevent is reactive to bad information. One must tread carefully to avoid reproducing poor information in academic research. CAGE,3 for instance, analysed Channel in its popular report The Prevent Strategy: A Cradle to Grave Police State (Mohammed and Siddiqui, 2013). The report is, however, filled with hyperbole and CAGE itself has been accused of twisting the truth to make the case against Prevent (Khan and McMahon, 2016). The report referenced, for instance, compared Channel to the actions of Assad’s government in Syria (Mohammed and Siddiqui, 2013). Skoczylis (2015) also argues that Kundnani’s (2009) Spooked! report, which built the cases for Prevent as a spying programme, 64

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is seriously flawed in its methodology. Such reports lead to the findings of Bell and Greer, who found that the campaign against Prevent in the tertiary sector ‘rests substantially upon myth, misunderstanding, misconception, and misinformation particularly’ (Bell and Greer, 2018, p 97). Much of the article’s findings concerned the ‘strawmanning’ of available data and anecdotes. This could call into question the NUS’s characterization of Prevent as a suspect-​producing policy. Further articles on Prevent have been directly challenged by those working in the sector, with an article by the Guardian that reported hospice staff being trained to refer dying patients and dementia sufferers to Prevent being rebutted as ‘inaccurate’ (Ali, 2018). A number of reports also find that Muslims in general support the idea of preventative work, that many mosques see Prevent as part of their everyday pastoral practice, and that the education and health sector are comfortable with the duty (Skoczylis, 2015; Busher et al, 2017; Bell and Greer, 2018). Therefore when studying Prevent, it is important to ensure that any data used as evidence is reliable, and that the sources used are genuine. This is kept in mind in the chapters that follow, most of which rest on policy documents produced for Prevent. This ensures that when describing what Prevent does, or intends to do, this description is based on reliable information. The information is analysed starting from the notion that Prevent is not just a counterterrorism policy, but a policy that is deeply ideological, as argued in this chapter. Because of this, it then follows that we cannot just analyse Prevent by trying to understand ‘what works’, judging the policy by whether it prevents terrorism. Prevent does much more than that; it shapes subjectivity, and lays out a framework outside of which political action becomes suspicious or dangerous. The question of how women fit into this therefore becomes one which is, too, deeply political. We have for many years understood sex and gender not just to be natural states, but sites of political contestation. What Prevent does in this framework therefore shapes the political and social lives of women in the United Kingdom, and will be analysed as such.

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Women in the National Policy Framework 4.1 Introduction This chapter analyses Prevent as it appears in national policy documents, and how women appear within these. Since The Prevent Strategy: A Guide for Local Partners in England was published in 2008, Prevent has received its own policy documentation and guidance notes, providing more detail on the strategy and guidelines for implementation. Using these documents, this chapter will provide an overview of Prevent’s engagement with women. Having been through four public iterations, in 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2018, there have been a number of changes to Prevent’s operation. As argued in the previous chapter, these iterations can be grouped into two thematically similar periods; the period 2006–​2011 as governed by the Prevent policies of 2006 and 2009; and the period 2011–​2022, as governed by the Prevent policies of 2011 and 2018. These documents outline in detail the assumptions and operational intentions of the Prevent policy, and as such we can trace how and when ideas and concepts appear. Therefore much that has been taken for granted in Prevent, such as ideas about radicalization, vulnerability and risk, can be found and better understood through these original documents. These documents also answer the question of why Prevent operates in a certain way in relation to particular groups, and can track continuity and change in the policy with regards to implementation. In this case, we can ask why Prevent is keen to engage with women, and find answers in the assumptions made in the original documentation. The data here is drawn from the national policy documents for Prevent and CONTEST, 2003–​2018. Guidance and supplementary documents for Prevent from key agencies are included where they exist, alongside ‘further’ or ‘guidance’ reading from the documents. The data is presented chronologically and organized thematically within those time periods to show how concepts are introduced or evolve over time. Many of these 66

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themes will be cross-​cutting –​as such, a discussion of the overall inclusion and exclusion of women in the strategy is presented at the end. The chapter begins with a discussion of overarching themes. These are themes and concepts which appear consistently in all of the eras of Prevent policy reviewed. These themes include the explanation that women are a key target for Prevent; the rationale for targeting women; and the idea that Prevent can be used to tackle oppression against women. Following this, the chapter is then split into occasional themes. These are the themes and concepts that appear only in one of the two eras of Prevent policy, or which are treated differently in different eras. In the 2006 and 2009 era, these themes include an overview of how women are included in projects and interventions; the important role of women in the home, family and community; the challenge of patriarchy and misogyny faced by women; and the role and challenge of culture and religion in engaging women. The themes culture and religion and women in the home, family and community and patriarchy and misogyny are also found in the 2011 and 2018 era, but are different enough in treatment to be considered thematically unique. In the 2011 and 2018 era, the themes found include women in the home, family and community; culture and religion; patriarchy and misogyny; women’s rights; and violence against women. A brief conclusion is offered at the end of the chapter.

4.2 Overarching themes While Prevent has gone through a number of changes over the years, still some things hold constant. Certain issues turn up within the documents time and time again, and hold fast in the way they are presented, talked about and tackled. These themes deal with the fact that women are considered a key target demographic in Prevent, the rationale for including women in Prevent, and the need for or ability of Prevent to tackle the oppression of women. While some themes might appear more frequently in one policy iteration than another, they nonetheless appeared consistently and remained largely the same in their articulation. The key target theme simply explains the fact that throughout Prevent, women are consistently named as a group that needs to be engaged by the policy. However, it is also clear that women are not considered to be at high risk of radicalization. Thus, it unearths the fact that women are largely seen as partners in the fight against terrorism, rather than as potential terrorists. The rationale theme includes the idea that women are inherently more peaceful than men; are better communicators; and are better at consensus building. Thus, it explains further the logic of women being considered partners, rather than risks. The oppression theme presumes that women are oppressed and that Prevent should and can offer them a way to tackle that 67

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oppression. This theme provides the hook to get more women involved in Prevent –​it is something women are interested in, and it holds out the ‘carrot’ for participating in the counterterrorism agenda. It also intertwines Prevent with a wider agenda for women’s rights. This allows Prevent to position itself against extremist ideologies which would purportedly oppress women, creating a strong contrast between the two ideologies on offer –​ the state ideology of liberal-​capitalist-​democracy, and the various extremist ideologies which hold in common the oppression of women. Prior to 2011 this theme was explicitly about Muslim women, in line with the wider policy focus. While in 2011 Prevent expanded to a ‘whole of society’ focus, women’s oppression still largely focused on ethnic minority communities.

4.2.1 A key target for Prevent? Since the initiation of Prevent women have been a key target group for engagement. In an initial response to the 7/​7 bombings and prior to the public release of the strategy in 2006, the government ran seven Preventing Extremism Together working groups which were to generate ‘concrete proposals about how Muslim communities and the Government can further work in partnership to prevent extremism, and to reduce disaffection and radicalisation within Muslim communities across Britain’ (Home Office, 2005a, p 1). The ‘Engaging with Muslim Women’ working group brought together 13 women to generate proposals which would produce recommendations as to how women could be included in any strategy to counter terrorism or extremism (Home Office, 2005a). The recommendations of the group, which focused on deepening the relationship between Muslim women and government, increasing the visibility of Muslim women in civic life, and strengthening Muslim women’s organizations, placed women as a key variable in any successful counterterrorism or counter-​extremism strategy. It concluded that ‘[a]‌ny effort to prevent violent extremism in the UK must take into consideration the multi-​faceted and changing role of Muslim women within the community’ (Home Office, 2005b, p 43). These recommendations were developed into 14 points of action, 13 of which were taken forward in some way by the government (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006). Despite this, women featured only briefly in the 2006 CONTEST strategy, in two small information boxes (HM Government, 2006). However supplementary documents related to Prevent made clear that women remained a priority for the strategy. The Preventing Violent Extremism Community Leadership Fund, which sought to ‘build the capacity of Muslim communities to take practical steps to reject violent extremism’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2007c, p 3) featured increasing the capacity of Muslim women as one of three key objectives. In 2007, the 68

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government also set up the National Muslim Women’s Advisory Group (NMWAG) that sought to ‘advise Government on the role that [Muslim women] can play in winning hearts and minds and tackling extremism’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008b). By 2008, women were considered important enough to have an entire document dedicated to showcasing examples of engagement with women, drawing on the recommendations outlined in the Preventing Violent Extremism Action Plan (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a). Women additionally appeared extensively in the 2008 guidance for the Prevent strategy. The document outlined how women should be engaged with extensively as a way to counter extremism in communities noting that ‘[w]‌omen can be a particularity effective voice as they are at the heart not only of their communities, but also of their families’ (HM Government, 2008, p 17). Much of the guidance document focused on getting women involved in local forums in a representative capacity. It also signposted local councils to the document Empowering Muslim Women: Case Studies and to the NMWAG as places where inspiration for local projects could be found. Guidance also emphasized that local councils would not be able to score above a three out of five in the National Indicator 35 (NI35) evaluations should they not engage with women in a ‘[r]‌egular and reliable’ way (Hammersmith and Fulham Council, 2009, p 64). NI35, which was active as an evaluation framework between 2007 and 2011, was ‘an attempt to get local partnerships to take responsibility for, and control of, violent extremism’ (Harding, 2008, p 45). Success in meeting the indicators would result in extra funding for councils under the Local Area Agreement and National Indicator Set framework (Mastroe, 2016). Hence the presence of women in this indicator formalized the need for local councils to engage with women, and indicates the priority that government gave to this at that time. However, data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government indicates that between 2008 and 2009, local authorities only scored an average of 1.9 out of 5 on NI35, and during 2009–​2010 scored 2.4 out of 5 (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 2010). According to guidance documents, this score indicates that there were, at best, ‘[r]egular mechanisms for consulting and working with Muslim community, but attendance and reach not wide. Tendency to engage with individuals and interest groups rather than communities’ (Hammersmith and Fulham Council, 2009, p 64). At worst, engagement would be ad-​hoc and unstructured. While this does not necessarily indicate that women in particular were left out of engagement strategies, it indicates that any inclusion was not representative. Evidence presented in subsequent chapters demonstrates that engagement with women tended to be poor. This foreshadows problems which appear throughout the policy; that women were considered to be key targets, but were not effectively engaged. 69

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The publication of the 2009 CONTEST strategy largely continued in the same vein as 2006. Outlining how Prevent would function, Muslim women were again named a ‘key group’ (HM Government, 2009b, p 90). Aside from this, women did not appear prominently in the government’s outline of Prevent. The 2009 guide to Prevent for local partners emphasized the previous work done with women, again drawing attention to the NMWAG and the Empowering Muslim Women: Case Studies document produced in 2008 (HM Government, 2009a). In 2009 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary further noted that women had been identified as ‘key contributors to tackling vulnerability’ (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, 2009, p 29). However, the priority accorded to women was at this time still not reflected in the provision of on-​the-​g round projects for women. In 2009 only 37 per cent of forces had specific Prevent initiatives to engage women (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, 2009), further enforcing the argument that women were considered key targets, but not necessarily treated as such. While the output of the government in this period regarding women did not match that of the 2006 era, the documents produced continued to treat women as a key target group, and it is clear that Prevent in 2009 was a continuation of the 2006 strategy. The election of the new Conservative-​Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2010 saw the publication of a new CONTEST and Prevent strategy in 2011. The Prevent policy in 2011 shifted markedly away from the 2006 and 2009 policies, arguing that it ‘confused the delivery of Government policy to promote integration with Government policy to prevent terrorism’ (HM Government, 2011b, p 1). The new policy would no longer focus as heavily on communities, and instead would emphasize individual risk and ideology as the key areas of work. This change in strategy resulted in the publication of a much larger amount of documentation. Concern regarding British citizens travelling to Syria to fight and the passing of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act (2015) also resulted in a large number of guidance documents being published for the various public agencies concerned. It is at this point that Prevent becomes most different from its previous incarnations. The main documents outlining the 2011 Prevent strategy hardly feature women. The Prevent strategy document mentions women in brief, mostly outlining previous work and mentioning that previous Prevent strategies had funded overseas work to empower Muslim women, and that it was no longer believed to be effective (HM Government, 2011b, p 37). Indeed few of the documents produced by the government in this era mention women as a key group. Certainly the category of ‘Muslim women’ is largely abandoned in Prevent 2011 as the strategy shifted from one which was Muslim-​focused to a ‘whole of society’ strategy (Skoczylis, 2015). The greater focus is on individual radicalization in the context of vulnerability and risk, which 70

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downplays explicit mentions of sex and gender in favour of an idea that each individual’s path to terrorism is different (Thomas, 2014). However, the relative lack of women appearing in 2011 documentation when compared to 2006 and 2009 does not necessarily mean that women were no longer a key target of the policy. The leaked Office for Security and Counter-​Terrorism (OSCT) document Prevent Strategy: Local Best Practice Catalogue made it clear that women remained a key target for Prevent work, seeking to ‘empower women to take on leadership roles within the family and community groups to present a positive counter-​narrative to extremist and terrorist ideology’ (Home Office, 2015b, p 17). The Counter-​Extremism Strategy additionally makes extensive mention of women, largely in the context of women’s right being threatened by extremism and making it clear that women would be further incorporated into the strategy as a counterpoint to misogynistic extremism (HM Government, 2015b). The introduction of ‘British values’ as a statutory duty in schools further enforces the dichotomy constructed by the government between liberal-​democracy and extremism as competing ideological systems. The release of a new Prevent strategy in 2018 continued the trend of the 2011 strategy. The focus remained on individuals and ideology, and women were no longer explicitly central to the strategy in the way that they were in 2006 and 2009. While women continue to feature in the strategy and guidance documents, they do so most prominently as persons who travelled to Islamic State controlled territory (HM Government, 2018). The theme of extremism being detrimental to women’s rights is held over from the Counter-​Extremism Strategy. Aside from this, women are not mentioned. The data collected demonstrates that Muslim women specifically were considered a key target group for Prevent at inception, and as such featured prominently in policy documents. The fact that they were not considered to be a group previously effectively engaged contributed to the impressive output of documentation on how to engage with Muslim women. This was continued in the 2009 strategy, which maintained a focus on Muslims as a community, and looked to integration, cohesion and community empowerment as a counterpoint to radicalization, which remained a community concern. By 2011, women no longer featured as prominently; while they were clearly a key community, policy documents no longer highlighted them as strategic partners in the same way as in 2006 and 2009. The shift from a focus on Muslims as a community towards individual risk and resilience is a partial explanation for this. However the shift to a ‘whole of society’ approach and a renewed focus on ideology as a causal factor, with ‘British values’ as a counterforce, meant that the government came to hold up women’s rights as part of a central strategy of demonstrating the superiority of the British way of life over other ideologies. Through this, women began to feature again more prominently. Certainly women’s rights appeared prominently here as a way of differentiating 71

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Britain from the Islamic State, the latter viewing women as subservient to men (Cook and Vale, 2018). By demonstrating that women were held to be equal in the United Kingdom, an appeal could be made to the women and girls who were seen as at risk of travel to Islamic State held territory at that time (Inspire and London Grid for Learning, 2015; Zakaria, 2015). This was perceived to be an especially urgent problem in 2015, as a trio of girls from Bethnal Green Academy left for Syria to join Islamic State, starting a wide debate about how to prevent further such events (Moaveni, 2019). By 2018, women were no longer mentioned as a key target, and instead the language of individual risk –​in the form of women returnees –​and women’s rights dominates the documentation. By this time, ‘migrants’ to the Islamic State had largely been stemmed after a peak in 2015–​2016 (Cook and Vale, 2018) and the problem was refocused on those that might return. Thus, outlining Prevent in the 2018 CONTEST strategy, the radicalization of women was mentioned solely in relation to women and their children returning from Syria and Iraq (HM Government, 2018).

4.2.2 Women: the rationale for engagement While women are a key target for Prevent, the data released by the government to date demonstrates that women are generally not considered to be at risk of radicalization. Women make up only 12.2 per cent of cases that have received Channel support between the years 2012 and 2017 (Home Office, 2018). Schmidt argues that this is not because women are necessarily less likely to become radicalized. Rather, women are less likely to be referred due to stereotypical ideas about female peacefulness, and those that are referred are less likely to be followed up on (Schmidt, 2020). A lack of engagement with women as radicalized or potentially radicalized persons was noted as a problem with Prevent in the 2015 Countering Extremism report. Mark Kearey and Allison Brannick of the Bethnal Green Academy also noted that the training they received around Prevent was largely geared towards stereotypes of ‘the angry young man’ (Home Affairs Committee, 2015a, p 5) and that more training was needed on women. As such, making women a key target of Prevent indicates that there is a different assumption at play than the government attempting to prevent women from becoming radicalized, even though preventing the radicalization of people has always been a key policy objective. Indeed prior to 2011, women are hardly referenced at all as persons who might be at risk of radicalization. While the possibility of women being radicalized is noted in the 2007 Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) consultation (Metropolitan Police Authority, 2007), it is not until the release of the 2011 Prevent strategy that a concrete case is presented –​that of Roshonara Choudhry, who in 2010 attempted to murder Stephen Timms MP for his support of 72

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the Iraq war. This case received a lot of attention –​not just because of the attempted murder, but also due to the ‘transgression’ of her violent act as a female (Pearson, 2016). Following this, women begin to appear as a group at risk of radicalization in a small number of documents (Home Office and Department for Education, 2011; Munton et al, 2011; Association of Chief Police Officers, 2012b; Christmann, 2012; Home Affairs Committee, 2012; National Police Chiefs’ Council, 2015; HM Government, 2018). However, these references are few when compared to references to other groups –​such as Muslims, youth and men –​and the number of documents produced in general. Further, the narrative produced by these documents is largely in the vein of orthodox terrorism research (Bloom, 2011; Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015), which sees women’s terrorism as more related to ‘personal’ than political factors. This kind of research is critiqued by feminist scholars for depoliticizing women’s involvement in terrorism and reducing their agency as actors (Alexander and Hawkesworth, 2008). For instance, research produced for the Home Office finds that ‘[w]‌omen reported significantly fewer religious or nationalist political motives for engaging in terrorism, and significantly more personal motives’ (Munton et al, 2011, p 18), while similar research produced for the Youth Justice Board quotes research that finds that the ‘majority of female suicide bombers in Iraq are thought to have had family members killed by either multi-​national or state forces in the country’ (Christmann, 2012, p 10). These quotes are drawn from literature reviews conducted by the authors, which would be less problematic if it were not some of the only examples for understanding female radicalization provided to Prevent workers by the government. Further explanations for female radicalization looked to the role of social media (Home Office and Department for Education, 2011; National Police Chiefs’ Council, 2015), and none offered an explanation that acknowledged female agency or political desire as reasons for engaging in terrorism. Women therefore appear as a stereotypically gendered construct, being ‘groomed’ rather than taking agential steps towards political goals (Aretxaga, 1997). In other words, women do not make the choice to be a terrorist as a woman, but rather that choice is made for them by external forces. If the purpose of Prevent is to stop radicalization, and women are largely not considered at risk of radicalization, then why are they included as a key target? Instead of being targeted as potentially radicalized persons, women are targeted to harness their presumed peaceful nature in order to stop the radicalization of others, most often men. The theme of the peaceful woman is one which is cross-​cutting through the different years and iterations of the Prevent policy, and underpins many of the logics of Prevent work with women. In this vein the introduction to Empowering Muslim Women states that ‘[w]‌omen throughout history have been both the vehicles and drivers of positive change’ and that as such they ‘have a key role to play in challenging 73

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prejudice and stereotypes both within their own communities and in wider society’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a, pp 39, 41). The MPA exercise also posited that women ‘[tend] to employ a more consensus-​building approach, about finding common ground, not going at loggerheads’ (Metropolitan Police Authority, 2007, p 41), that women are naturally good communicators, and that as they have a good insight into how their children think, they have a valuable contribution to make to countering terrorism (Metropolitan Police Authority, 2006). As such, interventions which ‘empower’ Muslim women (which featured in the 2006/​2009 era) are done under the assumption that more socially empowered Muslim women will naturally be a bulwark against extremism (Brown, 2008). By training them in theology and countering extremist ideology, they would be more effective in the fight against religious radicalization. Further, their position at the ‘heart’ of communities and families means that they are already legitimate actors who will be both influential and observant of signs of radicalization. The domestic labour of care that is expected of women in society (Bhattacharya and Vogel, 2017) becomes something which is then extended to the community as a whole through Prevent, as well as something which is necessitated through its connection with national security. Interventions which deal with improving the lives of Muslim women –​such as providing them with information on healthy diets or sexual health, or easing the burden of childcare –​should be understood as part of this logic. By strengthening their role within the family, women are more able to positively influence their children and partners, and by making their lives easier, women are more able to spend time with their families and thereby devote time to combating extremist ideologies. This kind of work, originating in 2006 and 2009, carried over into 2011 and 2018 Prevent even as it moved towards an individual focus for risk (Brown, 2013). Being prominent actors in the private sphere (Millett, 2016), women would be able to utilize their knowledge of and care for the family to monitor the household for radicalization risk. This is explored further in section 4.3.

4.2.3 Tackling oppression? Another common theme throughout all Prevent iterations is that of women’s oppression, broadly understood within in terms of patriarchy, misogyny, inequality, violence against women and the supposed ill effects of minority cultures. These conceptions appear individually in different times and are analysed in the following section. However, taken together they form an overarching theme in relation to women’s oppression, and the function of Prevent in opposition to that. That is an understanding that promoting women’s rights and fighting inequality can be used to the advantage of Prevent practitioners, as they are able to channel a desire for more freedom, 74

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or freedom from oppression, into engagements with Prevent projects and interventions. The Youth Justice Board (Hirschfield et al, 2012) provides an example of this in the Prevent documentation, advising practitioners on how to run projects that include women. It found that ‘young females whose more conservative upbringing meant they were not usually allowed to engage in activities outside the home’ were more likely to view Prevent projects in a positive light as they were allowed to attend such activities, as ‘parents had come to view the projects as a safe place for them to attend’ (p 68). As such the desire and need for freedom from a restrictive home environment is linked to engagement with Prevent. This desire for freedom is framed as something which can be taken advantage of. Another example can be found in the guide to effective Prevent practice, which recommended ‘embedding the project in existing activities delivered by other organisations or delivering it in venues that people are familiar with and might already access, such as Children’s Centres, Libraries or Leisure Centres in order to improve engagement (Iacopini et al, 2018, p 17). Therefore, places that women use to ease the burdens of childcare, to get free entertainment or education for themselves or their children, or to exercise in a safe environment, come to be sites where Prevent looks to access them. To take the leisure centre as an example as to why this relates to women’s oppression, consider that many women do not feel safe exercising in public due to fear of harassment, sexual assault or rape (Vera-​Gray, 2018) and thus will seek out closed or monitored spaces in which to exercise. Some Muslim women will also look to leisure centres that provide women-​only sessions as places where they can exercise away from men (de Knop et al, 1996). Because of women’s oppression, these spaces then provide both an accessible audience, and one which might be more amenable to Prevent’s message of women’s equality, considering they would attend these spaces because of a pre-​existing need. Similarly, ‘hooks’ are presented as a way to encourage engagement, which with women, can mean latching counterterrorism work onto work related to sexual health, relationships and sexual violence (Home Affairs Committee, 2012). As argued in the previous section, tackling women’s oppression is thought to have the knock-​on effect of increasing the time they can spend doing care work, thereby reducing the risk of radicalization in others. Thus, oppression is not framed within Prevent as a moral wrong which needs to be rectified. It is instead an impediment to preventing terrorism, as a valuable group becomes excluded from preventative activities. It is also an opportunity to sell the message of Prevent. This will be explored further in later sections. This reality has sparked anger in some groups, articulated by the An-​Nisa society in 2010: Many of the programmes are aimed at Muslim women. … Nowhere does it say ‘come to this workshop to prevent violent extremism’. The 75

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aims and objectives are false. Even if those delivering the projects believe they are trying to improve the prospects for Muslim women … they never disclose the real aims, which come from the Prevent strategy. (Communities and Local Government Committee, 2010, Ev.174) An-​Nisa, which had taken Pathfinder funding with the understanding that it would be used on community development work, later published a highly critical report of Prevent which outlined its belief that the policy was damaging to the Muslim community (Khan, 2009; O’Toole et al, 2016). Likewise Shaista Gohir, one of the founding members of NMWAG, resigned from the group in 2010 with similar complaints, that the government created ‘a structure that served no purpose, except contributing towards a political agenda’, and that the government was not serious about promoting women’s rights (Gohir, 2010a). Similar arguments are made by Brown (2008) in relation to promoting women’s access to mosques, in that the rights of Muslim women are only promoted to service a policy agenda, rather than as an endeavour emphasizing agency. Despite these objections, women’s oppression remains in Prevent in various forms to the present day. This is explored further in the following section.

4.3 Occasional themes Alongside the overarching themes already covered, certain themes exist that only appear in limited eras. The following sections present these themes, grouped within the eras that they appear in. As argued in the previous chapter, while Prevent has seen four official iterations in 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2018, it is better conceptualized as two broader eras, with the eras governed by the policies of 2006 and 2009 focusing on the Muslim community and integration work, and the eras governed by the policies of 2011 and 2018 looking to the individual, ideology and institutions as important sites of counterterrorism work. This is reflected in the thematic analysis that follows, which found themes to be grouped in the 2006/​2009 eras and 2011/​2018 eras. The Prevent review of 2011 largely created a cut-​off between these two periods, when a shift in policy focus was created. Thus, the occasional themes are grouped into the 2006 and 2009 eras, and the 2011 and 2018 eras. As noted in the Introduction, in the 2006 and 2009 era these themes include projects, interventions and inclusion; women in the home, family and community; patriarchy and misogyny; and culture and religion. In the 2011 and 2018 era, the themes found include women in the home, family and community; culture and religion; patriarchy and misogyny; women’s rights; and violence against women. Where themes appear in multiple eras, this is because they are different in treatment, even if they fall within a thematically similar concept. 76

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4.3.1 2006 and 2009 The 2006 and 2009 era encompasses the time from when Prevent was first released to the public, until but not inclusive of the release of the Prevent strategy of 2011. As explored in the previous chapter, Prevent in this era was focused on a threat from Islamic extremism, and thus was most concerned with ideologies and beliefs held within the British Muslim community. It was also especially concerned with community cohesion, and as a new policy was experimenting with different ways to engage with British Muslims. One way in which Prevent sought to engage with British Muslims was through Muslim women. These women were a key target for the policy, as already explored. However Prevent in this era also considered that there were unique reasons for and challenges with engaging Muslim women with Prevent. Reasons why they should be involved, and might face exclusion, included ideas about the role of women in Islam, the cultural background of British Muslim women, and the assumed special role of women in the home and community. How Prevent conceptualized and sought to overcome these problems, and leverage any advantages, is explored in the following. Projects and interventions: inclusion, exclusion and barriers to participation As mentioned in the previous chapter, the 2006 and 2009 Prevent policies considered Muslim communities to be where counterterrorist work should be located. As a part of this, Muslim communities were constructed as places of risk and vulnerability, and also places where this risk could be mitigated through preventative work (Mythen et al, 2013). This idea followed from the Cantle Report, which identified ethnic minority women as particularly disempowered and disengaged (Cantle, 2001). This led to the consideration of integration as a security issue and meant that the inclusion of ethnic minority women in policy matters became an urgent business. Against this background, Muslim women were considered a key target for Prevent. A number of steps were introduced to the policy to understand how Muslim women could be effectively included. This was a priority identified in the 2005 working groups, which sought to ‘empower’ Muslim women to become ‘informed and active citizens within society’ (Home Office, 2005b, p 37), noting that they would need platforms to showcase their work; must be allowed on to mosque committees; and that Muslim women should be provided with a forum to ‘map good practices amongst Muslim organisations and wider organisations that deal with socio political-​economic issues that affect Muslim women and children’ (Home Office, 2005b, p 38). Following this, the MPA consultation exercise found that ‘[w]‌omen have a great deal to say on the present threat, but their views, experiences and ideas are often ignored or simply not sought at all’ (Metropolitan Police Authority, 2006, p 1). 77

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However, while national policy dealt solely with the perceived need to further include Muslim women under a securitized presumption, the MPA notably included all women in the conclusions to its consultation. While the MPA consultation was used and read more widely than in London, appearing in a Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary report in 2008 (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, 2008), national policy would remain focused on Muslim women for the entirety of both the 2006 and 2009 Prevent strategy. These documents would focus on a number of cross-​cutting issues as key problems relating to getting women involved in countering terrorism, including access to employment; education; language ability; ‘cultural’ barriers; not being listened to; damaging stereotypes and discrimination; access to childcare; and an existing lack of women in services. The problem of a lack of representation would remain something of concern throughout 2006 and 2009. The question of why this would be the case was also addressed within government documentation. The 2008 Empowering Muslim Women: Case Studies document argued that ‘Muslim women have highlighted [feeling] that community attitudes and infrastructures did not allow for them to be consulted, heard or engaged on key issues such as decision-​making in how services are delivered or the leadership of women in tackling the threat of violent extremism’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a, p 6). This document located the problem within the Muslim community itself. This was a common frame in approaching the problem, sometimes approached in coded language as a ‘cultural barrier’ (Pratchett et al, 2010, p 27). This idea is common post-​9/​11, with the framing of minority cultures as being oppressive to women (Pratt, 2012). Lack of representation was also identified as being located in other factors. Such language appears frequently throughout, and primarily as a problem relating to women. Initially, consideration was given to providing Arabic as a language option in schools, which was considered following the recommendations of the working groups (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006, p 2). This was the only language recommendation resulting from the working groups, and emerged from the women’s working group. Following this language mainly appeared in regards to women in the form of perceived deficiencies in the English language, which prevented them from engaging in society effectively (Pratchett et al, 2010, p 27). Another problem highlighted was that women from the Muslim community were not listened to by the ‘statutory and service sectors’ which led to them being marginalized, as well as ‘becoming increasingly distant from the reality of the UK climate of terrorism, extremism, and radicalisation’ (Home Office, 2005b, p 42). This concern was reflected in other documents (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a), including in some cases a linkage to stereotypes about Muslim women. For instance, one Department 78

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for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) document notes that ‘[i]‌n some circumstances [Muslim women] can be subjected to stereotypes and misconceptions and are therefore not included in the wider public debate’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008b, p 30). The report also noted that the government should strive to overcome these misconceptions and include women in policymaking. Stereotypes were also brought up as a problem in and of themselves, particularly in relation to Muslim women who wear the hijab being a more visible minority (Metropolitan Police Authority, 2007; Change Institute, 2008; Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a, 2008b). This reflects a problem commonly reported by Muslim women, who are visibly ‘Other’ and therefore more vulnerable to hate crimes and hate speech on account of their religion (Awan and Zempi, 2015; Tell MAMA, 2017). A lack of access to communal space was additionally identified as a possible problem in getting Muslim women involved in the strategy (Home Office, 2005b). One study highlighted that the solution that some practitioners had adopted to ameliorate this –​segregating projects between men and women –​was ‘at variance with mainstream youth work practice and values’ (Christmann, 2012, p 39). Childcare was highlighted as a problem initially in the MPA consultation as something that would need to be provided so that more women can get involved in project activities (Metropolitan Police Authority, 2007). As part of wider concerns with Muslim women’s participation in the 2006 and 2009 policies, education and work featured throughout. One study published by the government noted that as of 2006 only 29 per cent of Muslim women were employed in the formal labour market (Change Institute, 2008) and the Empowering Muslim Women: Case Studies document devoted an entire chapter to projects that attempted to integrate Muslim women into the labour market (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a). Likewise, education was presented as a key, linked concern, with the same document devoting a separate chapter to this issue, noting that ‘[a]‌mongst Pakistanis and Bangladeshis … 40% of women of working age have no formal qualifications at all’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a, p 17). Both these issues were key concerns of NMWAG (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008b). According to the policy documents, by addressing the barriers to participation for Muslim women, more would be able to assert themselves within the community and society and ‘go on to participate in leadership roles, representation and support for those at risk of extremist behaviour in their communities’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a, p 42). Making leaders and role models out of Muslim women formed a key part of Prevent work in the 2006 and 2009 era, framing the betterment 79

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of Muslim women in society as part of a necessary security response. Indeed, the Prevent Guide for Local Partners (HM Government, 2008) wanted women in particular to succeed as ‘strong leadership helps give communities a strong voice, and provides individuals with the strength to challenge the arguments put to them’ (p 32). Hence, a number of projects were developed and highlighted in documentation to develop women as leaders and role models (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008b; Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, 2008) and to develop the networks of like-​ minded women across the country (Communities and Local Government Committee, 2010, Ev.15). Likewise Muslim women were also trained in engaging with the media, in order to allow them to challenge the stereotypes that appear there (WiredGov, 2008). Additionally, projects sought to reach out in ways which they thought would break through barriers as well as encouraging them to engage in social activities to raise self-​esteem, social capital and integration. This included arts and sports societies, radio plays and drama workshops. Regarding this, Empowering Muslim Women: Case Studies explains that: Arts and culture can be used to challenge sensitive issues in a positive and non-​confrontational manner, using stories to tackle issues around extremism and racial intolerance. … Participation in arts and culture is also fun and energising, breaking down many barriers as there is no right or wrong way to express yourself as an artist. Getting involved in arts and culture can provide a means of self-​expression, building a strong sense of confidence and identity. Sporting activities can bring together communities and people across all age groups, creating positive contacts which break down stereotypes. (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a, p 33) The wide net cast by Prevent in the 2006 and 2009 eras reflects the belief in the strategy that greater participation by Muslim women was needed in order to counter terrorism, and that this was best done by intervening to address the perceived needs of women in the Muslim community. As women are conceptualized in Prevent as inherently peaceful, it would follow that the more that women engaged in the policy, the greater the peaceable effects of it would be. This also linked in with the policy’s focus on integration and community cohesion, as ‘extremist messages are less likely to find support and are more easily isolated in a cohesive environment’ (HM Government, 2009b). Hence Muslim women were targeted as a group that was considered poorly integrated (Change Institute, 2008; Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008b) and thus they and the strategy would benefit from targeted work with them. This broad objective translated into interventions which were quite beyond the traditional conceptions of counterterrorism 80

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work, leading directly to the criticism in the 2011 Prevent strategy that Prevent had assumed ‘control of funding for integration projects which have a purpose and value far wider than security and counterterrorism’ (HM Government, 2011c, p 12), effectively securitizing community and integration work (Martin, 2015). Women in the family, home and community While including more women in Prevent was clearly a priority for the strategy, the role women played in countering terrorism was also something that needed to be established in order to develop a cohesive strategy. The working group set up in 2005 to look at the role of women in countering extremism and terrorism produced a number of recommendations in this vein. One recommendation, which was to explore ‘the role of mothers/​ women within the family nucleus, in the workplace, and within communities’ (Home Office, 2005b, p 38), underpinned much of how women were thought about in relation to Prevent. This theme –​of women holding a key place in the family, home and community –​is one which thus appears prominently throughout the 2006 and 2009 Prevent documentation. The prominence of this theme meant that by 2006, women were bring framed as a first-​line defence against radicalization. The MPA, for instance, published the results of a consultation exercise that claimed that ‘there is a particular case for consulting women not only because of their gender, but because of the roles they predominantly play in society: mother, carer, home-​keeper, and educator –​“the home is the first school” ’ (Metropolitan Police Authority, 2007, p 40). This view, which is reflective of common stereotypes about women as mothers and carers (Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015) is reiterated a number of times in the 2006/​2009 era; the 2008 Prevent Guide for Local Partners recommends women as an effective voice in combating extremist ideology as ‘they are at the heart not only of their communities but also of their families’ (HM Government, 2008, p 17); the Preventing Violent Extremism: Sixth Report of Session 2009–​10 report took evidence that ‘all young terrorist males have mums, and in a sense to set yourself out on a terrorist route is to somehow turn your back on the family environment’ (Communities and Local Government Committee, 2010, Ev.65); and a review of work done with women through Prevent, published in 2010, found that an important part of work done with women was in the vein of theological education, as they could then support their children in negotiating their identity alongside challenging extremist ideology (Pratchett et al, 2010). The Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU) additionally published research in 2010 that found that mothers of young teenagers were likely to look to their own parents for advice on religion and culture (Research, Information and Communications Unit, 2010). 81

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Prevent in 2006 also provided funding to ‘build women’s awareness of their role in keeping families together’, as well as ‘holding sessions to educate women in how to provide healthy diets for their families; an understanding of first aid and establishing healthy environments for children both in and outside the house’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006, p 3). Following recommendations from the working groups, the government also began providing sexual health advice to Muslim women as part of Prevent (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006). As argued previously, this is presumably so that women could free up their time to better integrate themselves, and spend more time with their families, thus spreading peaceful influence. It can also be considered a ‘hook’, which would draw more women into the counterterrorism agenda through provision. Thus, by linking something which is needed, such as sexual health advice, to Prevent, the government would be more able to get women involved. Similarly, women were positioned in the 2006/​2009 era as key actors in creating resilient communities. The 2008 report Preventing Violent Extremism: Next Steps for Communities noted that ‘[r]‌esilient communities cannot be built and sustained without the active participation of women’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008b, p 30) and noted that the government was investing in leadership and media training for Muslim women in order to enhance their roles within Muslim communities. The NMWAG also worked towards increasing the influence of Muslim women in their communities, with two of their three objectives outlined in CONTEST (2009) as increasing civic participation and identifying role models for Muslim women in public life (HM Government, 2009b). Research published by the DCLG looked to women as actors who are central to ‘regeneration and potential in all communities’, and as persons who might be a moderating influence on the Muslim community by ‘attempting to reorientate religious traditions to deal with repressive cultural practices’ (Change Institute, 2008, p 40). Much of the community work with women in the Muslim community in the 2006/​2009 era looked to strengthen their role as religious actors –​the DCLG funded a CD-​ROM which would ‘allow the young British Muslim females to obtain the true knowledge of Islam’, as well as projects which would bring women together in faith-​based discussion with the objective of challenging perceived taboos around adult education, healthcare and participation in the arts (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006, pp 2–​3; 2008a, p 33). Increasing women’s access to and influence in mosques was also a priority (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2007a), alongside using the new theological knowledge of Muslim women to ‘explore issues and misconceptions about the position of Muslim women in Islam and address how they can articulate strong messages about suicide bombings, jihad and democracy’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a, p 44). 82

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Patriarchy and misogyny While Prevent is primarily concerned with preventing and combating terrorism and extremism, women also find themselves included in the policy as victims of misogyny and patriarchy, and occasionally ‘traditional’ cultural norms, which are frequently understood as oppressive to women and in need of liberal intervention (Riley, 2013). The latter is explored briefly here, but appears more prominently in the 2011 era, and is analysed further in that section. This issue was initially picked up by the working group in 2005, with the government committing to establishing a group which would ‘bring together women to discuss a range of faith-​sensitive issues that are easily overlooked when women have no communal outlet’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006, p 3), highlighting a common concern that women are frequently denied an equal hearing in public and civic life (Cowden and Singh, 2017). This is later elaborated on and made explicit in the 2007 MPA consultation, with a witness stating: ‘Many of our [Muslim] communities are dominated by men. We live in a patriarchal society. When you go to those communities and you talk only to those individuals, then a whole range of women’s voices are negated’ (Metropolitan Police Authority, 2007, p 41). As the strategies of 2006 and 2009 were concerned solely with the Muslim community, patriarchy and misogyny that existed more widely in the UK was not addressed, entirely skirting any debate regarding the nature of patriarchy as a long-​standing social institution (Coward, 1983). As with many of the more theoretical concepts introduced in Prevent, patriarchy itself remains undefined, even if it is explicitly named. Considering that patriarchy is a slippery concept, with a number of feminist theorists still debating its various aspects (MacKinnon, 1991; Halley, 2006; Hill Collins, 2009; Freedman, 2018), its appearance in Prevent without any qualification is problematic. Work to combat patriarchy in Muslim communities was then promoted as best practice by 2008 in Empowering Muslim Women: Case Studies, with the Ministerial Foreword arguing that ‘all too often their [Muslim women’s] voice goes unheard. Some don’t have the confidence or skills to speak up in forums dominated by men’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a, p 2). The document frames many of the barriers to women’s success in terms of their relationship to men and culture, alongside material and social needs such as education, language provision and childcare which were not previously met. The language of patriarchy was however short-​lived in Prevent, appearing finally in 2010 as a radicalizing element which might push women further away from their community and into the hands of radical Islam (Sheikh et al, 2010). While it is clear from related documents that patriarchy remains a subject on the mind of government in relation to the Muslim community (Select Committee on Citizenship and 83

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Civic Engagement, 2018), a more dominant frame emerged in Prevent from 2007 in the form of the effects on women of culture and religion. Culture and religion More so than patriarchy and misogyny, culture and religion appear as barriers to women’s participation in both Prevent and in public life. Where culture and religion are referenced, (minority) culture is presented as something to be overcome, and religion as something to be harnessed by the state. This orientalist view, which conceptualizes the religion and culture of the other as something irrational and backward (Said, 2003) features women as an oppressed class who need to overcome their cultural baggage to progress (Schick, 2012). (White) British culture, conversely, does not feature much as a concept, even though it contains within itself oppressive forces such as nationalism, misogyny, sexism and homophobia (Peterson, 1999; Ali, 2020). The idea of a ‘Muslim culture’ that appears in these documents additionally constructs a monolithic community out of many disparate and different communities and groups (Spalek, 2010). This smoothing out of the differences between Muslims from various backgrounds in the UK creates a singular entity which ignores the various cultural heritages of the different communities from which Muslims hail, and places them neatly in a box where their culture is somewhat backward. Thus, Prevent finds itself contributing to discourses which feature ‘non-​Western societies as homophobic, fundamentalist, traditional and backwards, [with] Western countries … as their mirror: secular, progressive and modern—​founded on the principles of sexual liberation and tolerance’ (Lopes Heimer, 2020, p 174). Thus, much of the 2006 Prevent work with women focused on ‘specific social issues in the Muslim community such as lack of choices for women, forced marriage, honour killings and the participation of women in mosques and public life’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a, p 44). A lack of participation in public life by Muslim women is blamed on their ‘traditional role in Muslim society’ (Pratchett et al, 2010, p 27). Indeed one study found that all the Muslim communities involved in the report ‘remain largely male dominated with constraints on women justified by cultural traditions and “religion” ’ (Change Institute, 2008, p 26), sidestepping the possibility that Muslim women might be engaged and active outside of cultural conceptions of their community (Abu-​Lughod, 2002; Waterton and Smith, 2010). As such, a 2007 study published by the DCLG found that women ‘saw their mothers constrained by the traditions of their ethnic Bengali culture which placed little importance of women’s education and severely restricted their movement outside the home’ (Choudhury, 2007, p 4). The study goes on to note that Islamic teachings were able to be used 84

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by these women to resist cultural restrictions on behaviour. The need to supervise religion is highlighted in the instances where religion is found to be a barrier to women’s participation. For instance, it is named as a barrier to getting involved in arts projects, with the DCLG noting that ‘Muslim women were … reluctant to get involved in the arts because they felt it compromised their religious and cultural beliefs’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a, p 34). This ignores Muslim communities within which poetry, dance and calligraphy, to name a few things, are important cultural traditions in which women are known to take part (Lloyd et al, 1999) and contributes to the monolithic cultural construction mentioned prior. Religion is also presented as something which can be distorted, and thus becomes a source of extremism and misogyny (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006; HM Government, 2009b; Pratchett et al, 2010). However, as distortion is considered something which is a perversion of the true form of religious teachings, religion in its ‘pure’ or ‘moderate’ forms appears as something which can be beneficial, in the sense that it can be used to break away from the oppressive cultural norms that are located within minority communities. In this vein the Pathfinder projects in 2007 were used to ‘help support existing mainstream imams to counter the appeal of persuasive figures, fostering a new generation of moderate, mainstream faith leaders’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2007a, p 6). It therefore looked to promote religion within the confines of what the government deems appropriate. As the primary victims of religious oppression, and the beneficiaries of any increase in ‘moderate’ beliefs, women were considered central to religious aspects of the 2006 and 2009 Prevent strategies. The work of the NMWAG concentrated on religion as one of their three main objectives, alongside promoting female Muslim role models and increasing civil participation (Rashid, 2014). Increasing Muslim women’s participation in religious institutions would presumably be a liberalizing and pacifying influence (Eisenstein, 2007; Brown, 2008). Summary: 2006 and 2009 The 2006 and 2009 documents analysed in this chapter conceptualize women in a number of themes. In line with the universal theme of women being naturally peaceful, work to include women further in the policy as potential counterterrorism allies began in earnest in 2005. This work largely sought to encourage them to use their presumed position at the ‘heart of the family’ and at the ‘heart of the community’ to influence Muslims, making them more resilient to terrorist narratives and ideologies. Education initiatives were undertaken which were to amplify this peaceful influence, giving them more resources to counter religious extremist ideologies and 85

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to counter extremism in general by improving self-​esteem and decreasing domestic burdens. Concurrent to this was the idea that in the Muslim community, patriarchy and ‘culture’ were an impediment to women advancing in society and gaining leadership positions in the Muslim community. Thus, projects sought to combat this with the intention of getting more women into positions where they could better influence the Muslim community. Religion was seen as a possible way for women to argue for their position here –​‘moderate’ interpretations of Islam were in particular seen as woman-​ positive and a source of resilience within the Muslim community. This ‘Muslim community’ is something which appears as a homogenous bloc, rather than in the varying forms of groups and communities in which Muslims fall in reality.

4.3.2 2011 and 2018 In 2011 the release of an updated strategy marked a change in the way Prevent would be delivered. The new Prevent policy of 2011 stated at the outset that the previous policy was flawed, and that it ‘confused the delivery of Government policy to promote integration with Government policy to prevent terrorism’ (HM Government, 2011b, p 1). According to the government, this resulted in wasted money as funding was used for cohesion projects which had little to do with the Prevent agenda (HM Government, 2011b). The government also moved to focus more on ideology and individuals, downplaying the role of communities and dropping the explicit focus on Muslim communities. While women remained a key target, the concerns of the government regarding how communities would be engaged, and the change in the policy’s focus, meant that there would too be a change in how they were engaged and included. As outlined in this chapter, a lot of Prevent work with women in the 2006 and 2009 era was not strictly counterterrorism work. As such, by 2011 women’s participation in wider social life was largely removed, being something to be addressed in other government policies. Therefore, 2011 Prevent discarded from policy the projects which looked to get more Muslim women in employment and the arts, which sought to improve their language skills, which looked to provide them with sexual, health and dietary advice, and which more generally looked to get Muslim women further involved in British politics and life. The Prevent Equality Impact Assessment in 2011 did however note that one of the positive effects on women was that it had ‘potential to remove the constraints that block their participation in the agenda, by empowering them to tackle intolerance and play a more active role in society’ (HM Government, 2011c, p 9), indicating that the agenda of the 2006 and 2009 policy would not entirely be forgotten. 86

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Additionally, wider guidance highlighted that the concerns of 2006 and 2009, while no longer a part of the official policy, would continue to play a role. For instance, a general lack of women in the various services which deliver Prevent was highlighted as a potential problem affecting delivery and trust, particularly in relation to Black and minority ethnic (BME) women in the Metropolitan Police (Home Affairs Committee, 2015b). Research undertaken for the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) also highlighted that Muslim women were not effectively engaged with the police, which would need to be addressed should delivery of the policy be effective (Innes et al, 2011). This research led directly to the Shanaz project, a women’s network which was to further women’s engagement with the police and Prevent –​this project is explored more in Chapter 5. Delivery guidance in 2018 also highlighted the need for childcare to be taken into account in delivering Prevent to women (Iacopini et al, 2018), as per previous advice in 2006. However, the publication of the Counter-​Extremism Strategy in 2015 brought back many of the ideas used in 2006 and 2009 which were jettisoned in 2011. Language skills again appeared as part of the strategy in relation to women, with poor English skills assumed to be a cause of women’s lack of integration (HM Government, 2015b) and which would present a security threat if mothers could not understand what their children were reading and talking about in everyday life. While the strategy positioned this as something which effected Britain’s most isolated communities, both previous mentions of women’s language deficiencies and a speech by David Cameron makes it clear that the community in question is still the Muslim community (Sherwood and Mason, 2016). While the policy would no longer officially focus on Muslims, the claim that Prevent stigmatized Muslim communities would remain (Awan, 2012; Jackson, 2018) and Prevent would not see far-​ right cases receiving more specialist support than Islamist cases until 2019 (Grierson, 2019b). Further, education and employment were highlighted in relation to women, being that a ‘lack of integration can limit educational achievement and access to employment, particularly for women and young people’ (HM Government, 2015b, p 37) and that a lack of integration can be a driver of extremism, separating persons from mainstream society and leaving them vulnerable to extremist ideology. Evidence presented in the House of Commons also shows that the concerns of 2006 and 2009 remained in practice, particularly with reference to working with women in mosques (Home Affairs Committee, 2015a). However Prevent in 2011 and 2018 no longer make such concerns a key part of the written strategy. This section chronicles how the shift from communities to individuals, and the introduction of the ‘British values’ focused Counter-​Extremism Strategy, reconceptualizes women as compared to the 2006 and 2009 era. While some conceptual apparatus remain –​the family and the community 87

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are still considered key places for women, and culture is still seen as an impediment to their social advancement –​these concepts have evolved in line with the policy. As such, the place of women is no longer as clear in the policy, but rather can be found ‘between the lines’ and in relation to specific concerns, rather than in general. The 2011 and 2018 policies also flesh out more fully the role of women’s rights and violence against women in relation to the Prevent policy, which were concepts that were largely absent from 2006 and 2009. Women in the family, home and community The change in policy that the 2011 Prevent strategy brought involved a shift from understanding risk to be located in a community to it being located in the individual. The result of this largely erases the discourse around women being key to counterterrorism. However, the documentation continued to point towards families as sites of radicalization and resilience, a space which increased in importance compared to the 2006 and 2009 era. The NHS document Building Partnerships, Staying Safe saw families as areas where tensions within could be understood in terms of individual vulnerability, with ‘significant tensions within the family that produce a sense of isolation of the vulnerable individual from the traditional certainties of family life’ (Department of Health, 2011, p 10). While women are not mentioned explicitly in this, the latter reference to ‘traditional certainties of family life’ draws associations with an idealized family mother–​father dyad with the role of the woman being to perform domestic and emotional labour (Bhattacharya and Vogel, 2017; Cooper, 2017). Indeed the introduction of the family as a point of interest, largely supplanting the role of women, does not necessarily mean that one replaces the other. The family, after all, is not necessarily a natural nor non-​ideological formation –​it is an institution that is bound up with the dominant ideology of the time (Fraser, 2013). The woman appears in this formation as a person who is expected to maintain the home and care for the children (Barrett and McIntosh, 2015). Thus, while the woman appears as absent in the usage of the word ‘family’, we can instead find her within it, holding a certain role and responsibility, especially in relation to being the primary carer for children. The new formation is then not so far from the old, even if not so explicit. In this vein Rashid (2013) argues that in Prevent ‘parenting’ is in fact a gender-​neutral way of referring to mothering. Conversely the father appears most prominently in Prevent through his absence, with radicalized persons acting out in search of missing father figures and subsequently becoming vulnerable persons (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2008; Department of Health, 2011; Munton et al, 2011; NHS England, 2017). Mother figures do not feature as risk factors in this way, presumably as most 88

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single-​parent households are headed by women (Chalabi, 2013) and mothers are stereotypically considered a caring influence on the child and a naturally peaceful subject more generally (Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015). After the 2011 policy change families were also introduced in Prevent as a potential early warning system, with the Department for Education recommending that ‘[e]‌ffective engagement with parents/​the family is also important as they are in a key position to spot signs of radicalisation’ (Department for Education, 2015, p 7). The 2014 CONTEST annual report likewise positioned families as important to the Prevent strategy with the introduction of the Families Matter organization, which would front a national campaign to enlist families in preventing young people from travelling to Syria and Iraq (Home Office, 2015a). Other research and advice commissioned on Prevent by governmental organizations would find families as an essential component in preventing terrorism (Hirschfield et al, 2012), with the National Police Chiefs’ Council finding that mothers were essential in creating resilience as ‘[w]ithin families, the primary influence on respondents’ beliefs is the mother, highlighting the importance of the mother’s role in their child’s development’ (National Police Chiefs’ Council, 2015, p 5). Building on this idea, the Tavistock Institute published an effective practice guide for Prevent that included a ‘project that works with women to enhance their communications skills and provide techniques and tools for them to become more effective as parents, also incorporated issues of safeguarding more widely’ (Iacopini et al, 2018, p 16). Hence while in the main Prevent shifted in 2011 from a focus on women being at the ‘heart of the family’ in the 2006 and 2009 policies to a more general focus on families as a whole, we can still understand this as being woman-​centred, in line with the assumption that women run the household. Culture and religion Similarly to the family, culture and religion appear in the 2006 and 2009 era and the 2011 and 2018 era. Each era treats these topics differently, highlighting how changes following the 2011 Prevent strategy altered the way that the government would engage with different sectors of society. Compared to 2006 and 2009, culture is relatively absent in 2011 Prevent. However, where it does appear, it largely takes the same form, as an oppressive force against women. Similarly, (White) British culture does not appear in any meaningful form, allowing the primitive–​modern dichotomy to remain lying beneath the text. For example the Prevent Equality Impact Assessment of 2011 found that ‘Prevent aimed at women could be seen as an attempt to undermine traditional relationships between genders within certain cultures’ and that where this did happen, it could be seen as positive in that it would ‘remove the constraints that block [women’s] participation in the agenda’ 89

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(HM Government, 2011b, p 9). Similarly, Prevent work was seen as a positive influence when ‘young females whose more conservative upbringing meant they were not usually allowed to engage in activities outside the home’ were able to attend Prevent-​led activities (Hirschfield et al, 2012, p 68). Although culture is largely dropped from Prevent in the 2011 policy, again likely due to a focus on the individual, where it does appear it indicates that it is still considered to be an oppressive force against women. Religion in the 2011 Prevent policy is also framed in a similar way to 2006 and 2009 –​it is again found to be something which is frequently ‘distorted’ (Cabinet Office, 2013; NHS England, 2017; HM Government, 2018). In the Counter-​Extremism Strategy, this ‘distortion’ results in inequalities, especially the illegal segregation between men and women or women’s exclusion from public spaces (HM Government, 2015b; Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skill, 2016). As with in the 2006 and 2009 strategies, the strategy to counter religious oppression relies on women to some degree –​work to improve women’s access and participation in mosques remained, although this time also with the intention of preventing them from looking to the internet for spiritual guidance (Home Affairs Committee, 2015a). Looking on the internet for spiritual guidance could be considered risky, as ‘[t]‌here is a huge amount of extremist material available on the web. … For the motivated, the journey between a bedroom computer in the UK and a suicide belt may be covered merely in weeks’ (Carlisle, 2011, p 7). Women, not having equal access to mosques, would therefore be more vulnerable to internet radicalization. Bashir argued that ‘[i]f young women … are made to feel unwelcome in mosques … they are even more vulnerable to going online and looking for those answers around identity and belonging’ (Home Affairs Committee, 2015a, p 30). The case of Roshonara Choudhry, referenced as a woman who ‘attempted to murder a Member of Parliament … after reading sermons from an AQ-​AP associate on the internet’ (HM Government, 2011a, p 29) appears as an example of this. Recent interventions have therefore involved guidance from religious scholars to help radicalized individuals ‘reassess’ the religious beliefs that they have (NHS England, 2017, p 21). While guidance has noted that Islamist extremism ‘ideology … should not be confused with traditional religious practice’ (Cabinet Office, 2013, p 1) and that ‘[o]utward expression of faith, in the absence of any other indicator of vulnerability’ is not cause for a Prevent referral (HM Government, 2015a, p 12), a division remains between what the government looks to as a ‘moderate’ Islam and a more conservative form, which appears with some suspicion. Hence, mosques appear in the Counter-​Extremism Strategy (2015) as places which should ‘increase their capacity to engage with women’ (p 28), which makes most sense when read alongside women’s role as peace-​making agents. Rashid (2013) further argues that the concentration on women in religion comes 90

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with a dual expectation that one performs their religious identity in order to be seen as ‘authentic’, but that overly conservative women or women who step outside of the religious box are increasingly marginalized in the policy. Women’s rights The language of rights was included in Prevent prior to 2011, with the 2005 Working Groups recommending that the government, as part of its work with Muslim women, extend ‘the provision of equal opportunities and racial equality law to cover discrimination on the grounds of faith’ (Home Office, 2005b, p 36), a proposal that would be covered by the Equality Act 2006. The role of Muslim women championed by Prevent projects as ambassadors for and defenders of women’s rights was also emphasized (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a). It was, however, not central to the strategy. It is in 2011 that the language of women’s rights became central to Prevent after the Equality Impact Assessment found that some Prevent work might have been negatively impacted by the dominance of men in the Prevent strategy, while other parts of Prevent might have worked to remove constraints on women in society (HM Government, 2011c). The 2011 Prevent strategy, answering to concerns that Prevent might have given money to organizations with extreme views, then decided to withdraw funding from such organizations, including those that did not respect the ‘rights of all men and women to live free from persecution of any kind’ (HM Government, 2011c, p 34). Thus, some funding was removed on the basis of ‘some ambiguity about their views on issues that were important, such as the role of women’ (Home Affairs Committee, 2012, Ev.64). By 2013 this concern with rights was transforming as the government undertook a turn towards ‘muscular liberalism’ (Jose, 2015), where it would seek to do more to actively promote liberalism as an ideology, rather than letting individuals develop in a more seemingly neutral environment. Thus, as the 2013 CONTEST Annual Report stated, the United Kingdom would continue to see terrorist and extremist ideology as the key threat to be challenged, and would do so in part by ‘actively promoting’ what it saw as key liberal values, ‘[f]‌reedom of speech, freedom of worship, democracy, the rule of law, equal rights regardless of race, sex and sexuality’ (Home Office, 2013, p 21). Women’s rights were as such incorporated into the field of counterterrorism vis-​à-​vis the counterpoint to extremist ideology. The Counter-​Extremism Strategy of 2015 made this relationship more clear, positioning women’s rights as part of a package of values that were ‘under attack from extremists’ (HM Government, 2015b, p 9). It argued that ‘[w]here extremism takes root … [w]omen’s rights are fundamentally eroded’ (p 10). Symptoms of extremism in relation to women could be found in 91

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‘men and women being charged different fees for using the same service … women facing lengthier processes for divorce than men … [and] women … unaware of their legal rights to leave violent husbands’ (p 12) and harms such as limited access to employment, education and justice, as well as an uptick in violence against women. The 2018 CONTEST strategy largely followed this logic (HM Government, 2018a). A number of guidance documents produced for the higher education sector underscore this, referring to the Equalities Act as something which should be considered alongside Prevent delivery (Department for Education, 2021a, 2021c). This includes references to older guidance for universities that outlines their responsibility with regards to gender segregation (Department for Education, 2021c). While there is no indication that segregated meetings should be considered a marker of radicalization, it is noted that the guidance would be ‘helpful’ in understanding the Prevent duty, likely with regards to external speakers and meetings held under university auspices. Updated Channel Duty Guidance (HM Government, 2020a) also indicated that intolerance towards persons with traits protected under the Equalities Act, including gender, might be an indicator of radicalization. Thus, Prevent in 2011 and 2018, and especially following the publication of the Counter-​Extremism Strategy and the introduction of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act (CTSA) in 2015, would position itself as a guardian of women’s rights through its promotion of liberalism, and position the derogation of women’s rights as a symptom of extremism and terrorism. Violence against women Similar to women’s rights, issues of violence against women appear infrequently in Prevent overall. While these issues first appeared in 2006 as part of the Pathfinder fund, they are so few that they can be quoted directly in a few sentences. Examples include the London Borough of Hounslow offering leadership training for Muslim women, in order that they ‘play a huge contribution in addressing specific social issues in the Muslim community such as lack of choices for women, forced marriage, honour killings and the participation of women in mosques and public life’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008a, p 44). This would then give them the capacity to further confront terrorism and extremist ideologies. In 2009 these issues were also framed as issues to be dealt with so that women could play a larger part in Prevent policy delivery (Change Institute, 2008). Aside from these short examples, these issues were not further addressed in the 2006 and 2009 policies, despite these policies placing an emphasis on addressing issues which might be detrimental to their lives in order that they play a larger role in society. 92

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It is with the introduction of Prevent 2011, and the emphasis on individual risk and vulnerability, that issues of violence against women again appeared within the Prevent agenda, and indeed began to proliferate afterwards. While the 2011 Prevent strategy gives very broad examples of vulnerability, ACPO guidance for police officers on college campuses gives a specific example of domestic violence being a cause of vulnerability to radicalization (Association of Chief Police Officers, 2012a). Likewise, practitioners speaking in the Home Affairs Committee’s investigation into countering extremism made it clear that domestic violence was a concern for Prevent (Home Affairs Committee, 2015a) and the 2020 Channel Duty Guidance uses domestic abuse as an example of relevant information that should be shared with Channel panels (HM Government, 2020a). Presentations delivered to higher education providers also used Roshonara Choudhry as the sole example of a radicalized woman, highlighting the witnessing of domestic violence at home as being a key factor in driving her to look to the internet for answers (Department for Education, 2021a). Additionally, as Channel panels might include members of the local Safeguarding Adults Boards and Safeguarding Children Boards (HM Government, 2015a) it is then likely that domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women would be picked up on and considered by members of any Channel panel on which they sit, considering that it falls within their remit and training (National Network for Chairs of Safeguarding Adult Boards, 2017). As Channel panels deal on a multi-​agency basis and through the lens of safeguarding, any referrals that do not meet the risk criteria for a Channel intervention, or those persons that turn down a Channel intervention, might then be referred to services intended for vulnerable women such as domestic violence shelters or social services (HM Government, 2015a), further exposing issues of violence against women to security logics. As one in four women in Europe will experience domestic violence in their lives (Blaskó et al, 2020), there is scope for a large number of women to be drawn into the gaze of Prevent, even if most will not receive a Channel intervention (HO News Team, 2018). The publication of the Counter-​Extremism Strategy further placed issues of violence against women within the remit of counterterrorism work, citing ‘[p]‌ractices such as Female Genital Mutilation, Forced Marriage and so-​called Honour-​Based Violence’ as examples of the harm extremism can cause (HM Government, 2015b, p 13). The framing of these harms within the strategy places the risk squarely within minority communities through the use of cultural markers of violence against women (Idriss, 2017), thereby marking violence against women in minority communities as an indicator or form of extremism while the more culturally neutral domestic violence is not. Sara Khan –​then director of the women’s organization Inspire –​spoke against the inclusion of ‘negative cultural practices’ in any government definition 93

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of extremism (Home Affairs Committee, 2015a, p 17), although without qualification. Imkaan argues that this amounts to a government policy that ‘increasingly collapse[s] violence against BME women and girls, in particular forced marriage, female genital mutilation and “honour based” violence with counter-​extremism strategies’ which ends up promoting either a ‘one dimensional approach to risk and safety, or one which further labels and further marginalises us’ (Larasi, 2016, pp 13–​14). Recently, concern with misogynistic ‘Incel’ violence has begun to emerge as a security issue. Since the Isla-​Vista murders of 2014, increasing attention has been paid to murders purported to be connected with an ‘Incel’ ideology (Zimmerman et al, 2018; Baele et al, 2019). While the majority of the violence committed by ‘Incels’ has been committed in the US, a number of convictions for terrorism-​related charges have been made in the United Kingdom, supposedly linked with ‘Incel’ ideology (Dryden, 2021). This concern has been picked up by UK counterterrorism authorities. While this is treated as an emerging threat, it is already presented as something that falls within the framework of violence against women (Department for Education, 2020, 2021b; Commission for Countering Extremism, 2021). This recent interest in ‘Incel’ violence dovetails with the ongoing interest in the relationship between domestic violence and terrorism. In 2021 Counter-​ Terrorism Policing released research from their ‘Project Starlight’, which looks into the prevalence of domestic abuse in Prevent referrals. It found that ‘[o]‌ut of a sample of 3045 individuals, just over a third (1076) had a link to a domestic abuse incident, either as an offender, victim, witness or a combination of all three’ (Counter-​Terrorism Policing, 2021). While this project has not moved far from the initial stages of research, it is made clear that domestic violence is going to be more thoroughly included in Prevent referral assessments. Summary: 2011 and 2018 As noted in the previous chapter, and in this one, the shift from community risk to individual risk after 2011 changed much of Prevent. In regards to women, much of the work that was done in the 2006 and 2009 policies, which focused heavily on a perceived patriarchy and oppressive culture in Muslim communities, was jettisoned. What remained with regard to women was largely relegated to appearances ‘between the lines’ of policy. In this regard women still appeared as the key actors in the family, utilizing care and mothering to create resilient environments. This duty of care was also extended to include reporting on radicalization concerns. Accordingly, women remained stereotypically peaceful. The Counter-​Extremism Strategy 2015 led to much of the 2006 and 2009 discourse returning. Women’s rights came to the fore, with the government 94

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setting up a dichotomy between extremists, who would be detrimental to women’s rights, and the government, which would protect them. Women’s oppression also appeared again, in the guise of oppressive cultural practices which are harmful to women. Again, the government presented itself as an actor which could protect women, providing them with the incentive to further their involvement in countering terrorism. The integration of Prevent with other safeguarding concerns additionally drew more women into the policy. The Prevent duty created an environment where many safeguarding actors would be further integrated into the Prevent policy through their involvement in Channel panels. Thus, women who were suffering abusive relationships or violence might find themselves assessed by a Channel panel as a person vulnerable to terrorist recruitment. Although Prevent statistics show that few women were assessed as vulnerable enough to warrant a Channel intervention, the tying together of Prevent staff and safeguarding leads would mean that women who suffer violence might unknowingly come under the gaze of counterterrorism officers.

4.4 Conclusion This chapter demonstrates that women have, since inception, been a key target for Prevent. The assumptions underpinning that targeting are however not that women are at high risk of radicalization. Rather, Prevent sees women as resources that can be used in the fight against terrorism. This is because women are assumed to be inherently peaceful, and better at communicating and building consensus than men. Coupled with their assumed position at the ‘heart of the family’ and the ‘heart of the community’, a woman trained in spotting radicalization or adept at countering radical ideas is a counterterrorism asset. These assumptions, which are present across all Prevent policies, fashion a female subject that is remarkably traditional. She is most valuable in the home, and most prominent in her role of a mother, providing care and affection to children and being their primary educator. By virtue of her communication skills, she is able to sway the opinion of her partner, and restrain the more violent proclivities of men. Women’s prominent place within the home would also presumably give them insight into radicalization processes, and thus would be valuable as warning systems. While she does not hold power in the community, she is influential by virtue of her affective bonds. However, she typically is not interested in politics and is not politically minded; rather, any political action is guided by emotion. These assumptions allow women little agency, as their choices are made in relation to family and emotion, rather than political desire. This agency is further reduced for those from an ethnic minority background. Ethnic minority communities are presented as places where women are oppressed 95

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by men. Highly patriarchal, they are assumed to be places where women cannot have their voice heard, and indeed are at risk of having their rights and freedoms suppressed. It is this insight that leads the government to assert itself as the protector of women’s rights, set against the extremists. Work to promote women’s rights here also has the advantageous effect of increasing their social power, as a woman unrestricted by misogynist burdens would be better able to assert herself in the family and community and, presumably, further restrain the violence of men. While the Prevent policy of 2006–​2011 concentrated on women as part of the Muslim community, after 2011 the shift of focus to individuals meant that women largely disappeared from Prevent policy. However, guidance notes demonstrate that while the policy has developed, it still thinks of women in similar ways. Women were still considered key in the community and the family as pacifying agents. After 2011 the focus on women’s rights also intensified, with more explicit comparisons between extremist abuse, and government protection of women’s rights. The safeguarding agenda additionally brought violence against women into the policy. Prevent boards would now, as part of a safeguarding agenda, assess whether radicalization was a factor in domestic violence and abuse, something which overwhelmingly concerns women. Thus, shifts in the policy overall mask a remarkably stable conception of women within the policy at a national level. It is clear that women are thought of as mainly peaceful, and that Prevent looks to encourage their participation in the policy in order to both capture this influence, and to make use of their presumed oversight of the home, providing a valuable source of intelligence. Part of the strategy for capturing this support, as will be further explored in other chapters, is the integration of Prevent with women’s rights and social empowerment. Thus, the early efforts of Prevent to encourage women’s involvement in the arts, business and local politics is not just an effort to increase their social power and therefore increase the value of their participation in Prevent. It is also part of an effort to capture women’s political activism and put it in the service of counterterrorism. Due to this we not only get a form of carceral feminism, where women’s concerns are integrated with the security state (Bernstein, 2007); we also get what Halley (2006) terms ‘governance feminism’, an integration of state practice and feminist activism, which severely lessens the bite of this kind of political activism against the state.

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National Projects Post-​2011: Shanaz and Prevent Tragedies 5.1 Introduction Since the start of the policy, Prevent has operated on a local and national level to meet its objectives. As the policy is part of the national counterterrorism strategy, these projects are usually handled by the Metropolitan Police, who have national counterterrorism responsibilities, or by the government ministry that is responsible for Prevent. At the time of publication, this ministry is the Home Office, which handles counterterrorism through the Office for Security and Counter-​Terrorism (OSCT). The purpose of these projects is to coordinate national action on counterterrorism, improve the governance of sectors which are thought to have individuals vulnerable to radicalization, and to disseminate national messaging in order to create national counter-​narratives to extremist ideas, as well as encouraging engagement with Prevent. These broad objectives have resulted in a wide array of projects, including the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board and the Radical Middle Way roadshows, and a number of public campaigns which disseminated Prevent-​aligned messages. While many of the national campaigns run by Prevent are badged as counterterrorism products, many also are not. In 2015, the OSCT produced a ‘Local Best Practice Catalogue’ which outlined a number of Prevent projects that had been run in recent years. Many of the national campaigns –​ including Faith on the Frontline, #MakingAStand, Families Against Stress and Trauma, and A Tale of Two Cities –​were marked as being ‘RICU products’. The Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU) of the Home Office has generated some controversy in recent years as more of its activities have become public. According to the Guardian newspaper, RICU is a kind of propaganda unit, which either produces, or helps others to produce, messages supportive of counterterrorism objectives. The controversy arises in that it does so in secret, and supports projects which 97

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on the surface seem like they have nothing to do with counterterrorism, but actually do (Cobain et al, 2016). This secrecy has resulted in a few projects being revealed as covertly supporting counterterrorism objectives, causing controversy and damaging the reputation of those projects. A case which nicely sums up the entire situation is that of SuperSisters, which was an online magazine for young Muslim women, generally liberal in leaning, and focusing on empowerment and celebrating multiple Muslim identities. When it was revealed to be funded by Prevent and the Building a Stronger Britain Together fund, the resulting controversy hit the site to the point where it now lies dormant. Over the years there have been a number of projects run by Prevent, covertly and overtly, that have targeted women. Alongside SuperSisters, there has also been #MakingAStand, which was launched in 2014. The project wanted to get Muslim women to ‘take the lead to reject ISIL propaganda and discourage travel to Syria/​Iraq’ (Home Office, 2015b, p 6) by getting them to post messages online using the hashtag, and to take part in regional events, encouraging them to take government counterterrorism messages into their homes and communities. While #MakingAStand was a RICU project, the Home Office has also funded projects outside of RICU. One such project is Your Mother, a documentary produced by the organization Sisters Against Violent Extremism. This documentary profiled three mothers whose children became involved in violent extremism, intending to ‘sensitise mothers to their potential in safeguarding their families and communities against violent extremist ideologies’ (Women Without Borders, nd). The film was also used to train British police on the role that women can play in preventing violent extremism. Prevent has also used its resources to create networks and facilitate meetings, always with the broad objective of getting people on board with Prevent objectives and strengthening national resilience to terrorism. A pertinent example is the National Muslim Women’s Advisory Group, which was launched in 2008 and then quickly collapsed after the leader of the group resigned in 2010 (Gohir, 2010b). The project wanted to reduce Islamic extremism by getting more members of Britain’s Muslim community engaged in counterterrorism efforts, and it saw the role of women as a moderating one, albeit one which needed to overcome the perceived constraints on women that existed within the community (Allen, 2017). Notably there is not a lot of information on these projects. To avoid controversy, a lot of organizations do not publish their cooperation with Prevent. The government is also protective of information on these projects, refusing to release information on grounds of national security. Those projects that are old enough to be able to have information released might instead have their information deleted, as record keeping within the Metropolitan Police and OSCT is poor –​I’ve tried to get information on a lot of projects 98

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that I have identified, only to be told that the Metropolitan Police and OSCT do not regularly keep information on projects for more than seven years. This chapter presents the information on two national projects. The first section covers a network project –​the Shanaz network, which ran from 2011 to 2013, and was managed by Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), and later its successor the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC). The Shanaz network looked to get more women involved in Prevent through the creation of structures which would formalize ties between the police and women’s civil society groups. It would also look to network women together across the country in order to strengthen intra-​group engagement with Prevent. Initially formed by ACPO after research indicated that Muslim women were not engaging with Prevent, it became independent in January 2013, before dissolving at the end of that year. The second project covered is a communications project known as Prevent Tragedies. Prevent Tragedies was set up in 2015 by a partnership between ACPO-​TAM (Terrorism and Allied Matters) and the Metropolitan Police, and ran until 2017. The project was a strategic communications project which sought to get Muslim mothers involved in Prevent by making them aware of the risk of their daughters travelling to Syria. Both these projects draw on the ideas developed in the national Prevent policy, seeing women in relation to their families, motherhood, patriarchal community structures, and traditional ideas about pacific femininity. They are explored in detail in this chapter. Much of the information comes from Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, and information on these can be found in the Appendix.

5.2 Shanaz 5.2.1 Development Shanaz ran from 2011 to 2013, and was a police developed project. The idea for the project came from a Detective Inspector (DI) seconded to the ACPO-​ TAM unit, who was given a remit that included women’s engagement, and working against women’s radicalization. This DI (included as N-​ACPO-​ PreventLead here) joined the unit and quickly noticed that there wasn’t much work going on at all in this area. While a lot of Prevent work was being done in mosques, there weren’t a lot of women in leadership positions, leading them to be side-​lined (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). Research done in 2010 on how women engaged with Prevent backed up this perspective, identifying Muslim women as being disillusioned and disengaged with Prevent policing (Innes et al, 2011). As women were considered to be best placed to take note of radicalization in homes and communities, this was a problem (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). It was also noted that where women were engaged, it seemed like an afterthought, not really engaging with issues 99

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that women thought were important. The reasons for this were because of the assumption that terrorism was a male issue, and so women would not need to be engaged as comprehensively. A high turnover of police staff and a lack of female representation was also seen to hamper the work that was done (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). These insights led to the idea that a women’s project was needed to get more women involved in Prevent. Consultations were then made with prominent Muslim women, charities, ACPO forces, and any women’s organizations that were already engaged with. Although the initial research pointed to a problem relating in particular with Muslim women, non-​Muslim women were also included in the consultation, reflecting the wider targeting of Prevent in 2011 (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). Talking to these groups revealed a number of things which would be taken into account in the new project. Firstly, the perception that women were excluded from Prevent rang true. This was partially blamed on the police’s reliance on male gatekeepers in the Muslim community, particularly via mosques. As mosques have few female leaders (Bano and Kalmbach, 2012), this engagement ended up being gender biased. Additionally, many men in the community were perceived to be desiring that women remained excluded from public roles. As police officers were not well accultured, they were also unable to properly challenge this exclusion, seeing it as an internal community issue. When these problems were identified, officers would ‘tiptoe’ around such ‘cultural issues’, leading to them acquiescing to or reinforcing patriarchal practices and attitudes which saw men not wanting ‘their’ women to get ‘out of control’ (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). Additionally, police had a tendency to engage on their own terms, “turning up and demanding to see people when they wanted to have something done, and not really looking to the smaller women’s groups or the groups outside of the mainstream” (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). The result of this was, in the opinion of the DI in charge, a violation of the Equalities Act because “[the police] did not always abide by the positive duty to engage with communities … especially in relation to gender and ethnic minority communities. We went straight to the mosque and took on engagement which was by its very nature gender discriminatory” (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). The consultation also found that women wanted to be engaged with Prevent. The result of this consultation was the fledgling development of a women’s network, focused on Muslim women as a group most severely excluded, and trying to engage the women who do not or cannot attend mosque and would therefore be left out of current Prevent community engagement (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). It would however not be limited to only Muslim women, especially considering that Prevent in 2011 had expanded to a whole of society approach (HM Government, 2011b). The network would also be supported by the government and concerned 100

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counterterrorism agencies including the police, the Home Office, ACPO and RICU (Shanaz Network, nd). Fifty women from the 43 police forces were initially selected to begin the network. To avoid the accusations of secrecy or spying that had dogged Prevent (Djan, 2015) it would also be ‘badged’ as a counterterrorism project.

5.2.2 Structure While being ‘badged’ as counterterrorism, the network –​named Shanaz after the mother of the DI –​was geared towards eventually becoming an independent and formalized network, with an elected management committee, a constitution, formal membership roles and annual general meetings (Shanaz Network, nd). Relationships with the police would also be formalized through the creation of a new police role for liaison with the network, the Shanaz Champion (Project Shanaz, nda). Police would have to submit reports on a quarterly basis on their work with the network (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). Additionally ‘a community representative from each police force area’ would attend meetings of the ‘national group, ensuring the needs of their area are met nationally and returning learning and resources from other areas to their own’ (Shanaz Network, 2013b, p 2). This structural enmeshing of the police and Shanaz would “embed cultural change in the minds of senior police in particular” (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead), making sure that engaging with women would be something that was not just an afterthought. The network would additionally have a counterpart ‘Shanaz Network Representative’, who would be ‘a female, have good reach into her local communities, and not be a member of the extended police family’ (Project Shanaz, ndb, p 1). This person would ‘[l]‌ead visibly as a point of contact for Prevent women’s engagement in her area, publicising herself, her role and the [Shanaz Network], and using the media in a reasonable and responsible way to further common goals’ (Project Shanaz, ndb, p 1). Thus, the network was structured around building strong contacts between existing grassroots women’s networks and the police via Shanaz as a mediating organization, which would add value on both sides through professional/​community knowledge, contacts and reach. On 17 January 2013, the Shanaz network held an annual general meeting at which a constitution was signed and the network became officially independent from the police. From that point on, it would be governed by the elected committee, and not by ACPO-​TAM (West Midlands Police, 2013). This was an important step in the delivery of Prevent work, as Prevent work was considered by ACPO to gain credibility the further its delivery would be removed from the police (Association of Chief Police Officers, 2013) and would allow it to move further away from spying accusations. The official liaison roles would however keep the network close to the 101

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police, and the structures created would look to ensure that it would have influence. This structure would in part work to satisfy the first aim of the network, outlined in the following section.

5.2.3 Objectives and delivery After inauguration, the network quickly developed objectives that would structure its activities. To start the network worked to short-​term objectives which prioritized the growth and reinforcement of local Prevent networks, especially concentrating on ‘local links between Shanaz representative and Prevent partners to include health, education and FEMALE [sic] faith leaders’ (Shanaz Network, 2012a, p 4). Local representatives would also look to implement the network within universities, especially looking to link with Islamic societies and ‘disseminating Prevent safeguarding messages’ (Shanaz Network, 2012a, p 7). The safeguarding message would also be delivered to communities as part of an exercise looking to ‘disseminate [mythbusting] and basic Prevent safeguarding principles, penetrating as deeply as possible into communities via the women at the heart of those communities’ (Shanaz Network, 2012a, p 8). The formalization of the network with a constitution led to the development of longer-​term aims and objectives, created in consultation with the police, but outside of their control. These aims were: • To provide a platform for women to participate in decision-​making around the development of policy and strategy in Prevent activity. • To advocate on behalf of women to ensure policy and strategy does not disempower nor have a negative impact on Muslim, as well as any other communities. (Shanaz Network, nd, p 1) This translated into the following objectives: 1. Address ideologies which terrorists use to recruit people. 2. Support those who may be vulnerable to radicalisation. 3. Help to strengthen institutions which can play a role in Prevent. 4. Enlist the support of existing Women’s Groups. 5. Take the Prevent message to communities in an easy to understand manner, acting as a bridge between policy makers and the public. 6. Collate feedback from the public, especially women, and present this to ACPO, RICU, the Home Office or the appropriate body. (Shanaz Network, nd, p 1) In many ways these objectives straddled both the old Prevent framework of 2006 and 2009, and the new framework introduced in 2011. The 102

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concentration on ideology clearly had parallels with the newer Prevent framework of 2011; the focus on Muslims as a community meanwhile had parallels with the older Prevent framework. One of the first activities of the network was the creation of a Prevent guidance document to be disseminated to all police forces which would detail how best to engage women in Prevent (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). This document would lay out the rationale and best practice for women’s engagement with Prevent, outlining that: ‘[T]‌errorism was not just a male issue. ... [P]eople like Roshonara Choudhry are going to stab their MP in their office if you don’t address [terrorism] in the female perspective. And young women are going to run away from Bethnal Green and go and become war brides for the jihad in Syria if you do not address this.’ (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead) Alongside this, a myth-​busting document was made to address concerns around Prevent (Khan, 2012), a series of videos centred around Syrian mothers telling women not to go to Syria as jihadi brides were published, and an online toolkit for challenging Islamist ideologies was made available (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). Additional videos were published on the crisis in Syria, concerning how to donate safely to charity, a mother’s lament at the conflict, and a short video showing a young woman’s distress as her husband becomes a suicide bomber (Shanaz Network, 2012c; Project Shanaz, 2014). A private web forum was also created for women to share ideas and best practices on Prevent within the network. Other projects included radio stations and sewing circles, which were outlined in the best practice document given to police (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead), and the encouragement of providing Prevent training in ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) and coffee mornings in order to access women in a ‘relaxed’ setting (West Midlands Police, 2013). While the broader integration work conducted in 2006 and 2009 was absent from the objectives of the network, some such activities remained. While the Prevent myth-​busting document, which is outlined further below, made it clear that integration was no longer part of Prevent, it did highlight that the strategy relied on ‘a successful integration strategy’ as ‘[s]‌upport for terrorism is linked with not being part of a close-​knit and multi-​faith society’ (Khan, 2012, p 5). The social media output of Shanaz also indicated that community integration would remain on the agenda of work, even if it were not part of the objectives. In 2014 the Shanaz Twitter account indicated that network reps would be ‘working with prevent teams in Bradford raise to awareness, importance of unity with different communities’ (@ShanazNetwork, 2014). As with other Prevent work, while community 103

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cohesion and Prevent were formally separate, it would become much harder to separate them in practice (Thomas, 2014). While a full members list is not available, members included persons from organizations such as Muslim Women’s Network UK, Women Acting in Today’s Society, Inspire, Women’s Networking Hub, Sparkhill Women’s Association, the Youth Parliament, the Princess’ Street Learning Center, Women’s Inclusive Network Gloucestershire and West Wiltshire Multi Faith Forum (Shanaz Network, 2013a, 2013b). Many of these groups were concerned with broader questions of integration and women’s rights and empowerment. As with other women’s groups, the broad remit of membership and the way in which groups were structured to be broader than just Prevent meant that wider concerns than just radicalization would be addressed. This is especially relevant within the context of women’s services being cut, meaning for many women’s groups engagement with Prevent would be a path to receiving funding which might have been lose due to austerity (N-​NGO-​CounterExtremism). Thus, the linkage made between integration and counterterrorism in the 2006 and 2009 Prevent policy, which was cut in the 2011 Prevent policy, was reconnected through Shanaz.

5.2.4 Promoting Prevent As one of the objectives of Shanaz was to promote Prevent, understandably an effort was put into doing this. One way this was done was by creating the myth-​busting document already discussed. The author described her reasoning for doing so as follows: ‘I didn’t want people to be frightened of Prevent. I wanted them to be able to understand the work going on to meet the objectives of the Government’s Strategy and feel able to take the effort forward’ (Association of Chief Police Officers, 2013, p 4). The document itself was an important part of initial work with Shanaz, as it would help fulfil the requirements of the network’s fifth objective. Thus, the document provides a simple narrative around the policy, in which it is presented as ‘not about convincing citizens that terrorism is wrong, we don’t need convincing! It is actually about enlisting the support of people in our country to reach the minority who may be attracted to or drawn into terrorism’ (Khan, 2012, p 4). This terrorist minority is set up as ‘people who don’t respect [British] rights, and in fact abuse them and pose a threat to our communities. As members of this society we have a duty to stop such individuals from causing cracks in our communities’ (Khan, 2012, p 3). In this way the document neatly sets up the dichotomy between British values and extremism that would appear in the Counter-​Extremism Strategy in 2015, and further reintroduces the relationship between integration and counterterrorism. British people are represented as almost naturally innocent and enjoyers of democratic rights, and terrorists as persons who 104

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would take advantage of that innocence and seek to destroy both rights and communities. It would, through this mechanism, also present an opportunity to challenge terrorist ideologies, by presenting them as ideas which would fundamentally damage society and individually held rights. Women are then set up as persons best placed to spot and act on vulnerable persons, being thought to have closer relationships with those around them. Referring to Prevent is also framed as an act of care, and women are told that ‘those closest to the individuals at risk of radicalisation are in the best position to help them. Prevent isn’t about “turning” on your friends, families or colleagues’ (Khan, 2012, p 6). The document also addresses those who might be against Prevent, pre-​ empting the likely criticism that will be received by the policy. Instead of addressing those concerns, they are simply dismissed –​those that are against Prevent simply do not understand it properly, as it is ‘written in over 100 pages of government jargon’ (Khan, 2012, p 3) which is especially difficult for those persons with English as a second language (Khan, 2012). Prevent is best then left to the experts, as a technical policy that can’t really be understood (or, for that matter, contested) by the average person.

5.2.5 Beyond Prevent The way in which Shanaz joined integration and counterterrorism, as described, is not only a result of independence and a broad membership base. Many of the activities undertaken by Shanaz were designed to either promote Prevent work, or to overcome barriers to engagement with women from minority communities, especially if those communities were deemed patriarchal. This challenge was described as such: ‘There were elements of subcultures that we were trying to break into, to engage with women, which did not want us to. … So we had … people from mosques, who were male. … They didn’t want their women-​folk to be brought in to what they saw as their issues. They didn’t want their positions challenged as the head of the communities.’ (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead) However, because these barriers were social and political rather than terrorism-​related, Shanaz found itself moving beyond the solely terrorism-​ related role outlined in the objectives. This social barrier would be something that would have to be addressed in getting Shanaz off the ground: ‘The traditional role of Muslim women would be subservience, and they would be confined to the home. I think around that time, 25 per cent of Muslim women –​Pakistani women –​were not in employment. 105

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These things that some of us find offensive, a lot of Pakistani men were very satisfied with that.’ (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead) Patriarchal cultures were not the only thing being addressed by Shanaz, however. By the time Shanaz had become independent, there was already a wide range of issues that members had identified as needing addressing. Again, these issues were not necessarily to do with counterterrorism, but were broadly of interest to the women attending Shanaz meetings, including “county-​lines types drug dealing … domestic violence … coercive control … young women being taken abroad for forced marriage in Pakistan” (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). As the objectives of Shanaz mostly focused on Prevent, this could be considered ‘mission creep’. It was however justified as addressing these issues would build rapport and engagement. Thinking that women might not have understood Prevent fully, the police understood that engaging with ‘everyday’ issues for women such as drug dealing and anti-​social behaviour would allow Prevent messages to be absorbed more readily (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). It would also get women interested in the network who would otherwise not want to get involved in a solely counterterrorism related project.

5.2.6 Representing women in Shanaz Aside from the problem identified at the start, with a lack of Muslim women engaging with Prevent, the decision to create a women’s network was accompanied by similar assumptions towards including women in counterterrorism identified in Chapter 4. In the first instance, it was considered to be a disadvantage to counterterrorism efforts if they did not involve women, as they were “half of the community”, and more importantly, though to be at the heart of it (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). The latter assumption, that women are at ‘the heart of the community’ or ‘at the heart of the family’, and are therefore best placed to spot radicalization, steered Shanaz work as it did wider Prevent work with women. Shiria Khatun, then chair of the Shanaz network, enthusiastically argued on behalf of this at the European Parliament, stating ‘who better than women to know what is happening in their own homes as well as in their communities!’ (Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats in the European Parliament, 2015, p 13). The theme of women having this central role in the family and community runs through the entirety of the Shanaz project. While the initiator of Shanaz considered the role of women in counterterrorism to be “unlimited” (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead), the role of women in the Shanaz network was sold to potential recruits as a project which primarily allowed women to protect their families and community. The text of the ACPO Shanaz factsheet states that: ‘Women are at the heart 106

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of homes and communities and are best placed to notice behavioural changes in their children or others. This puts them in a position to safeguard those who are potentially vulnerable to recruitment’ (Association of Chief Police Officers, 2012c). This assumption primarily places women within a care role, in line with the wider traditional role given to women (Millett, 2016). Shanaz draws heavily on this traditional role, with much of the literature summarizing the network emphasizing women as carers and being ‘at the heart’ of the community and family. As the network did not last long, this conceptualization would not develop further than this, despite the DI in charge noting that women should not be solely considered in this way for counterterrorism interventions (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). The emphasis on the family role easily segued into placing mothers in a key position. Again, while the role of women as simply carers, and as mothers in particular, was noted as something that Shanaz wanted to move beyond (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead), mothers nonetheless came to a prominent role in the network as counter-​radicalization agents. The prominence of mothers as persons who might pick up on radicalization was noted already in the research which sparked the Shanaz network (Innes et al, 2011), and within the network they were considered important as “they will know before anyone else if a child is being radicalised, they will notice behaviours and that child changing, someone becoming more religious, more devout” (N-​ ACPO-​PreventLead). They were thus positioned as a kind of ‘early warning’ system for radicalization, with almost super-​natural abilities to notice changes in their children, drawing on biologically deterministic and gynocentric arguments about gestation, birth and childcare being events that create a greater empathic awareness in women (Fine, 2011; Firestone, 2015). This would also slip into biologically deterministic ideas about women being naturally peaceful. One Shanaz member argued that “they want to cater to their society and they want to safeguard their communities from any kind of attack, and so women are a platform of voices and a platform of change, and we have seen it over the years, not just overnight” (N-​Shanaz-​Member) and thereby framed women as historical agents of care, with their actions being consistently good over the years. Ideas about women being biologically or hormonally less disposed to violence were also given as reasons for why one might want to involve women further in counterterrorism work (N-​ ACPO-​PreventLead), with speculation about biology being a reason as to why women might be less prone to violence, aligning Prevent further with biologically deterministic ideas about pacific femininity (Fine, 2017), as well as tying the ‘moral good’ of women to maternity and motherhood (Hester, 2018). Women partaking in Shanaz and Prevent would be able to rely on these natural caring and nurturing skills to heal confused minds, support the vulnerable and teach and inspire the next generation –​presumably teaching 107

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them to be peaceful, and ignoring the violent potential of women (Shanaz Network, 2012b; Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015). At the inaugural annual general meeting of Shanaz, members also watched the film Your Mother by Sisters Against Violent Extremism,1 which would be used for workshop facilitation in future Shanaz events. The film: captures the stories of mothers whose children have committed acts of violent extremism, or who intended to do so. These brave women discuss how their children’s choices have destroyed their families’ lives. This film is intended as a tool to prompt meaningful conversations at a grass roots level around terrorism, radicalization and the importance of women in preventing it. (Association of Chief Police Officers, 2013, p 5) This film would be shown alongside training sessions on managing the media, regional action planning, a talk by the joint head of RICU and developing a community interpretation of Prevent (Shanaz Network, 2013c). The film would later be shown in the different Shanaz regional groups, forming a key initial part of Shanaz workshops (Association of Chief Police Officers, 2013) and indicating that the idea of a nurturing mother being able to prevent radicalization would form part of the network’s narrative for getting involved in Prevent. This intervention was focused on Islamic extremism (Women Without Borders, nd), again reflecting the priority given to Muslim women rather than women as a whole. This peaceful message of women would be better absorbed in the community, too, as they are more likely to be listened to than government ministers (Shanaz Network, 2012b). This was understood to be because they are an unexpected voice on the subject of terrorism (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead) and because women’s informal networks were thought to run deeply into communities (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). Certainly capturing this influence would be part of the work of Shanaz, as described by then-​Home Secretary Theresa May, who thought that Shanaz would “make better use of the influence that women have over their family members, their colleagues, and their friends” (Shanaz Network, 2012b, 00:02:22–​00:02:32). However, the need to reach out to women lest they become radicalized was also present in considerations about Shanaz, albeit in limited form. Roshonara Choudhry again appears as a key figure, referenced as a person who was vulnerable because she prayed alone and had no one to turn to when she had questions (Khan, 2012) and as a person whose needs were not met, which led her to stab Stephen Timms (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead). Her story is used as a general reference for women who “have no safe space to discuss religion and are therefore vulnerable to warped versions of [Islam]” (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead) especially due to the fact that they are 108

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excluded from full participation in many mosques. Hate crimes are also noted as something which might make women vulnerable to radicalization (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead).

5.2.7 Dissolution Despite the work that went into setting it up, Shanaz folded not long after it became independent. The network wrapped up at the end of 2013, having suffered from a number of issues including in-​fighting and a lack of external support. According to the recollection of one member, many of the women brought into Shanaz were already part of their own organizations and successful in their own right. As such that member thought that “while I was happy to be part of the network of women to advise police on policy, I didn’t necessarily want to be part of an independent, new organization” (N-​NGO-​CounterExtremism). Thus, few people were able to commit the necessary time to the organization for it to meet its objectives. A general lack of funding also hampered the organization. As the police had been so intimately involved in the setting up of the group, when they eventually withdrew it resulted in an organizational and funding void (N-​NGO-​CounterExtremism). Additionally, personality clashes between members began to create difficulties. As the organization was largely “personality driven” (N-​ACPO-​ PreventLead) this meant that work effectively ground to a halt at the national level, and the leadership became mired in accusations of bullying and intimidation (Hooper, 2019). However as the network was structured to provide local advice, some local coordination and networks remained functional, although unofficially (N-​ACPO-​PreventLead).

5.3 Prevent Tragedies 5.3.1 The development of Prevent Tragedies The same insights that led to Shanaz being formed led to an entirely different outcome in 2015. While Shanaz was a women’s network, Prevent Tragedies looked to reach a far wider audience by using a mass communications strategy. This project was sparked in 2015, after concern over individuals who were travelling to Syria to support the cause of anti-​government forces. Concern over this was so great that new legislation was introduced (Blackbourn and Walker, 2016), changing the UK’s counterterrorism strategy. Particular concern was paid to the growing amount of ‘women, children and families buying into ISIL’s extremist narrative’ (HM Government, 2015b, p 10). Prevent also shifted in this period, with a further focus on women and mothers, as vulnerable persons and possible sites of resilience. In 2014 the government introduced the ‘Families Matter’ organization as part of 109

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Prevent work to encourage families to be mindful of radicalization, and as an organization that could offer advice and support to families affected by radicalization (Thomas, 2017). The idea that women were ‘groomed’ to travel to Syria against their own interests was a particular way that this problem was presented to families and mothers, linking it with rhetoric around safeguarding that had been introduced in 2011 (Cook and Vale, 2018). Those women that left for Syria were increasingly described as ‘jihadi brides’ in the media, further cementing their choice as something gendered and within the purview of the ‘emotional’ woman (Huckerby, 2017). Prevent Tragedies grew from this particular moment. It was also a moment in which concern could be taken advantage of, especially as the travellers to Islamic State territory had been garnering a lot of media attention (Redmond and Viney, 2015). A further push was given by research which indicated that young people in particular were still ‘being drawn into the “appeal” of travelling to Syria’ (Redmond and Viney, 2015, p 2). While previous efforts had been made by the police on this issue, including a national Syria police media briefing on 24 April 2014, and ‘advertorials in a number of national women’s magazines … and the establishment of the national Syria women’s stakeholder meeting’ (Redmond and Viney, 2015, p 1), there was a feeling that these interventions had not been successful. Thus, the Prevent Tragedies campaign was developed both as a response to the continuing travel of persons to Syria, and the recognized need for a new approach to communications, considering the failure of previous communications. On 24 April 2014 a request was also made for the police to focus more on young women, as well as addressing concerns that the public had about calling the Anti-​Terrorism Hotline. The campaign would build on previous Prevent work while addressing these issues, and ‘creatively use input from the national female stakeholder meetings and utilise their networks and credible voice contacts to disseminate messages’ (Redmond and Viney, 2015, p 2).

5.3.2 Objectives and structures The Prevent Tragedies campaign was launched in April 2015 with a budget of £300,000, managed as a joint project of the Metropolitan Police Service and the Counter-​Terrorism Policing HQ (Redmond and Viney, 2015). The project ran until at least 6 June 2017, when the final post was made on the www.preve​nttr​agedi​ es.co.uk website (Cole, 2017). An archive is available on www.arch​ive.org. The project looked to connect with ‘[w]‌omen who are close to young women who are at risk of radicalisation and/​or travelling to Syria e.g. mothers, aunts, sisters, friends or those who may be able to identify behavioural change’ (Redmond and Viney, 2015, pp 3–​4). Alongside this, the project had a secondary target audience of those young Muslim women 110

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and men who might be considering travelling to Syria to fight or support those who are fighting (Redmond and Viney, 2015). The objectives of the campaign were: • To explore avenues that will deter travel to Syria and resonate with the target audience; • Using anonymized examples we will seek to counter the narrative and help portray the reality of the situation in Syria; • With the help of the national female stakeholder group, identify credible voices to help disseminate messages that will resonate with young people and their families; • To empower young people by providing the facts about the situation in Syria in an attempt to help them make informed decisions and deter travel; and • To find credible voices and case studies that will resonate with young people and their families. (Redmond and Viney, 2015, p 3) These were backed up with operational objectives which sought to build on previous Prevent work so that families could ‘take action if they are worried about the behaviour of young women who are close to them’ (Redmond and Viney, 2015, p 3), as well as reassuring the public that the police were continuing to work to counter the terrorism threat. Prevent Tragedies would also work to reinforce the fact that Prevent would become a statutory duty and therefore furthering the safeguarding narrative used post-​2011 (Redmond and Viney, 2015).

5.3.3 Delivery The campaign had a number of outputs, most prominently its website, which hosted information and advice on radicalization, travel warnings about Syria, resources for mothers and women to draw on in having conversations about radicalization, and posts related to communicating the Prevent Tragedies objectives (Prevent Tragedies, 2020). These outputs were largely strategic communications, structured around delivering messages with the intent to create behavioural change within an audience in order to support policy objectives (Farwell, 2012). Other outputs included radio adverts, online videos, leaflets and a partnership with You Can Now to award students who designed the best campaign that would deter young women from travelling to Syria, or encourage mothers have conversations with their daughters on the issue (Redmond and Viney, 2015; Prevent Tragedies, 2016a). In relation to the Prevent policy of 2011, Prevent Tragedies would work to ‘[r]‌espond to the ideological challenge of terrorism’ and ‘[p] revent people from being drawn into terrorism’ (HM Government, 2011a, 111

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pp 59–​60) by providing information and calls to action, meeting objectives 1 and 2 of the 2011 policy.

5.3.4 General content and messaging While the content delivered by Prevent Tragedies was diverse, an overarching message was built in so that the objectives of the project would be met by each output. The brief provided at project launch sought to deliver the message that: The situation in Syria is complex and dangerous and there are many terrorists and extremist groups involved in the conflict. The creation of the so-​called Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria … is a direct threat to UK security. Terrorists prey on vulnerable people and it is our joint responsibility to protect them. If you are concerned about a loved one the police can help. We can work together to help protect the young people in our communities. There is support available to you and to them. Take action before things go too far. (Redmond and Viney, 2015, p 5) Each output would seek to deliver this overarching message, as well as more specific points. Women and mothers who viewed Prevent Tragedies documentation would be expected to come away aware of the risk of radicalization faced by young women, and should be confident that if they had a concern about radicalization then ‘it is better that I seek help from the police as soon as possible; … [t]‌his is the best way that I can protect them’ (Redmond and Viney, 2015, p 4). Recipients should also come away with the understanding that if they did not call the police, then ‘their [daughter’s/​ niece’s/​sister’s/​friend’s] fate could be much worse in Syria’ (Redmond and Viney, 2015, p 4). Supporting this would be content with a tone of voice that was ‘[e]mpathetic, authoritative and informative’ (Redmond and Viney, 2015, p 6). As this campaign was a campaign structured around strategic communications, the content of each campaign output can be analysed as per its message.

5.3.5 Mothers and daughters With mothers as a key target audience, Prevent Tragedies used language which tries to leverage a presumed care relationship between mothers and daughters. It assumed a uniquely close bond existed between mother and daughter that could be leveraged for counterterrorism work, and that mothers would, by wanting what is best for their children, be the best mediator between Prevent and young girls. The role of the mother in Prevent 112

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here appears to draw heavily on theories that see women as different to men primarily through their biological difference and practice of mothering. The latter in particular provides a framework for understanding the mother’s role in counterterrorism, as motherhood is understood to be caring, nurturing and creative. Motherhood also creates relational ‘selfhoods’, defining women in relation to others and generating empathy in opposition to men’s universal selfhood which concentrates solely on the development of the individual (Spelman, 1988). Raising daughters within this framework perpetuates it, as these daughters look to their mother as a female role model and incorporate the modality of care and relational selfhood into themselves through mutual identification (Ferguson, 1989). As such, Prevent Tragedies encouraged mothers to engage with Prevent as they are ‘often the ones in a family who are most likely to spot signs and notice changes in their children’s behaviour’ (Prevent Tragedies, 2015b, p 3). This is because ‘the strong bond between a mother and daughter can have a powerful influence on a young woman. [The mother] can talk to [her] daughter about her feelings’ (Prevent Tragedies, 2015b, p 2). As with the national policy literature, this bond is presumed to exist as part of women’s nurturing and mothering capability and places women at the heart of the family, with a unique ability to see and understand emotional change within family members (Hooper, 2017). Additionally, as with the national policy literature, this also extends to the community, and women are able to use their position at the heart of the family and community to wield benign influence (Prevent Tragedies, 2015a). The concentration on mothers here does not take into account how housework and care work within the context of the family might be detrimental to women. Feminists of the second wave have long argued that the expectations placed on women via marriage, motherhood and the family contribute to patriarchal social structures which hamper women. Delphy, for instance, argues that the expectation that women face to look after home, husband and children is laborious and leaves little time for women’s education or advancement in the workplace (Delphy, 2016). That women are generally expected to do this further creates a ‘motherhood penalty’ for those women who do work and have children, as firms expect them to contribute less time to work and more time to family (Fine, 2011). Those women who do not work, and chose to stay at home to look after children, will find themselves underqualified and underexperienced for when they might wish to look for work, pushing them towards dependence on their partner’s wage and away from financial independence (Foster, 2016). That financial independence is especially important should a woman want to leave a partner; all the more so if that partner is abusive (Kim and Gray, 2008). Nonetheless part of the advice given to mothers, who might subsequently be worried about their daughters becoming radicalized, included increasing 113

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the kind of emotional and care work that they are expected to do within the families. A leaflet aimed at mothers stated that they ‘keep their children close –​to constantly remind them that they are loved, that they are part of a strong family network and that they can talk to you about anything they are worried about’ (Prevent Tragedies, 2015a, p 3). Additional advice in this leaflet included taking more interest in the online activities of children, and talking to children about issues of concern to them (Prevent Tragedies, 2015a, p 3). These leaflets were printed and placed in key points in Muslim communities around the UK, as well as appearing throughout the month of March 2015 in various publications with a high Asian or Muslim readership, both printed in multiple languages (Metropolitan Police Authority, 2015). A 30-​second radio campaign developed for Prevent Tragedies carried a similar message:   FVO:              

A compassionate message delivered by a warm and authoritative British Asian female voice. This is a message from the Prevent Tragedies Campaign, in partnership with UK Police and partners. It’s not just young men who are travelling to Syria. Several young women are now known to have left home for the conflict, leaving their families devastated and afraid. We know that the strong bond between a mother and daughter can have a powerful influence on a young woman. You can talk to your daughter about her feelings. You could see changes in behaviour, or signs she may be about to travel, to a conflict that millions are desperate to escape. You can reach specially trained people for help and advice by calling 101. (Prevent Tragedies, 2015b)

This radio message was aimed at Asian women in general, and Asian women aged 45+​, and was carried on popular South Asian radio stations (Metropolitan Police Authority, 2015). The radio campaign, like the leaflet campaign, pushed the idea that daughters might be, unbeknownst to others in the family, in grave danger. According to the message, it was their mothers who had the power to protect them above anyone else by virtue of a ‘strong bond’, presented as something presumed and therefore almost as if naturally occurring. This bond would allow women to pick up on changes that others might not. A series of open letters from Syrian mothers hosted on the Prevent Tragedies website further urged mothers to talk with their daughters so that they would not travel to Syria (Prevent Tragedies, 2016d). These letters not only urged mothers to talk with their daughters and discourage 114

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them from travel; they also provided a stark vision of what would happen if they failed to do this. One letter warns, ‘don’t take the risk that you might wake up one day and find your daughter has fled to Syria. It could be the last time you ever see her, talk to her or see her face’ (Prevent Tragedies, 2016d). Other letters describe how Islamic State has caused the deaths of innocents, including women and children, and that women travelling to Syria could ‘face arrest, torture, or even death’ (Prevent Tragedies, 2016d). Other communications reiterated this threat, and further expanded it to the family as a whole. Much of the literature also talks about the “devastation” a family would face if a family member chose to travel to Syria, resulting in “heartbreak” and the possibility of the community around them rejecting them, being ever referred to as “the terrorists up the road” (Prevent Tragedies, 2016b, 00:03:30–​00:03:33). An 18-​month-​old child is imagined as being unable to understand that his older brother had gone to Syria and died (Prevent Tragedies, 2016b). Equally to the threat of death, women’s rights are framed as something under threat. Those that travel to Syria are warned that Islamic State are ‘preventing people from educating themselves, making them illiterate. My sister told me of a family where all the women –​including a four year old girl –​were forced to wear full coverings’ (Prevent Tragedies, 2016d). Then Senior National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing Helen Ball contrasts the life on offer in Syria to that which women can achieve in the UK, saying to potential travellers: ‘What are you going to do with the rest of your life there? What are the opportunities open to you in Syria? Who are you going to be in life? These opportunities are so much smaller and circumscribed in Syria then if you remained here in the UK’ (Prevent Tragedies, nda, p 3). She further opines on how poor an environment Syria would be for a woman to raise a child in (Prevent Tragedies, nda). Likewise, the 2016 International Women’s Day pledge by Counter Terrorism Police, fronted by Prevent Tragedies, further framed terrorism as something which results in the ‘degrading treatment of women’ (Prevent Tragedies, 2016c, 00:00:24–​00:00:28) and declared that “[w]‌omen should not be held in forced or bogus marriage, subjected to rape, slavery, denied education, or encouraged to put them or their children in danger” (Prevent Tragedies, 2016c, 00:00:34-​00:00:48). As part of this pledge, Counter Terrorism Police promised to protect women’s rights and support their empowerment (Prevent Tragedies, 2016c).

5.3.6 Radicalization: spotting the signs For those women convinced by the campaign, it also offered advice on how to spot the signs of vulnerability or radicalization, as well as some theories as to why it might occur. The definitions of radicalization and extremism 115

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provided by Prevent Tragedies remains largely the same as that provided in the Prevent policy (Prevent Tragedies, nda). The ‘signs’ of radicalization to look out for, and factors that might be a source of vulnerability, however, diverge from what is presented in the national policy literature. The divergence here is similar to that noted in the previous chapter, with government agencies offering more detailed and specific factors to look out for than the general factors presented in the Vulnerability Assessment Framework and Prevent policy. For instance, factors of vulnerability presented include identity crisis where ‘the pupil is distanced from their cultural/​religious heritage’ (Prevent Tragedies, nda, p 1); a personal crisis including family tensions and questions about faith; and personal circumstances including ‘migration; local community tensions; and events affecting the pupil’s country or region of origin’ (Prevent Tragedies, nda, p 1). These factors, as with those presented in National Health Service (NHS) guidance, are clearly concerned with a person of minority background. The signs of radicalization include support for Islamic State and/​or a desire to travel to conflict zones in the Middle East and Somalia and Libya (Prevent Tragedies, nda). This is to be expected considering that the project is concerned only with Islamic extremism. While these factors are racialized but not explicitly gendered, advice to mothers did include some explicitly gendered signs to watch out for. In particular, mothers were warned to look out for women becoming ‘interested in politics or foreign policy when she has not shown an interest before’, alongside asking for identification documents, saving money, and getting new clothes or new friends (Prevent Tragedies, 2015a, p 3). The former factor in particular creates a situation where young women becoming interested in politics and foreign policy, in the context of a brutal civil war in which countless civilians have died and a security apparatus which many have argued contributes to Islamophobia (Younis and Jadhav, 2020), becomes suspicious. Considering that young men are generally more likely to be encouraged to be involved in politics from a young age, and young women are less likely to do so (Kenny, 2015), Prevent Tragedies brings a security lens into political education, disadvantaging those young women who might want to get involved in political activism. Getting interested in politics as a ‘sign’ of radicalization also gels with the theories as to why young women might be attracted to fight in Syria. In Prevent Tragedies these theories are more heavily gendered than those presented in national policy literature. In a leaflet aimed at mothers, the idea that young women might be attracted to ‘the “glamour” of marrying a fighter’ is presented (Prevent Tragedies, 2015a, p 2). This is built upon further by Helen Ball, who states that marrying a fighter might fulfil a sense of purpose that a young woman has (Prevent Tragedies, ndb). Additionally, she presents the idea that young women might be pushing back against parental control. Said in the context of a campaign targeted at Muslims and 116

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Asian women, it can be presumed that this ‘parental control’ referred to is similar to the restrictive home environments that young Muslim women are presumed to suffer under in wider Prevent literature referenced in the previous chapter. She however rejects the idea that discrimination in the UK might be a factor in women’s decision to leave, arguing that the UK provides ‘wonderful opportunities for young women’ (Prevent Tragedies, ndb, p 2).

5.3.7 Promoting Prevent: what to do and how to do it Mothers who think that their daughters might be becoming radicalized are encouraged to call 101 or talk to the police (Prevent Tragedies, 2015b, 2015d). They would then be referred to Prevent. By 2015, the debate around Prevent being a ‘toxic brand’ was ongoing, with former senior police officers claiming that Prevent was seen as a tool for spying on Muslim communities (Halliday and Dodd, 2015). As previously mentioned, police studies had confirmed that Muslim women were least likely to engage with the police (Innes et al, 2011). To combat this, Prevent Tragedies would present Prevent as something that was a continuation of other police work, and would link it to safeguarding. It argued that ‘[t]‌he Prevent programme is based on the successful work British police carried out with community groups and families to reduce gun and gang crime in our big cities’ (Prevent Tragedies, 2015c, p 3) and equated talking to the police about radicalization to talking to the police about drugs, child abuse and crime (Prevent Tragedies, 2015c). As with the creative brief, Prevent would also be framed as something caring, with referrals being presented as ‘good’ acts (Redmond and Viney, 2015), likely to be successful and supported by the community at large (Prevent Tragedies, 2015c). Both those being referred and those referring would be supported (Prevent Tragedies, 2015c), and interventions would ultimately be about protecting individuals, and safeguarding them from harm (Prevent Tragedies, 2015c). For those women who would worry about the criminalization of their children by Prevent, the campaign offers a number of reassurances. In the first instance, it reiterates that criminalization is better than death (Redmond and Viney, 2015). Beyond this, though, it offers a hope that even those who have left might not be criminalized; hence, those who are still in the United Kingdom have a better chance of avoiding prosecution. In an interview hosted on the website Helen Ball outlines that in the case of those young women who had already travelled to, and returned from, Syria: ‘The first thing we would need to do is find out whether they are people who are deeply radicalised, have been trained as dangerous terrorists or whether they are people who have made a mistake … and want to leave that completely behind them’ (Prevent Tragedies, ndb, p 3). While those women would be expected to work with the police, the narrative suggests that in most 117

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cases these women are presumed innocent, ‘groomed’ persons who were manipulated and have little responsibility for their decision. Indeed ‘if all that they have done is made a mistake and they want to put that right, then they will be given the opportunity to carry on with their lives here’ (Prevent Tragedies, ndb, p 3). While there is a possibility that those referred would face investigations and prosecution (Prevent Tragedies, 2015c), mothers were to consider this in relation to the alternative possibility of their child’s death should they not report them. The narrative of the campaign, while acknowledging this, nonetheless played down criminalization and played up the ‘tragedy’ aspect of inaction, stating that ‘[t]‌his is not about criminalising people it is about preventing tragedies’ (Prevent Tragedies, 2015c, p 1). Thus, mothers are offered a choice within the Prevent Tragedies campaign; watch your daughters and report them if you think they are vulnerable, or risk their death in Syria.

5.4 Conclusion The two projects outlined in this chapter appeared after 2011, and thus were subject to the 2011 Prevent policy framework. While the 2011 policy was supposed to mark a strategic change in relation to the period governed by the 2006 and 2009 policies, both of these projects show some continuity with the prior policy era. However, they also integrate changes from the 2011 policy, blending the two eras together. The concentration on women in the two projects clearly draws upon the national policy literature in relation to women. As with the 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2018 literature, women are presented as being at the ‘heart of the community’ and at the ‘heart of the family’, and therefore in an advantageous position to both monitor those close to them for signs of radicalization, and to affect change within their communities and families. In addition to this, women’s participation in Prevent is largely framed as something which is hampered by patriarchal conditions within Muslim communities. Although these conditions are not within the remit of Prevent, the police considered that addressing these issues would be necessary to involving women in the Prevent projects. Additionally, the networking of women’s groups undertaken in Shanaz meant that the concerns that these groups would normally address were brought under the umbrella of Prevent and to the attention of Prevent officers in the police. Therefore issues related to patriarchy and women’s oppression again came to the concern of Prevent. Although Prevent after 2011 was governed by a policy which sought to distance itself from the 2006 and 2009 policies which focused only on Muslim communities, the projects outlined in this chapter nonetheless found themselves again focusing largely or solely on these communities, albeit for differing reasons. While Shanaz was formed in reaction to a 118

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realization that the police were not adequately engaging with the Muslim community, it sought to expand its remit beyond that community alone. However, the outputs and development of the project show that it came in the end to focus mostly on Muslim communities, as the national policy remained focused here, and most of the pushback against Prevent was also from Muslims. Prevent Tragedies was created in reaction to the increasing influence of Islamic State in geopolitical affairs and thus came to focus only on Muslims. Although some of the message delivery could be generalized, this would be a side-​effect of the project, rather than a planned output. Eventualities such as the growth of ISIS and falling police engagement could not be captured by national policy which was the product of departmental deliberations in Whitehall and therefore largely removed from street-​level delivery (Hupe, 2015). Although these projects were delivered nationally, we here begin to see the first signs of divergence from the national policy literature, especially in those areas where the projects continue to relate counterterrorism to community cohesion and integration. References to ‘war brides’ and ‘jihadi brides’ within these projects underscore that the development is reactionary, rather than proactive. Both projects also reflect the attempts in the national policy to draw civil society organizations into the Prevent framework. As noted in the previous chapter, Prevent has broadened its scope and delivery in relation to women in a way which captures concerns wider than counterterrorism, and in particular captures political issues which related to ending women’s oppression. In this way it also begins to co-​opt feminist concerns. Shanaz in particular is exemplary of this, in that it draws a variety of women’s civil society organizations into a framework which formalizes a relationship with the police. The fact that this relationship was underpinned initially by funding from the police, and later with the promise of influence and further funding opportunities, meant that those women’s organizations that suffered under cuts due to austerity would find that a closer relationship with the police might bring them the money and influence they would need (Foster, 2016; Rehman, 2019). Such a relationship would strengthen the kind of ‘governance feminism’ pursued by state agencies to the detriment of more radical arguments about the relationship between police power, the state and patriarchal structures in society (Duff, 2018). The integration of women’s organizations into Shanaz then resulted in the project expanding its scope beyond counterterrorism. This reflects the integration of women’s concerns into Prevent from inception, which led to it being concerned with Muslim women’s sexual health, child nutrition and parenting strategies, among other things unrelated to counterterrorism. Further to this, in developing Shanaz the police recognized that a number of social and political barriers faced women in public life, and that these would need to be overcome if more women were to engage with 119

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

police initiatives. It therefore began to see issues of women’s rights as a counterterrorism concern. In developing the project, the Equality Act was additionally cited as underwriting Prevent delivery, framing intervention as a ‘service’, aligning it with safeguarding practice and implying that the police had a legal duty to have Prevent implemented in communities for their own development. While Prevent Tragedies did not capture civil society organizations, it did draw issues of women’s oppression and promoting women’s rights into the scope of Prevent, arguing that Britain protected women’s rights, and terrorist organizations abused them. Thus, it began talking about issues of forced marriage and rape in the context of terrorism. The projects differ most sharply from the national policy literature in relation to their conceptions of radicalization in women. As described in the previous chapter, radicalized women barely feature within the national policy. However, the declaration of the caliphate in 2014 and the subsequent growth of foreign fighters leaving their home countries to fight in Syria (van Ginkel et al, 2016) created a significant concern for Western governments. By 2014 this was a concern in the UK (D. Anderson, 2014) with a growing portion of the 700–​760 travellers to Syria and Iraq from the UK being women (van Ginkel et al, 2016). While Prevent was in 2014 already well accustomed to intervening in cases of male radicalization, it was not well prepared to handle female radicalization (Saltman and Smith, 2015). Thus, Shanaz, and more prominently Prevent Tragedies, included women as potentially radicalized persons. However, women were not included at all as radicalizers. Both projects, being reactionary, largely mirrored media portrayals of the women travellers being brainwashed, manipulated, groomed or otherwise making the decision to travel without agency. The guidance and discourse around preventing this travel then largely fell into the existing policy rhetoric around safeguarding, in that these women primarily needed to be protected from adverse external influences. Radicalized women also largely appeared within frameworks which reinforce traditional ideas about femininity: women are emotional, easily led, romantic, and are seeking out powerful men for partnership (Cornell, 1995; Fine, 2017). These women are not conceptualized as agents in any way, and instead function to reinforce the regulatory ideal of the passive woman (Butler, 2011). This regulatory idea can be thought of as further reinforced by the fact that if women do reject the notion that they were manipulated, they then will lose the protection afforded by the assumption that they just ‘made a mistake’ as outlined by Helen Ball (Prevent Tragedies, ndb). Thus, women who travelled to Islamic State territory are theoretically given some leeway to avoid prosecution, as long as they accept the fact that they were somehow blind to the reality of Islamic State, thereby robbing the ideology of support. The naivety of women in this narrative is 120

National Projects Post-2011

further built upon by arguments addressed in Chapters 7 and 8 in relation to opposing Prevent. The cure to the radical disease which afflicts radicalized women is also something which draws heavily on these tropes. Mothers are encouraged to use their abilities as nurturers and carers to protect their daughters. Further drawing on this, Prevent is framed as part of this care work, rather than as part of counterterrorism work. Providing advice to ‘keep [your] children close –​to constantly remind them that they are loved, that they are part of a strong family network and that they can talk to you about anything they are worried about’ (Prevent Tragedies, 2015a, p 3) thereby links Prevent with ideas about love and affection which are more typical of kinship relations than relations with state agencies. The corollary of this is that there is an assumption that families without adequately loving relationships might be creating terrorists, and through the implications of travel to Syria, condemning children to death. Further similarity is found in the rejection of the idea that Prevent might be a damaging policy. As mentioned previously, Prevent has weathered a significant amount of criticism. In 2006 and 2009, the policy implied that terrorists might have political concerns, or grievances that drive them to align against the state. By 2011, this idea was wholeheartedly rejected. Prevent Tragedies and Shanaz both largely align themselves with the latter. Prevent Tragedies in particular does this through denying that discrimination in the UK might be causal in radicalization, instead insisting that women have the best life chances here in the UK. Shanaz similarly argued that those who oppose Prevent simply do not understand it because the policy documentation is too long, or English might not be that person’s first language. These arguments interlock with some of those made about radicalized women –​that they do not understand politics well enough to make informed decisions. Whereas in relation to radicalized women the regulatory ideal could be used in favour of radicalized women to the detriment of Islamic State support, in this case women become trapped by it. Security knowledge is presented in the Shanaz myth-​busting document as incomprehensible and jargon-​heavy, sealing it off from being understood by amateurs (Aradau, 2004). Accepting that women were too naive to understand Islamic State when they travelled to Syria also means that the naive subject is applied to cases of women opposing Prevent: they must be naive to oppose it.

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6

Delivering Prevent Locally 6.1 Introduction As noted by Skoczylis (2015), Prevent at the national level, in both policy and delivery, differs to the local level. While the level of control the government has over this local delivery differs depending on the iteration of Prevent, being more top-​down from 2011 onwards, there remains enough scope in local delivery for differences to appear between Prevent delivery in different areas. This chapter tracks the delivery of Prevent in a local authority, given the pseudonym ‘Townsville’, from 2006 to 2021. This is done primarily through documents that were gathered by Freedom of Information (FOI) request and from the council website. As Prevent has developed nationally over the years, tracked in previous chapters, this chapter shows how those national developments translate into local policy. By looking at these developments at the local level, we can see how local events and decisions cause local policy to deviate from the national policy –​ there are differences in structure, targeting, and concerns that are unique to the local area become integrated into the strategy. We can also see how the relative independence of local Prevent teams means that innovative changes can be made to the policy. This chapter starts with an overview of Prevent from the Pathfinder years in 2006, through the policy changes of 2011, until 2021. As with the national policy, 2014 is a watershed year for integrating women into the strategy, as concerns rose over travel to Iraq and Syria. From this point, women become embedded in Prevent strategy both as a target and institutionally, as VAWG (Violence Against Women and Girls) organizations become of interest to the Prevent strategy. Despite the concern over Islamic State, women remain to this day as a potential ally of Prevent, with the strategy looking to utilize women to increase the resilience of others. While this includes young women and girls, it is still the peaceful woman that is at the heart of Prevent locally.

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6.2 Prevent in Townsville: Pathfinder year Following the public release of CONTEST in 2006, and the initiation of Pathfinder funding for Prevent projects in local areas, Townsville was allotted almost £100,000 to run pilot projects. It ran six pilot projects, which were intended to build upon previous work done in the borough on cohesion and community development (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011). These projects were chosen quickly, and on the basis of already existing relationships between the local council and community organizations. Little community consultation was undertaken (Appendix: Evaluation of Prevent, 2011). All of these projects were aimed at the Muslim community, with four of the six focusing on youth (Table 6.1). Evaluations of these projects found that discussions in relation to extremism were welcome. However, a lack of a definition of what extremism was meant that little progress could be made in relation to understanding and tackling it. One project, a debating forum, ran into problems when members of Islamist extremist organizations began to participate in the project. They managed to win a debate, arguing that British democracy was destroying Islamic values (Appendix: Local news, 2008). These groups were able to participate in this event because an agreement around what constituted extremism, and could therefore be grounds for exclusion, could not be reached. This problem would haunt the policy in the coming years (Spiller et al, 2017). The Pathfinder year also uncovered problems related to how Prevent could address religious extremism without alienating Muslims, and anxieties about referring people to the police. However, the projects were thought to be generally successful, and the borough sought to integrate lessons from these projects into their future Prevent delivery (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011).

Table 6.1: Pathfinder year projects in Townsville Target

Intervention type

Project area

Vulnerable youth

Support

Vulnerability

Muslim community

Training

Leadership

Muslim organizations

Training

Media

Muslim youth

Training

Local government engagement

School-​age Muslim youth

Support

Vulnerability

Muslim youth

Political education

Political empowerment

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6.3 Prevent in Townsville: 2008–​2011 6.3.1 Structure and objectives of Prevent in Townsville, 2008–​2011 From 2008, Townsville moved from Pathfinder year implementation to regular implementation of Prevent. In total, Townsville was awarded £1.6 million between 2008 and 2011 to carry out its Prevent activities. At this early stage of local Prevent delivery, objectives were exclusively tied to the objectives of the national Prevent policy in 2006. As indicated in the breakdown in Table 6.2, a portion of this money was used to develop new institutional structures and employ new persons to ensure Prevent was carried out. Due to the connection between cohesion and Prevent in the 2006 and 2009 Prevent policy eras, local Prevent work was overseen by the borough’s Scrutiny and Equalities committee. The team in place overseeing this work included the Borough Commander from the local police force and the Lead Member for ‘Cleaner, Safer, Greener’, whom operated under a broad remit to improve the safety and cleanliness of public spaces (Carmona and de Magalhães, 2009). This was supported by borough council members who led on equality and cohesion (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011). A local Prevent team was also formed, including a newly appointed Prevent Programme Manager, a Cohesion Development Officer seconded Table 6.2: Breakdown of expenditure in Townsville, 2008–​2011 Type of funding

Funding decision 2008–​2009 makers

2009–​2010

2010–​2011

Grants up to £3,000

PVE Programme Manager in consultation with Partnership Prevent Team

£30,000

£30,000

Grants over £3,000

PVE Programme Board with final decision made by PVE Exec. Board

£990,000

Support and assistance

PVE Programme Board

£40,000

£40,000

£40,000

Staffing, service and supplies

PVE Programme Board

£60,000

£60,000

£60,000

Communications

PVE Programme Board

£20,000

£20,000

£20,000

Youth Offending Team Youth Offending Team

£120,000

£50,000

Children’s Services

Children’s Services 124

£10,000

£12,000

DELIVERING PREVENT LOCALLY

part-​time from the Government Office, and a Communicating Preventing Violent Extremism Officer seconded part-​time from a local private media and communications company. This company also led two of the local projects. The Diversity and Equality Coordinator from the borough council, who had responsibility for faith and gender locally, was also consulted by the Prevent team. Local police were also involved, with an Inspector for counterterrorism, a Sergeant, three Police officers and a Police analyst giving input (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011). This team sat within a wider community plan which was published in 2008 and set to run until 2020 (Appendix: Community Safety Plan, 2008). The plan created a wider remit for policing and safety, which would look to creating safer communities through a public health approach which would become more influential nationally post-​2011 (Heath-​Kelly, 2019). This focused on housing, schools and healthcare and providing care services for the vulnerable –​including offenders –​alongside a zero-​tolerance approach to policing (Appendix: Community Safety Plan, 2008). The Prevent team was placed in a wider institutional structure. This was supplemented by parallel group structures which would inform the local implementation, with a Resilience and Counter-​Terrorism Group, tasked with implementing Protect and Prepare, and a Community Cohesion Contingency Planning and Tension Monitoring Group (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011). Additionally, a PVE (Preventing Violent Extremism) Programme Board took responsibility for delivering Prevent work and measuring National Indicator 35 (NI35), and a PVE Executive Board oversaw funding decisions. The latter included the local Assistant Chief Executive, Police Chief Inspector and a member of the Government Office. Finally, a referrals group was set up to handle Channel cases. This group was integrated into pre-​existing safeguarding practice in the borough, thereby combining child and adult social work, mental health services and probation with the Prevent agenda at an early stage of the policy’s local development (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011). Due to the concerns highlighted during Pathfinder year, the implementation of Prevent in this period was intended to be ‘bottom-​up’ so that the local community would be able to have more confidence in the policy (Appendix: Evaluation of Prevent, 2011). However, it was found that this caused its own problems –​namely, the different members of the Prevent team had differing priorities, and the projects commissioned by the Prevent team did not always work together due to a lack of oversight and control. In line with previous observations made about Prevent delivery (Skoczylis, 2015), conflicts occurred between police and social work agencies, with the former wanting to surveil and prosecute suspects, and the latter wanting to provide social support. Similar to Kundnani’s (2009) observations, the presence of the police on Prevent boards contributed to the perception that 125

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Prevent was about ‘spying’ on local communities (Appendix: Evaluation of Prevent, 2011). At the project level, this stance was associated with mixed results. Bottom-​ up implementation increased community buy-​in, making projects more responsive to local needs, and increasing flexibility. At the same time this approach also created confusion about what Prevent projects should be doing, and what the causes and solutions to radicalization might be. Indeed, there was much confusion about the actual definitions of radicalization and extremism, and generally poor communication about project implementation within the borough (Appendix: Evaluation of Prevent, 2011). This model did, however, find success in that the borough scored well on the NI35 indicators, including those indicators that required engagement with women to score well. Overall, the borough scored well enough in each indicator to demonstrate efforts were taken to engage widely in the community, including with women (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 2010). Importantly, Prevent was embedded into existing practices and structures within Townsville from the start and delivered as part of existing plans for community safety and cohesion. Thus, while later strategies from the central government would sever Prevent from community cohesion, the integration of Prevent into wider institutional structures meant that this separation could not be fully realized. It would also mean that other policies and strategies would influence the development of Prevent in Townsville. As Walker (2018) observes, the inexactness of Prevent which already caused problems for Townsville in Pathfinder year would mean that Prevent would be vulnerable to ‘policy spirals’. The effects of this are explored further in section 6.4.

6.3.2 At risk groups in Townsville, 2008–​2011 Given that Townsville had been one of the areas with the highest rates of conviction for Terrorism Act 2001 (TACT) offences (Stuart, 2017), risk management was important (Mythen, 2020). To this end, the local Prevent strategy began creating risk profiles. These risk factors would remain largely unchanged until 2018, indicating that the common assumption that ‘risk’ appeared most prominently post-​2011 is not correct in all cases –​here we see a local area adopting a risk profile in 2008 (Mythen et al, 2017). In particular, Townsville was concerned with persons who met the following profile: • Gang mentality and low-​level criminality • Young, single men who were exploring heritage, faith and identity • Gr ievance stemming from under-​e mployment and pover ty. (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011) 126

DELIVERING PREVENT LOCALLY

As with the national policy, Townsville was primarily concerned with its Muslim population in this period. To this end, there was also a particular concern in relation to social profile of Muslims within Townsville, which in 2009 consisted of around 40 per cent of the population. Population concerns were wedded to the risk profile given in the local strategy. A young population, with 60 per cent of Townsville’s Muslim population being under 25, and a disproportionate number of the local Muslim population being unemployed, was thus of concern. Around 35 per cent of the Muslim population did not work and instead looked after the home and/​or family on a full-​time basis. Ninety per cent of those people were female. These statistics would be influential in how money was spent on local Prevent projects (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011). These risk factors point also to the use of ‘community policing’ logics in local Prevent implementation. This saw not only the police looking to low-​level criminality as the key to stopping large-​scale (terrorist) crime, but also to a ‘mission creep’ where ‘security objectives are seamlessly blended into prevention and the need to build social cohesion’ (Klausen, 2009, p 413). This also becomes apparent in the institutional structures that Prevent was –​and remains –​part of, which places it alongside and integrates it into other social policy objectives. This is explored more in section 6.4.1. While women were not thought of as risky, they were not excluded from Prevent overall. As with the national strategy in 2006 and 2009, women were considered useful to the strategy in that they were thought to be influential in families and communities, and considered at low risk of radicalization. They could be an asset if properly trained. Thus, women were included in the strategy planning in relation to their family role. Women were also included in ongoing tension monitoring in the borough. As women had reported that hate crime and Islamophobia was something they were particularly worried about, this was used as an indicator of rising community tensions (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011). Through this understanding, women were ‘instrumentalized’ in Prevent activities in Townsville from an early stage (Lewicki and O’Toole, 2017).

6.3.3 Project funding for Prevent in Townsville, 2008–​2011 Project funding after Pathfinder year was handled by the PVE Executive Board and thus came under the control of a team consisting of the council executive office, the local police and the Government Office for the region. Through this arrangement, the central government was able to maintain oversight of the implementation of Prevent. After the PVE Executive Board selected projects for funding, this was decision was ratified by the PVE Programme Board. This meant that final approval would be overseen by a multi-​agency panel, including local councillors (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011). 127

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Funding from 2008 was allocated mainly to local community groups, with the intention of building legitimacy for the policy through local ownership. A total of 82 groups applied for funding at the initial call. Of that 82, 28 organizations were awarded funds to begin work in 2009 (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011). The process of selecting groups to fund involved a three-​ month period of consultation with the local community. This involved five events, including: • • • • •

The launch of the PVE programme at Townsville’s Muslim Centre An event for young people at a local college An event for women held at a local coffee shop A debate on a local radio station during Ramadan A workshop on the commissioning process at a local community centre. (Appendix: Prevent plan, 208–​2011)

The choice of projects funded leant heavily towards the risk conception already outlined; the majority of the funding (29.16 per cent) went to projects targeting youth, and most of the remainder to Muslim groups and interventions targeting the Somali community, a particularly deprived community and one that was of concern to the police with regard to crime in the borough (Appendix: Reports on Somali population, 2011, 2015). Thus, Prevent came to dovetail with the wider conceptions of risk directed at the Asian community, and integrating understandings of risk and race emanating from the War on Terror (Millings, 2013; Sabir, 2017). As the Prevent strategy between 2006 and 2011 focused on Muslims, these projects also focused heavily on Muslims. This is summarized in Table 6.3. Those projects which might have been able to reach a wider audience due to their targeting, such as youth projects, were not constructed in such a way to do so, being constrained by risk calculations. The largest youth projects were targeted at and marketed to those considered to be at risk or already exposed to extremism. As the risk profile presented demonstrates, these programmes would have been targeted at young men, particularly those struggling with faith, heritage and identity or under-​employment. In the context of Prevent 2006–​2011, this meant Muslim youth. Thus, five out of the nine projects targeted at youth were in fact targeted at Muslim youth, with those projects taking the majority of the funding –​£101,000 of £246,000. This figure does not include those projects which were not targeted at youth in general but came to target youth in practice anyway. One project targeted at youth which received £60,000 demonstrates how the risk categories dominated delivery. This project was targeted at youth, and saw local youth developing short films to be broadcast on the internet. The youth selected for the project were largely from a Black and minority ethnic (BME) background and exclusively male, and the project ended up 128

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Table 6.3: Projects funded by type and target, Townsville, 2008–​2011 Group

Target

Race/​ethnicity

Funding allocated (% group)

Funding allocated (% target)

13.98 BME

2.13

Somali community Men

11.85 2.96

Boys Criminality

2.96 2.96

Ex-​offenders Religion

2.96 28.79

Interfaith groups

3.32

Mosques

12.33

Muslims

13.14

Institutions

7.11 Schools

Youth

7.11 29.16

Youth Women

29.16 10.4

Families

0.36

Parents

0.2

Women

9.48

Project development

4.98 Project evaluations

1.19

Research

3.79

exploring the propaganda of Osama bin Laden, and conspiracy theories that had been spreading in local mosques (Appendix: Propaganda project report, 2009). Thus, the project, which did not exclusively focus on ‘at risk persons’, came to do so anyway, being delivered from a male perspective and targeting the Muslim community. Another project similarly was targeted ‘generally’, but through its delivery method of boxing classes it ended up being dominated by a young male audience (Appendix: Annual report of sporting organization, 2010). This project was awarded £25,000. A further project which targeted the Somali community, and in particular Somali 129

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offenders, was delivered to both men and women. However statistically these offenders would have been much more likely to have been male than female, and those more likely to be involved in ‘risky’ offences such as gangs, drugs and interpersonal violence would have been male (Appendix: Somali crime report, 2014). This erasure of women from ‘general’ projects demonstrates the wider lack of women’s inclusion in Prevent nationally (Allen, 2014a), being largely isolated within women’s projects and family or parenting projects, as explored in the following section.

6.3.4 Women in Prevent in Townsville, 2008–​2011 As outlined in Table 6.4, between 2008 and 2011, 9.48 per cent (£80,000) of the overall projects budget was given to projects which had women as a primary target. Alongside this, some 0.5 per cent (£8,709) was given to projects related to parenting and families. As women were expected to be the caregivers in the family, women would also be the primary targets for family projects. Two other projects which worked with mosques included women as a secondary target, which were funded £84,000 in total (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011). The projects funded which looked at women specifically were concerned with families, and with the intersections of British Muslim women’s identity

Table 6.4: Projects with women as a primary or secondary target, Townsville, 2008–​2011 Group

Target

Project

Funding allocated

Women

Building resilience in Muslim families

£50,000

Women

Women and the hijab –​ £70,000 arts event and book

Families

Building resilience in families

£3,000

Parents

Faith, cohesion and extremism

£1,709

Mosques

Sub-​project: intergenerational connection between women in mosques

£9,000

Mosques

Sub-​project: involving women in mosques

£75,000

Women

Religion

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and the hijab. The former looked to, via mothers, build the resilience of Muslim families to extremist ideologies. It would do this through workshops delivered with a focus on Islamic belief and balancing Islam with Western values, focusing particularly on the identity issues that might arise in children (Appendix: Evaluation of Prevent, 2011). Women were brought together in workshops and were provided with the knowledge and skill to have conversations with their children around extremism. A support network for mothers was set up in parallel to provide ongoing support (Appendix: Grants allocation, 2009). This project received £50,000 to work over three years, and was delivered by a local Muslim women’s organization that was established with the assistance of the council in 2006/​2007 (Appendix: Muslim women’s organization accounts, 2011). In an evaluation of this project, it is noted that this project might not have been funded had Prevent money not been available (Appendix: Evaluation of Prevent, 2011). However this is not necessarily positive, as this also means that some women will not use these services because of their attachment to Prevent. This is discussed more in Chapter 8. The second project, which received £30,000 over two years, involved the production of an event on women and the hijab, and the publication of an accompanying book. This was supported by a Question Time-​style event on the subject of challenging extremism, and a year-​long arts project which explored issues related to Muslim women. The event and book looked to bolster Muslim women’s identity and challenge assumptions about women and the hijab, the reasons for wearing it, and the stereotypes associated with it. It looked to demonstrate that ‘beneath the veil are intelligent, articulate, humorous, ambitious and fun loving individuals; real women making a significant contribution to British society’ (Appendix: Women and the Hijab: Report, 2010). The event, which around 100 people attended, was billed as being part of International Women’s Week, and included art performances and speeches by local community activists, artists, the media and the police. The latter in particular linked the hijab to the ‘terrorist climate’ that the United Kingdom was experiencing, and spoke about how being a female, Muslim police officer meant that she could challenge stereotypes within the police. Another spoken word piece argued that the choice to wear the hijab did not come ‘from some [fundamentalists] who wanted to wish Jihad on the infidels’, but instead was something that made life more meaningful, representing the positives of Islam and building identity and community. While much of the production focused on positive constructions of hijabi women, it was nonetheless placed in the context of extremism and terrorism, reflecting the Prevent funding (Appendix: Women and the Hijab: Report, 2010). Other projects included women, even if they were not the sole target. One project looked to increase women’s engagement in local mosques. This 131

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drew on local research that indicated that women were underrepresented on mosque management committees and that many of the smaller mosques did not have space for women to pray in at all, making young women in particular feel excluded. Another project which worked with mosques looked to increase intergenerational understanding between women. These projects received £75,000 and £9,000 respectively. Of the two projects that looked more broadly at parents and families, funded £3,000 and £1,700 respectively, one was attended entirely by women. The former, of which attendance data is not available, looked to train parents in ‘spotting the signs of extremism’ and ‘good parenting’, while the latter was attended by 12 women and looked to discuss faith, cohesion and violent extremism (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2008–​2011). As noted in section 6.3.2, women were not thought of as a risk factor at this point. The projects outlined show no indication otherwise. Instead, the projects clearly draw upon the ideas explored in Chapter 4 –​women are thought of as a liberalizing, pacifying influence. They are also thought of as being the appropriate actors to watch over the family, again reflecting national policy. The project on women and the hijab was clearly concerned with the further construction of this ‘liberal Muslim subject’, injecting itself into arguments around the place of the veil and the scarf in European political life, an argument in which ‘the terms of the headscarf debate are significant in determining ideological fault lines’ (Gokariksel and Mitchell, 2005). The substance of this would be to link religion and the state via the supposedly more liberal Muslim woman (Bennoune, 2008; Cowden and Singh, 2017). Taken together these projects also demonstrate the marginalization of women in Prevent, where their voice is seen to be only valuable in relation to motherhood and debates around the hijab and veil in society (Rashid, 2014). These relationships are not critically assessed in relation to women’s empowerment or oppression, but rather brought into the service of the state (Kariapper, 2009; Cooper, 2017).

6.4 Prevent in Townsville: 2011–​2021 6.4.1 Structure and objectives of Prevent in Townsville, 2011–​2021 The new 2011 Prevent strategy brought changes in the way Prevent would be delivered, funded and evaluated, in particular dropping any community cohesion work (Mastroe, 2016). Townsville anticipated a sharp drop in the funding that would be made available from 2012 and subsequently focused work on priority targets. Savings would also be made by embedding Prevent training within the funding structure of non-​Prevent grants (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2012/​13). An initial drop in funding saw Townsville receiving £22,000 for 2011/​ 2012. This drop would not last long; each following year the block grant 132

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Table 6.5: 2011–​2019 grants to Townsville Type of funding

Block grant

Project grants

2011/​12

£22,000

£1,768,154

2012/​13

£66,000

2013/​14

£292,000

2014/​15

£363,000

2015/​16

Unknown

2017/​18

Unknown

2018/​19

Unknown

Total funding:

£3,344,022

£832,868

Note: Funding decision makers: Prevent Executive Board in consultation with Prevent Programme Board

to Townsville would rise, reaching £363,000 for the period 2014/​2015. As Townsville was assigned as a Prevent priority area in 2011, it would also be assigned Prevent staff and be allotted money for funding local projects. Thus, the block grant was supplemented by the provision of Prevent staff by the Home Office. These staff would support local organizations in applying for Prevent funding from a national pool as well as providing in-​ kind support, creating a situation where projects in Townsville would be either funded by the Home Office or the local Prevent team. The budget outlined in Table 6.5 is therefore not an entirely accurate picture of Prevent activity in the borough. Between 2011 and 2015, a total of £1,768,154 was spent on Prevent projects, a number in fact far above what was available for project funding in the 2009–​2011 period. For the period 2016–​2019, at least £832,868 was spent on local projects.1 The block grant amount for 2016–​2019 is not available. While the structure of Prevent in Townsville did not change much post-​ 2011, the increased focus on safeguarding led to a further integration of existing safeguarding structures with Prevent. While the national Prevent strategy would expect local areas to create and utilize a separate Channel panel to deal with Channel referrals (HM Government, 2015a), Townsville instead created its own unique structure. Referrals in Townsville would be sent to either a children’s safeguarding panel, or an adult safeguarding panel, which included probation, the adult safeguarding team, adult disability services, mental health services, the Prevent team, and a board which was responsible for creating a joined-​up borough wide service for delivering a local governance vision (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2012/​13). Notably these panels are the main safeguarding bodies in the borough and not unique Channel safeguarding panels. This bespoke solution, agreed with 133

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the Home Office, tied Prevent in Townsville more tightly to practice prior to 2011, and thus to other standard safeguarding practices. It also would tie Prevent to community cohesion, despite the formal separation from this agenda, as safeguarding is governed in the borough by an overarching community plan. Indeed, it is described in scrutiny documents as part of the local practice. This practice emphasizes ‘the importance of promoting equality, cohesion and community leadership’ (Appendix: Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 2016, p 12) and notes that a ‘well-​integrated community can help to reduce the risk of hate crime and the risk of extremism’ (Appendix: Community Safety Plan, 2021). Thus, as with Thomas’s observation, cohesion and Prevent in Townsville are ‘divorced but still cohabiting’ (Thomas, 2014, p 472). The Prevent Board, which oversaw the delivery of Prevent pre-​2011, would continue to function and would remain governed by the Community Safety Plan. This structure drew on the pre-​2011 organization within the borough and placed Prevent alongside a number of different bodies dealing with different local strategies (see Figure 6.1). Thus, Prevent would sit within a structure that evaluated its success within a wider borough plan. Due to its position within this structure, it would be informed by other local bodies. Since 2020, this has included an Independent Prevent Advisory Group and a Youth Prevent Champions Network, which were formed following increasing wariness of Prevent within the local area (Appendix: Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 2019; Appendix: Presentation on Prevent activities, 2019). Since 2020, the Prevent Advisory Group has been funded by a £2,000 Home Office grant. The use of community feedback reflects the increased scrutiny that Prevent has come under nationally, resulting in more reviews, more guidance, and the invitation of those affected by Prevent to challenge it (Walker and Cawley, 2020). Locally, the Prevent Advisory Group attempts to increase trust and ownership of Prevent. In 2020, it also looked to increase engagement with women as a ‘key group’ (Appendix: Prevent Delivery Plan, 2020). Most importantly this structure includes the Violence Against Women and Girls Steering Group and the Domestic Violence Forum. The influence of Prevent is visible thus visible in the local Violence Against Women Strategy would consider Prevent as one of the services offered to vulnerable women. Thus, it would come to relate Prevent to ‘countries where FGM [female genital mutilation] is emerging due to the increase in radicalisation and the increase in threat of extremism as a factor in child arrangement orders in the family courts’ (Appendix: Violence Against Women Strategy, 2016, p 40). It would also consider Prevent work as part of the broader strategy for reducing violence against women. This initial linking of VAWG and Prevent later developed into a fully-​fledged integration of the two agendas. 134

135 Counter-Extremism Forum Community Cohesion Working Group

Youth Offending Team Board

Prevent Board

Violence against Women and Girls and Domestic Abuse Strategy Group

Anti-Social Behaviour Delivery Group

Drugs and Alcohol Board

Reducing Recidivism Board

Hate, Community Cohesion and Extremism Priority Area

Reducing Recidivism Priority Area

Safeguarding Children Board

Violence Priority Area

Community Safety Partnership

Community Safety Partnership Executive

Children and Families Partnership Board

Regional Crime and Police Scrutiny Committee

Anti-Social Behaviour Priority

Health and Wellbeing Board

Local Strategic Partnership

Overview and Scrutiny Committee

Figure 6.1: Prevent within the Townsville Community Safety Plan structure

Items at this level are not hierarchical

Safeguarding Adults Board

newgenrtpdf

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Following research commissioned by Townsville, the 2020–​2021 Prevent Delivery Plan sought to improve partnerships between the VAWG team and the Prevent team, including the following outputs: • Increase in VAWG knowledge among Prevent professionals, specifically Chanel members • Increase in Prevent knowledge among VAWG professionals, specifically front line VAWG caseworkers and MARAC [Multi-​Agency Risk Assessment Conference.] members • Improved partnership working on Channel cases where there are both VAWG and Prevent concerns • Procurement processes adjusted to take into consideration Prevent agenda • VAWG Coordinator to attend Channel Meetings • SO15 [SO15 is the Counter-​Terrorism Command of the Metropolitan Police, nationally responsible for counter-​terrorism policing in the UK] to provide Channel members with any VAWG related police call outs, incidents, arrests, charges, and convictions for each Channel case. • Channel members to complete VAWG training • WRAP [Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent] A training to be delivered to VAWG professionals including frontline VAWG workers, MARAC attendees, and VAWG Coordinator. (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2020) This indicates a massive shift in how VAWG is thought to be linked with radicalization, with VAWG concerns now being routinely assessed by Prevent staff and cross-​examined by the Channel board. The interaction between the different bodies within the Community Safety Plan is also apparent in how Townsville sought to define extremism, and how this can play into radicalization. Advice given to schools on how to recognize and understand extremism and radicalization noted that extremists are: [P]‌eople who have strong views on particular issues, such as abortion or harming animals for scientific investigation but who also feel this gives them the right to act violently against those who do not share their views. Some people may believe their perspective entitles them to seek by violent force to control … others such as in homophobic attacks or ‘honour killings’. (Appendix: Guidance: Supporting Vulnerable Children, 2015, p 3) The advice also referred to domestic violence as a form of extreme violence which might have a root in ideology, and encouraged teachers to refer cases they were concerned about to their safeguarding officer (Appendix: Guidance: Supporting Vulnerable Children, 2015). 136

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This assertion is also visible in the Community Safety Plan, which considers misogyny to be something which contributes to extremism (Appendix: Community Safety Plan, 2021). Thus, we can see here the evolution of the ‘policy spiral’ identified in the 2008–​2011 period into a ‘policy transfer’, where the growing remit and shrinking understanding of Prevent resulted in adjacent bodies in the community safety structure adopting part of Prevent work, and Prevent adopting part of their understanding (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000). This is also notable in that it is an example of a local area picking up the call from the national Prevent policy to recognize violence against women as a symptom of extremism and a possible indicator of radicalization and thus transferring counterterrorism into this field (Marsh and Sharman, 2009). This process of transfer is especially apparent in the adoption of ‘safeguarding’ terminologies across the different bodies of the structure, and the integration of Prevent into this apparatus (Dresser, 2018). By 2018 radicalization would thus begin showing within other safeguarding plans –​the children’s Multi Agency Safeguarding guidance would make assessments of children’s needs within frameworks that would consider a child being ‘groomed into violent extremism’ as an urgent need, triggering a child protection enquiry (Appendix: Safeguarding guidance, 2018). These evolutions challenge notions that Prevent does not consider misogyny to be part of a radical ideology (Patel, 2019), especially since plans within Townsville now also recognize that being a woman might result in different experiences of both crime and service delivery (Appendix: Community Safety Plan, 2021). The integration of Prevent into various safeguarding structures represents a challenge to how safeguarding should normally be conducted, with Prevent not being subject to the consent of the safeguarded (Heath-​Kelly and Strausz, 2018). It also raises concerns, explored further in Chapter 8, that women suspicious of Prevent will avoid seeking help for domestic violence due to its integration with Prevent.

6.4.2 At risk groups in Townsville, 2011–​2021 From 2011 a broad shift within Prevent occurred nationally, widening the focus of the policy beyond just Muslims. Despite this conceptual shift, the Townsville risk strategy remained largely static, maintaining its focus on the three risk categories created in 2009 of young, single men; the under-​employed; and those involved in low-​level criminality and gangs (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2012/​2013, 2013/​2014). However, the shift to individual risk made in the 2011 Prevent strategy saw a rollout of numerous ‘vulnerability’ and ‘risk’ guidelines to local institutions which gave further depth to the model. These models remained predominantly concerned with youth. 137

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Indicators of risk and vulnerability are not clearly delimited in these documents. The relationship between the two factors appears intimately linked to the point that they are presented as almost the same thing. Factors that are included in the wider documents include those with a desire for more ‘street cred’; a search for answers to questions about identity, faith and belonging; a desire for adventure; grievance fuelled by racism or personal experience; and identifying with a charismatic individual or group (Appendix: Guidance on safeguarding and Prevent, 2014). These risks and vulnerabilities were thought to become more pronounced if foreign policy or politics caused resentment (Appendix: Guidance for parents, 2015; Appendix: Community Safety Assessment, 2016). Further to that, a clear concern was articulated in relation to the children of migrants, in that alienation from a parent’s heritage or cultural values, isolation from ‘traditional’ family life, or the experience of migration might lead a person to reject British values (Appendix: Guidance: Supporting Vulnerable Children, 2015). As Sian (2017) points out, while these markers seem to be neutral, ‘our suspicions naturally fall on black and brown bodies more than white ones, and specifically Muslim bodies, due to a latent Islamophobia or racism that exists within society’ (p 3). This also follows the risk indicators outlined in Chapter 5, and indeed are introduced at the same time that concerns surrounding women’s travel to Syria emerged. Violent behaviour in general is also listed as a risk factor, including domestic violence (Appendix: Guidance: Supporting Vulnerable Children, 2015) further linking together safeguarding, women’s rights and Prevent. Risky youth could be spotted through a variety of indicators. Documents circulated among schools and parents on how to safeguard youth noted that parents and teachers should look out for: youth who spend too much time on the internet; mixing with new and poorly behaved friends or showing ‘extrovert’ behaviour themselves; being secretive; behaving out of character; or otherwise losing interest in their usual hobbies and activities (Appendix: Guidance on safeguarding and Prevent, 2014; Appendix: Guidance for parents, 2015). In addition, the possession of extremist material or the expression of sympathy for extremist is considered an indicator. Conversely, children being better behaved, quieter, studying more or dressing more modestly would also be something worth watching out for (Appendix: Guidance for parents, 2015). What is more clear is the subjectivity involved in assessing individual risk –​taken together these indicators are contradictory, and thus call upon assessors to ‘trust their gut’ in making decisions (Heath-​Kelly, 2017a; Pettinger, 2019). As will be explored in Chapter 8, this can translate into anxiety about the wearing of the hijab, which is sometimes constructed as a marker of suspicious activity (Hussain and Bagguley, 2012; Jarvis and Lister, 2017). The ambiguity of vulnerability indicators also should be understood as only making sense 138

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in reference to ‘normativity’, thus meaning that those who deviate from expected behaviour are cast as suspicious (Stephens and Sieckelinck, 2019). As explored in Chapter 5, this can create problems for women engaging in areas which are traditionally ‘masculine’, such as political activism. As with much of the national Prevent literature post-​2011, many of these risks and vulnerabilities were compared to sexual exploitation and ‘grooming’, placing them more squarely in the realm of safeguarding. This draws on the idea of policy transfer explored in section 6.4.1. This link is made most explicit in guidance to schools, which states that: Teachers are required, and encouraged, to talk about and educate students on the issues concerning sexual relationships, including around grooming. … However, if a student discloses something … which makes the teacher concerned that the child is being exploited, the teacher has a legal duty to pass it onto the child protection/​safeguarding lead. … This is exactly the same procedure for issues around extremism. (Appendix: Guidance for parents, 2015, p 6) This linking is especially apparent from 2014 onwards, where concerns around young people travelling to Syria became a high priority and guidance was issued on amending school safeguarding policy to include Prevent (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2014/​2015; Appendix: Guidance on safeguarding and Prevent, 2014). This particular concern with bolstering Prevent delivery and safeguarding in schools was also in reaction to the ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal (Appendix: Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 2016), similar to nationwide reactions (O’Toole and Holmwood, 2018). While many of these risk indicators are coded in many ways towards minorities, particularly in reference to ‘tradition’, ‘heritage’, ‘cultural values’ and ‘modesty’ in dress (Breen and Meer, 2019; Younis and Jadhav, 2020), the strategy did not confine itself to the Muslim population post-​ 2011. As per the change in government policy, the strategy began to take notice of other groups, including the far-​right, animal rights extremists and Black supremacists (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2015/​2016). For instance, documents indicate that from 2012 Townsville became particularly concerned with English Defence League (EDL) and Britain First (BF) activity (Appendix: Prevent plan 2012/​2013, 2013/​2014). From 2014 the local Prevent team ran two workshops on the EDL and presented to schools and the local council on the far-​right (Appendix: FOI Request 2014; Appendix: Prevent plan 2014/​15, 2018/​2019). The EDL workshops were held under the auspices of the Community Cohesion Planning and Tension Monitoring Group, further indicating links between Prevent and community cohesion post-​2011 (Appendix: Community Safety Plan, 2013–​ 2016). The presentations to the council and schools did not mention women, 139

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contributing to the invisibility of women in these groups (Rippenyoung, 2007; Cowden and Sahgal, 2018). However, discussions about the potential radicalization risk in women did appear for the first time in 2015 after a number of young women from Bethnal Green left for Syria (Loyd, 2019). As explored in Chapters 4 and 5, this event exposed a weakness in Prevent at that time. Prior to this event, Prevent did not consider women to be risky. After the Bethnal Green event, the 2015/​2016 Townsville Prevent strategy considered that ‘extremist “grooming” and radicalisation’ is a ‘real threat which can affect anyone’ and that the strategy should begin to consider ‘the changing nature of the threat in terms of individuals previously unknown to police and security services’ (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2015/​2016, p 6). The borough did not however formally adjust the general risk model to include the possibility of radicalized women until the 2018/​2019 strategy, removing the reference to men within the risk categories, simply stating that ‘[predominantly] young people are the majority of those affected by violent extremism’ (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2018/​2019, p 3). This did not, however, mean that women were ignored as a risk until 2018. From 2015 onwards, Townsville engaged in a number of activities that indicated it was taking the threat of female support for Islamic State seriously. For instance, in 2015 a conference was held by the council on how best to handle cases of radicalization that might turn up in the family courts (Appendix: Report: Prevent and Family Courts, 2015). The issue of radicalization and family courts was a novel one, with the conference revealing that prior to 2015 there were no such cases locally. However from March 2015 until December 2015, 31 children had been subjected to safeguarding interventions and were subject to Prevent case management proceedings (Appendix: Report: Prevent and Family Courts, 2015). As prior to this women were generally conceived within Prevent as a positive influence upon children, and were not considered to be a significant risk for radicalization, the rise in these cases led to a subsequent re-​evaluation of risk. Thus, this conference further expanded on the risk concerns within the borough, highlighting a number of concerns in relation to women and girls. The ‘Bethnal Green girls’, a prominent case nationally (Cook and Vale, 2018), formed the basis for much of this discussion of the risk, vulnerability and management of female radicalization. The Bethnal Green girls in this case were found to be vulnerable as the parents, for whom English was not a first language, were not able to monitor their online activities. Because of this, Islamic State were able to have free access to the girls and could ‘tap into the dreams and aspirations of the girls’ because they were not emotionally mature enough to resist (Appendix: Report: Prevent and Family Courts, 2015, p 11). This risk model informed a more general risk model of ‘flight-​ risk girls’, who were thought to be well behaved, from stable, non-​radicalized 140

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homes, and high academic achievers who were mainly radicalized –​or ‘groomed’ in the borough terminology –​by being manipulated online (Appendix: Report: Prevent and Family Courts, 2015). The fact that this event sparked a rethink of risk that had been around since 2008 underscores the reactionary nature of risk calculations in counterterrorism (Heath-​Kelly, 2017b). Read alongside the other interactions that Prevent has sought with women, it also reveals the subjectification of women in terrorism as primarily irrational (Gentry, 2020). As argued in Chapter 5, women engaging in terrorism are not seen as agents, but rather as manipulated –​‘groomed’ –​ subjects. It is their nature as emotional beings that is being used against them. In 2016 Townsville was included in a multi-​area training resource for schools which focused on the risks that pupils might face in relation to online radicalization. Within this training were three specific resources, out of a total of 32 video resources, which focused on young women who might be at risk of travelling to Syria (Appendix: Training for schools: videos, 2016). The videos again framed the problem of radicalization within young women as something akin to grooming for sexual abuse, and noted that many of these young women would travel to Syria for romance, thinking that they are in a genuine relationship. Specifically young women were in danger of being targeted by specialist Islamic State content which would point them to websites like ‘Jihadi Matchmaker’ in order to find a husband and get them to come to Islamic State territory (Appendix: Training for schools: videos, 2016). This again constructs females as primarily emotional subjects who primarily seek affection rather than power, as explored in Chapters 2 and 5. Schools were advised to point out that Islamic State would be unable to provide the kinds of freedoms that women would have in the UK. It is also argued that Islamic State’s ideas about women are in contrast to Islamic teachings that have always encouraged women’s participation in public life, and that anyone who supports women’s rights could not in any way support Islamic State, mirroring the arguments made in the national documents outlined in Chapter 4 (Appendix: Training for schools: videos, 2016). As much of this risk is in relation to the family context, families were thus constructed as a possible point of resilience if they were trained. This was because ‘[t]‌he family is one of the most powerful, social, emotional and human influences in the life of a child, this greatly constructs who they become as adults’ (Appendix: Report: Prevent and Family Courts, 2015, p 13). Indeed with families being commonly understood as key sites of identity construction and socialization, they are commonly drawn into prevention frameworks (Milardo, 1988; Guru, 2012). However, a notable risk within this idea is noted within the conference, in that the family might also be radical –​al-​Muhajiroun members were noted as particularly dangerous, with women being devious and, through her ‘invisibility’ within the community and family by virtue of wearing the hijab and niqab, were 141

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able to pass themselves off as cooperative when faced with interventions by child services (Appendix: Report: Prevent and Family Courts, 2015). The fact that these women can do this is however argued to be contingent on the way that women are understood by the security services –​that women are mostly understood as naturally peaceful by Prevent in fact gives these women the opportunity to slip through the net (Schmidt, 2020).

6.4.3 Project funding and objectives for Prevent in Townsville, 2011–​2021 In 2012 and 2013, Townsville looked to the satisfaction of the following objectives through its prevent delivery: • Target … individuals identified as at risk of involvement in extremist activity and violence • Strengthen community leadership to enable key individuals and organisations to challenge extremist ideology • Strengthen positive social networks and institutions to increase their capacity to challenge extremism and violence • Ensure robust evaluation is built into the delivery of the Prevent programme • Mainstream Prevent across all Directorates in order to increase Prevent awareness and enhance referrals. (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2012/​2013, p 5) These objectives would stay largely the same for the period 2011–​2021, with the 2020–​2021 plan adding objectives to better integrate Protect into Prevent planning (Appendix: Prevent Plan, 2020/​2021). Townsville’s deviation from the national objectives of Prevent is highlighted by the fact that the borough sought to fund projects which would generate a wider level of cohesion in the borough, noting that cohesion would have benefits beyond those who were targeted by Prevent (Appendix: Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 2018). As with the previous period, the funding for projects relied heavily on local risk conceptions. As outlined in Table 6.6, youth projects took 60 per cent of the total funding in the 2011–​2019 period, and 15.7 per cent of funding was directed towards projects for men. However the increase in funding for women compared to the previous period does reflect a shift in risk, as will be explored in section 6.4.4. Funding after 2019 is no longer listed in the Prevent Plan, and could not be retrieved via FOI –​the estimated budget for 2019/​2020 was £475,000–​625,000 (Appendix: Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 2019). As with the previous period, those projects which would be able to reach ‘general’ audiences would be more stringently targeted at those groups considered at risk. Thus, while 60 per cent of money went to youth targeted 142

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Table 6.6: Projects funded by type and target, Townsville, 2011–​2018/​19 Group

Target

Men

Funding allocated (% group) 14.14

Men Religion

14.14 1.62

Mosques Institutions

1.62 3.76

Schools Youth

3.76 56.64

Youth Women

Project development

Funding allocated (% target)

56.64 18.55

Families

4.16

Girls

8.20

Women

6.19 2.07

Training and communications

2.07

activities, these activities would in fact be targeted largely at young men, who were considered to be high-​r isk (Appendix: FOI Request, 2013). Further to this, Prevent would also operate outside of these directly funded projects. By 2017, all mainstream grants given to organizations within the borough would come with the caveat that those organizations working with young persons would have to receive safeguarding training, including Prevent training (Appendix: Overview and Scrutiny Committee Action Plan, 2017). Thus, the delivery of Prevent would not only reflect the risks identified in the local Prevent strategy, but also the priorities of the Community Safety Plan as well as being more broadly integrated into the work of non-​Prevent projects through safeguarding training.

6.4.4 Women in Prevent in Townsville, 2011–​2019 As indicated in Table 6.7, between 2011 and 2014 Townsville did not spend any money on women-​only projects, reflecting the low risk women were thought to pose. However, it did spend £7,986 on a family-​focused project in 2012, which looked to provide one-​to-​one advice to parents of children deemed at risk of being involved in extremism. Two 13-​week programmes of parenting support would also be provided to parents in at-​risk areas 143

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Table 6.7: Projects with women as a primary or secondary target, Townsville, 2011–​2018/​19 Group

Target

Project

Funding allocated

Women

Women’s empowerment £18,565 and religious training

Women

Training mothers to spot £81,474 radicalization in young women

Girls

Young women’s culture and lifestyle magazine

£173,564

Families

Family and parenting support

£7,986

Families

Family and parenting support

£85,000

Families

Training families to spot £15,000 radicalization

Women

(Appendix: Prevent plan, 2012/​2013). This programme would be linked with the Channel safeguarding arrangements made by the council. As with projects run with families in the previous period, this project would be open to any interested family members –​men and women. It would also however be informed by the knowledge that the majority of persons providing home care would be women. In 2015, the borough would run another family project, funded with £31,500, which would come to run each following year (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2015/​2016). The project continues to run in 2020 but it is unclear how much funding is allocated each year (Appendix: Presentation on Prevent activities, 2019). In 2018, the project was allocated £53,500 (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2018/​2019). This project would be largely similar to the families project of 2012, in that it offered support to families in order to reduce extremism. This project would, however, be much expanded –​not just targeting the parents of immediately at-​r isk children, but targeting the parents in the borough more generally. While the project was open to both men and women, between 2008 and 2010 the same project run in other areas attracted 86 per cent female participants (Appendix: Evaluation of Families programme, 2009/​2010). National data from 2014–​2017 indicates that 83 per cent of participants were female in that period (Appendix: Evaluation of Families programme, 2014–​2017). There is no indication of whether the project in Townsville experienced the same sex distribution in participation. The project would work to improve parenting practice, and therefore contribute to a more stable family life, through a series of workshops 144

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which would teach conflict resolution, discipline, community involvement, relationship enhancement, and cultural or spiritual understanding (Appendix: Evaluation of Families programme, 2009/​2010). This would translate into children’s abilities to ‘feel good about him/​herself … to manage/​express feelings and emotions; to control behavior … to consider others when making decisions; to ask for help/​guidance if needed; to avoid using or dealing drugs; to avoid violence and stay out of gangs; to feel comfortable with his/​her ethnicity’ (Appendix: Evaluation of Families programme, 2014–​2017). Parents would be better able to ‘manage their anger; express emotions; teach children right from wrong; handle child fighting or destructive behaviour; handle child refusal to do housework; make suggestions to child’s teacher; make plans to achieve personal goals; access community resources’ (Appendix: Evaluation of Families programme, 2014–​2017). Thus, as with the national strategy, a better family life would be considered a protective factor which would reduce the risk of youth getting involved in terrorism or extremism. Prevent training would also be embedded within these training sessions, with sessions on keeping children safe from online and offline extremism and radicalization, and on increasing confidence in relation to discussing Prevent-​related topics and community violence (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2015/​2016). This intervention fits with the wider risk conception within Townsville, which assumed that family tensions would produce isolation in children, leaving them vulnerable to extremist recruitment, and that a cohesive family environment would generally keep children safe (Appendix: Guidance: Supporting Vulnerable Children, 2015; Appendix: Guidance for parents, 2015). Women are not assumed to be a risk factor; rather, a protective factor. Events in 2015 would see women becoming a priority again, with a subsequent funding increase in line with the increased perceptions of risk (Table 6.8). In 2015 £18,565 was given to a project which would train female Muslim scholars with the hope that they would be able to access women praying or studying in their homes. These scholars would also develop a web presence to be able to reach out to those who do not attend mosque or study circles (Appendix: Annual report: national women’s organization, 2014). The latter would be especially directed towards younger women, reflecting the contemporary concerns around young women consulting ‘Sheikh Google’ and becoming radicalized (Shehabat and Mitew, 2018; Huey et al, 2019). The project would ‘[give] them a proper understanding of their faith that will make them resilient to radicalization’ and ‘[allow] Muslim women to reach their full potential in society without compromising their faith’ (Appendix: Prevent activities: women’s organization, 2017). Workshops run with local women would also look to train them in:

145

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[H]‌ow to spot the signs of radicalisation, deliver insights into the theology of Islam … and highlight the specific challenges Muslim women face in society. We examine the ways in which violence in the home can link with extremist ideology and how parenting issues can leave a child vulnerable to radicalisation. (Appendix: Prevent activities: women’s organization, 2017) The project would position Muslim women as essential in combating radicalization both through their ability to reach other, younger women who might be receiving ‘wrong’ information about their faith; and through their ability to watch over the home and community for signs of radicalization. The ‘empowerment’ of women in this programme would be done in order to better their ability to educate and watch over their families and communities. As with the national Prevent strategy, women’s rights and violence against women would be positioned as two sides of the extremist coin. And as argued in Chapter 4, this empowerment would be part of a wider ‘governance feminism’, whereby empowerment is in service of the state. While Yuval-​Davis and Al-​Ali (2018) argue that women entering fundamentalist movements give up their agency, so do women entering the security state in pursuit of their rights. In 2017 and 2018, a further £173,564 would be spent on a project specifically centred on young Muslim women, made in response to the perceived increased risk of young Muslim women travelling to Syria (Appendix: Young women’s project: press release, 2019). The project would not reach out to and train young women with counter-​extremism messages, but instead run a ‘lifestyle’ website imbued with liberal discussions of the Muslim faith, messages concerning multiculturalism in the UK, and displays of positive civic engagement by young Muslim women (Appendix: Website of a Prevent-​funded project for young women’s project, 2019). The project would, however, also run local events which would include debates, lunch and a raffle to win vouchers (Appendix: Young women’s project: advert, 2016). Those events would include presentations on ‘hate crime reporting, the political origins of Islamic extremism, and the basics of Islam’, as well as workshopping solutions to overcome the problems that Muslim women might face in everyday life, including giving them tools to overcome Islamophobia (Appendix: Annual report: national organization, 2016, p 6). This project draws parallels with the ‘women and the hijab’ project described in section 6.3.4 in seeking to create liberal female Muslim subjects. The project would cease to be funded by Prevent after 2018, although a similar project would receive funding. This project received £81,474 of funding in 2018 and would look to target young Muslim women. However, it would do so through their mothers, looking to build their awareness of the internet radicalization threat facing their daughters. Training included 146

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online safety for teenage girls, information on the pressures faced by young people, extremism, hate crime, British values and safeguarding procedures (Appendix: Advert: local project, 2018). The project would also look to build improved relationships with female community members (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2018/​2019). A similar project aimed explicitly at spotting the signs of radicalization within the family would also be funded up to £15,000 in 2018 (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2018/​2019)

6.4.5 2020–​2021 projects As outlined in Table 6.8, from 2020, the number of projects for women in Townsville reduced. In 2019, the project which sought to teach mothers how to spot radicalization in young women was again funded, and of six projects was the only project targeted at women that year. In 2021, of eight projects, three projects for women and/​or girls were funded by the Townsville Prevent team. One of these projects targeted at girls only, with the other two projects being for both men and women, but with a specific guidance to ensure that women were involved in the project. One project was targeted at families, and run by the Women’s Team, seeking to raise awareness of exploitation within the Somali community. The other project worked with local sporting foundations and mosques, focusing on safeguarding and improved engagement with local mosques (Appendix: Prevent plan, 2020/​2021). The single-​sex theatre project was used to target girls aged 13–​16 who had been identified by their schools as being ‘at risk’. The project sought to mitigate the risk of radicalization, addressing factors such as drug and alcohol use, sexual health, relationships, and child exploitation. This would be done by teaching healthy relationships, the importance of individuality, British values and encouraging the participants to support one another Table 6.8: Projects with women as a primary or secondary target, Townsville, 2019–​2021 Group

Target

Project

Funding allocated

Families

Women’s team: raising £30,000 awareness of exploitation in Somali communities

Girls

Theatre workshops for at-​r isk girls

£53,912

Women

Prevent engagement in mosques

Not available

Women

147

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(Appendix: Theatre Project Outline, 2021). Workshops would be done with participants over 4.5 hours, either across three weeks or on a single day, and could be extended to four or five full-​day workshops across school holidays. No participant would however be told that they were invited to the course because of a concern about radicalization; instead, they would be invited to learn new skills, raise their confidence and make new friends (Appendix: Theatre Project Flyer, 2021). Post-​project evaluations from 2020 indicate that many of the participants enjoyed the project, and found value in what was offered. The vast majority of participants indicated that they finished the project with greater self-​ belief and self-​worth, a greater understanding of the risks of ‘unsafe’ sex, and improved their knowledge of and ability to recognize negative and exploitative relationships and the actions to take (Appendix: Theatre Project Annual Return, 2020). As with other projects, this project seeks to increase resilience and decrease vulnerability; it does not, however, directly address any political thought or ideology held by the participants. In line with other Prevent projects, such things are approached as passive by-​products of interaction with bad actors.

6.5 Conclusion The extent to which Townsville was influenced by the national strategy, and its extensive outputs in relation to women, cannot be fully ascertained simply through a review of the early strategy documents. As will be made clear in the following chapter, practice becomes variable in relation to the challenges that Prevent staff encounter in their attempts to implement policy. However, these documents do demonstrate a number of commonalities between the national and local strategies which point to a shared idea about how women should fit into a strategy looking to prevent terrorism. The structures put in place to implement Prevent from its earliest moments also are seen to have knock-​on effects that reverberate throughout the policy lifetime. Additionally, events nationally and locally force a reaction and re-​evaluation of Prevent locally. As such, local policy is an effect of both national changes and local and institutional contexts. This chapter argues that Townsville has attempted to involve women from the start of the policy. As indicated in Table 6.9, the period 2006–​2019 14.9 per cent of known spending on Prevent was for projects targeting women, families and girls. However it is clear that this involvement relies heavily on the idea that women are inherently peaceful, and hold influential positions in the family that can be leveraged for counterterrorism. This conception was only challenged by events in 2014, which demonstrated that women were joining Islamic State and thus highlighting their potential to get involved in terrorism. However, it is also clear that the response to this also relies on the 148

DELIVERING PREVENT LOCALLY

Table 6.9: Projects with women as a primary or secondary target by year, Townsville Year

Families

Girls

Women

Total

2012

£7,986

-​

-​

£7,986

2013

-​

-​

-​

-​

2014

-​

-​

-​

-​

2015

£31,500

-​

£18,565

£50,065

2016

-​

-​

-​

-​

2017

-​

£92,090

-​

£92,090

2018

£68,500

£81,474

£81,474

£231,448

2019

-​

-​

£49,241

£49,241

2020

£22,500

£44,855

Not available

£67,355

2021

£7,500

£9,056

Not available

£16,556

Total

£137,986

£227,476

£149,280

£514,742

conceptions of women as naturally peaceful and emotional that run through Prevent. The answer to women’s radicalization, as argued in Chapter 5, is more involvement of women in the family, and an understanding that those women that did join terrorist groups did not do so of their own accord –​ rather, they were ‘groomed’. The integration of Prevent into local mainstream safeguarding structures pre-​2011 would also influence how women are integrated in Prevent. The institutional structure that Prevent is integrated in led to counterterrorism being concerned with violence against women, domestic violence and community cohesion post-​2011. Thus, as argued in this chapter, women facing issues such as domestic violence would become the concern of Prevent due to the integration of safeguarding and terrorism prevention. This can be seen in the local Violence Against Women strategy and the institutional integration of Prevent into community safety. The lack of definitional certainty with regard to radicalization and extremism allow for these concerns to leak into assessments of terrorist risk and vulnerability, with issues that might be considered political and social issues for women, such as abortion, domestic violence and honour killing, also becoming the concern of counterterrorism through their integration into vulnerability discussions. Those projects that involve women from 2011 largely remain within the confines of national practice and practice pre-​2011. Women are still mostly seen in relation to their family role. In a repetition of 2006 Prevent practice, ‘good parenting’ is also introduced as something of concern to 149

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counterterrorism, in that loving families can be protective. This also draws on ideas developed in Prevent Tragedies, discussed in Chapter 5. However, at this point, projects also appear that begin to address the risk of women’s radicalization. These projects also draw on the ideas discussed in this chapter; the projects are mainly concerned with giving women access to ‘correct’ Islamic teachings, and emotionally connecting with them through lifestyle projects. There is little political content to these interventions; women remain as a-​political, emotional subjects.

150

7

How do Prevent Professionals Understand Women? 7.1 Introduction The previous chapters analysed Prevent policy nationally, outlining a framework within which women have been conceptualized as maternal, caring and characteristically non-​violent persons. Despite the many years over which Prevent has developed, a broad overview of both policy and action at a national level indicates that this characterization has remained remarkably stable. However, we already know that Prevent in policy nationally does not cleanly translate into Prevent as practice on a local level. While we have looked in detail at the practice in one area in the previous chapter, it is worth delving into the practices of different areas to see whether these use their discretion to develop policy in differing ways. This is worth doing not least because the priority area system used by Prevent means that the resources available to a local area, and national government oversight of their activities, will likely differ at least in line with this. Additionally, while the documents of the previous chapter can tell us what local areas do, they cannot give us detail on the assumptions behind those decisions and what happens in practice. As will become apparent, the challenges faced in each area have resulted in different strategies to overcome them. Even activities that are becoming national best practice in Prevent, such as the use of stakeholder advisory bodies, have discretionary elements to them which result in different outcomes. What kinds of groups and persons these bodies are made up of, for instance, will shape how different groups interact with Prevent. Whether such bodies include dedicated women’s groups, and what kind of women’s groups these might be, is one such difference that will shape how Prevent is carried out. This chapter looks at how women are included in Prevent within five different areas, two of which are Tier 3, and three of which are Tier 1. It will explore if the actions identified in the previous chapter are replicated 151

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across different areas and investigate the assumptions behind those decisions. It presents data from interviews conducted with Prevent professionals from those areas between 2016 and 2018, as well as reflective responses gathered in 2020. The coding of the participants reflects their remit (National, Tier 1 or Tier 3 city); their institutional affiliation; and their role. A key concept that this chapter explores in detail is whether Prevent is ‘gendered’. On this, Hearn and McKie write that while ‘[t]‌he notion of policy can easily appear at first as gender-​neutral … not only is much policy and policy development constructed by and through assumptions about gender, but also much policy and policy development can be understood as policy on and about gender and gender relations’ (Hearn and McKie, 2008, p 75). In this sense, we are looking at Prevent here as something that can appear generalist and neutral, while simultaneously being shaped by assumptions about the characteristics of different genders. In prior chapters, I argued that Prevent is gendered, and that this is made clear through an analysis of policy documentation. In this chapter, I explore how much of this carries through to the actions of Prevent practice locally, and whether practitioners treat the policy as gendered, consciously or unconsciously. This latter point is where the chapter begins. It follows this by looking at the various challenges to including women, and how women are included in practice. This chapter argues that Prevent is highly gendered, even if it is ideologically presented as only concerned with the individual by some. It also argues that the conceptualizations of women found in the national and local policy documents can be found across all Prevent areas under study, adding weight to the argument that British counterterrorism relies on gendered practice.

7.2 Is Prevent gendered? As the initial objective of this research was to uncover how Prevent understands women, one of those questions that I approached interviewees with was: is Prevent gendered? This question began the interviews, setting an agenda for the conversation to follow. The blunt nature of this question also meant that interviews started in an illuminating way. Those working on different aspects of Prevent had different answers, and sometimes a clear and sharp ‘no!’ would come as a response. In this sense some Prevent professionals thought the topic of the interview somewhat absurd, considering that at the time of interview both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary were women, signalling gender equality at the highest level (T1-​PreventEducationOfficer). Another Prevent professional argued that Prevent could not be gendered, because if it were, she would not have received funding (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism). Others saw Prevent as 152

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simply pragmatic in that it does what it needs to do depending on the individual context, without reference to wider theorizing about the nature and structure of power in society (T1-​SocialWork-​PreventLead). The Equalities Act was also seen as a guarantor of sex indiscriminate delivery (T1-​PreventEducationOfficer; T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator; T3-​Prevent-​ Coordinator2). This is in line with arguments made by Holmwood (2019) and Lockley-​Scott (2019a). As such, through the lens of individuation and depoliticization, Prevent delivery becomes non-​ideological, non-​gendered and non-​sexed. However not all felt that way, and breaking down the different responses between each person practising Prevent provides some worthwhile results. Those who provided interventions via Channel and social work considered Prevent not to be gendered, but rather characterized by the attention paid to individual needs. It was however accepted that these individual needs might themselves be gendered. This is particularly apparent in talking about domestic violence, in that the presence of this would be a vulnerability most often seen in women (T1-​PreventEducationOfficer; T1-​Police-​PreventLead; T1-​SocialWork-​PreventLead; T3-​Police-​ChannelLead). Most Prevent officers acknowledged that there would need to be some level of gendering of delivery if Prevent were to reach women, especially in relation to involving women in Prevent projects (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator; T3-​Police-​ PreventLead; T3-​Prevent-​Coordinator). Those who worked as project managers running Prevent-​funded projects tended to emphasize that Prevent was not gendered and that it concentrated on the individual. They then however went on to elaborate how their project approached and considered men and women differently in relation to radicalization, vulnerability and need (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism; T1-​NGO-​Safeguarding; T1-​ Prevent-​PreventProjectLead). Those who worked in sectors subject to the Prevent duty, excluding social work, gave similar responses (T1-​Statutory-​ PreventLead; T1-​PreventEducationOfficer). Other interviewees noted that Prevent was gendered, but the insistence that it was based only on individuals was something which masked this gendered response. This made Prevent clumsy (N- ​NGO-​ CounterExtremism; T1-​P reventEducationOfficer; N-​NGO2-​CounterExtremism). Digging more deeply into how Prevent is gendered, many interviewees noted in one way or another how they mostly dealt with men. As explored in previous chapters, this also translates into an opposite attitude towards women –​that if men are violent, then women, their opposite, are not. While many participants noted that this notion was challenged in 2014, with women travelling to Syria to support extremist groups (T1-​Prevent-​ Coordinator; T1-​Statutory-​PreventLead), this new reality facilitated an adjustment of perception, rather than a wholesale rethinking. While women were still seen to be mostly peaceful, young women were thought to be at risk 153

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due to marginalization within social and religious institutions, particularly within the Islamic faith (N-​NGO-​CounterExtremism), and vulnerability to emotional manipulation (T1-​PreventEducationOfficer). This development still, however, relies upon gendered tropes which see women primarily through an emotional lens and assume a lower level of political knowledge and engagement than men (Gentry, 2020). These ideas about the nature of women show commonality with the national policy. While talking about the different roles that men and women play in Prevent, one practitioner stated that women are better at counter-​extremism and counter-​radicalization work as “they understand the nuances” better than men do, and thus are more able to pick up on “when a person is struggling with identity or life issues that might make them vulnerable” (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism). This was also linked to the idea that women are more patient than men, which is attributed to maternity (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism). Another practitioner talked about how women are at the heart of the community and heart of the family, and more influential as mothers than fathers within this sphere (T1-​ Prevent-​PreventProjectLead). This meant that within the family, the woman is the person who is a moderating influence, usually found holding back the more action-​oriented man (T1-​NGO-​Safeguarding). From the perspective of a counter-​extremism or counter-​radicalization practitioner, women are therefore a valuable resource to tap into. The specific nature of women in the family is explored more in section 7.5. Therefore while some practitioners argued that Prevent is not gendered, these statements show that in practice it is. This isn’t really a surprise –​ feminist texts do a good job of underscoring just how gendered our society is, from the layout of our streets to the practice of law. Chapter 2 also outlines just how much we think of terrorism in terms of violent men and passive women. However we can also look to changes in Prevent itself to see how shifts in the framing of radicalization might affect these ideas. As argued in Chapter 4, post-​2011 policy began to individualize Prevent, depoliticize it, and focus on ideology as the key source of the problem of radicalization. The addition of a safeguarding framework further individualized and depoliticized the policy. Thus, these changes make it difficult to think in terms of broader power dynamics within society. Hence while gender and sex have been recognized by feminists as part of a wider structure of domination for some time now, increasing numbers of women in the labour market and politics has shifted thought away from structural or ideological oppression and towards individuation (Cooper, 2017). The locating of radicalization within the individual therefore removes the wider contexts and complexities of gendered or sexed domination. A result of this is that we find messages within Prevent that deny the dominance of women over men (Andrews, 2020). 154

How do Prevent Professionals Understand Women?

7.3 Challenges to including women While there was some disagreement about whether Prevent is gendered, each interviewee nonetheless highlighted that they considered women to be an important group to include in Prevent. Alongside this, many highlighted that there were some difficulties in doing so. These reasons ranged from the ‘invisibility’ of Muslim women, the need to overcome patriarchal cultures within Muslim communities, to the need to keep in mind that women are expected to carry out childcare responsibilities more so than men, leaving them with less time to engage in Prevent-​related projects. As already noted, the latter did not involve recognition of the structural disadvantage that childcare responsibility might cause women. Instead, conversation remained focused on how this might drive disengagement with Prevent.1 A major problem identified by practitioners relates to wider stereotypes about women in society, and how to avoid perpetuating these stereotypes while still gaining access to women who might, in some way, live up to these stereotypes. For ­example –​as will be explored later –​many women are the primary caregivers in the family, even if this role is changing. However, forming a campaign around this observation might end up further driving these stereotypes, or entrenching this role. This problem befell Prevent Tragedies, as explored in previous chapters. It is notable that some Prevent practitioners are aware of this, and the negative effects that might arise if work in this domain is not handled with care (N-​NGO2-​CounterExtremism). This need for care extends to ethnic and religious inclusion, too, and practitioners spoke about how they were careful not to ‘wheel out’ Muslim women as tokens of inclusivity, and that those who were involved would need to be protected (T1-​Police-​PreventProjectLead). However, care was also taken not to overly challenge stereotypes so that they would not ‘rock the boat’ too much. These stereotypes could also be advantageous, and could be played upon. The stereotype that women are more peaceful or maternal than men, for instance, was used to encourage that kind of behaviour in target audiences (T1-​Prevent-​PreventProjectLead). This evidently complex relationship between social stereotypes and ideas about what a woman’s correct role in society should be is a theme that appears throughout many of the problems raised in relation to the inclusion of women, and one which is variously navigated around, addressed, played down or played to, depending on the desired outcome. A common point discussed was also whether women are a ‘hard to reach’ community –​one which for some reason or another, shies away from interaction with security officials or political activism, or experiences cultural, social, economic or political barriers to engagement (Benoit et al, 2005). Improving police engagement with communities considered to be hard to reach has been a priority for some time, although it is noted that 155

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

the concept of ‘hard to reach’ is sometimes simply a euphemism for ethnic minorities (Jones and Newburn, 2001). While the practitioners interviewed did admit there were difficulties in engaging with ethnic minority women, this was not considered as a problem of ‘hard to reach’ communities –​rather, it was more to do with how stereotypes and patriarchal attitudes would create barriers for those activities and projects which sought to include them. One problem commonly espoused in this vein was patriarchal attitudes within the Muslim community. The women themselves were often thought of as keen to be involved in Prevent, but the abuse of women who are involved in Prevent created a barrier for them. Additionally, many spoke about how women were either prevented from attending meetings by their family or otherwise prevented from speaking in meetings by other men. Several interviewees raised the issue of men dominating mixed-​sex meetings (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism; T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator; T1-​Police-​ PreventProjectLead). This is something which is a more general problem in society (Mann, 2018) even if here the interviewees only spoke about this problem in relation to the Muslim community. There were several ways that this problem was handled by those working on Prevent. When those meetings were held in universities, one respondent noted that they would rely on the Equalities Act to ensure women were included (T1-​PreventEducationOfficer). Another was to simply hold women-​only meetings, which were noted to be very well received: “for these women … it was a first time for some of them that they had those conversations … and it was an environment, whether they told their husbands or not, they felt safe to go along to really” (T1-​Police-​PreventProjectLead). This, however, was not a solution that could be universally enacted, as in some cases Prevent workers found that after an initial session the women would be prevented from attending future sessions by male family members. In reaction to this, the facilitators changed from a three-​session, one hour per session format into a one-​session, three-​hour format (T1-​Prevent-​ Coordinator). The use of segregation here is presented as something necessary to access Muslim women. It is worth noting that women-​only spaces have been used by feminists for decades as safe spaces for organizing and socializing (Enke, 2007; Segal, 2015). It is also worth noting that despite the ongoing debate in British society about transsexual access to these spaces (Whittle and Simkiss, 2020), no Prevent office that was contacted had any procedure in place for if a trans person were to seek to join a sex-​segregated meeting. This is an oversight, considering the violence that trans persons experience everyday, and the targeting of LGBTQ+​persons by extremists (Kidd and Witten, 2007; Doan, 2010). Segregation was not something that was pursued in the first instance in most cases, but something that was seen to be done out of necessity. One interviewee puts it thus: 156

How do Prevent Professionals Understand Women?

‘[W]‌e have held meetings … where women didn’t come. We couldn’t understand why. So, we asked the women to come, and the men got very uncomfortable. The next meeting we said we will have women, and the men didn’t come. … So, we will hold meetings purely for women and get a good turnout. As if you had men, some women wouldn’t come as they wouldn’t want to speak out in front of the men, and on the other side, you would find that if you had women some of the men wouldn’t come. … So we are responding to the community’s own divisions’ (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator) Difficulties were also noted on the struggles that women have faced in the Muslim community in regard to representation on mosque committees, and in local politics in general (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism). This is also seen as contributory to women’s radicalization, as women would be less able to access mainstream religious teachings and thus might look for religious instruction on the internet (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator; T1-​Police-​ PreventProjectLead; T3-​Prevent-​Coordinator). Thus, Prevent professionals found themselves caught between a perceived need to get women involved in religious instruction, but having to face down patriarchal attitudes that prevented them from receiving such instruction. Those that attempted to address this found themselves accused of trying to ‘warp’ the minds of women in the Muslim community (T1-​ Prevent- ​ P reventProjectLead; T1-​ P revent-​ C oordinator; N-​ N GO-​ CounterExtremism). Those who were women from the Muslim community found themselves facing misogynistic abuse, including being asked why they were not married and why they were not in the kitchen (T1-​Prevent-​ Coordinator; N-N ​ GO-C ​ ounterExtremism; N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism). Those who pursued a more feminist approach to including women also saw abuse, stating “the fact that we advocated for women’s rights, challenging patriarchal interpretations of religion, we stood up for women leading prayer … we met a lot of resistance from men, who thought we were perhaps leading women astray” (N-​NGO-​CounterExtremism). Despite this, many considered this important work, in that extremism could not be tackled without reference to women’s rights and women’s empowerment, with or without a wider reference to feminism (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator; T1-​ Statutory-​PreventLead). These problems have publicly been noted by Prevent professionals who are themselves Muslim women (Khan and McMahon, 2016; Haroon-​Iqbal, 2019). Difficulties were also noted in Prevent responses which involved women as a spouse of a referee, or as the person making the referral. It was noted that there could be concerns about women’s safety if they were to report their husband (T1-​NGO-​Safeguarding). If there were concern around a woman’s safety who was in contact with Prevent, one project worker noted that they 157

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would either use a contact within the community to reach out, masking the Prevent response, or provide their own non-​Prevent response to the issue which would draw on other safeguarding mechanisms if appropriate (T1-​ NGO-​Safeguarding). Other interviewees indicated that as issues of domestic violence were within the remit of safeguarding, Prevent and Channel boards would be well positioned to provide advice and service referrals to those in need (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator; T1-​Police-​PreventProjectLead (T1-P ​ OL1); T3-​Prevent-​Coordinator; T1-​Statutory-​PreventLead). Indeed, one area was used to making referrals from Prevent to a local women’s refuge (T1-​Police-​ PreventLead). The fact that many of the respondents considered domestic violence to be an indicator of either risk or vulnerability, depending on whether the referral was a perpetrator or a victim, meant that they were expected to be alive to the possibility of harm in such cases (T1-​Prevent-​ Coordinator; N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism; T1-​NGO-​Safeguarding; T1-​Police-​PreventLead; T3-​Police-​PreventLead). Whether women are well protected in these cases is a matter for debate. Rehman (2019) finds that women who refer are not well protected, as it is the potential perpetrator who is of interest to the security services. Likewise, James (2020) finds similar evidence. The fear of reprisal after reporting is also a general problem that hampers police operations (Felson et al, 2002). It was also noted that the family of a referee or the family of someone subject to a Terrorism Act arrest would require support, which would come from Prevent officers (T1-​Police-​PreventLead). Prevent officers in such a case would: ‘[E]‌xplain that we are not there to investigate that family, we are there to support that family. Explain what will happen to their loved one. We give them a phone, put them up in a hotel, we’ll give them money; … that is about us trying to build confidence in what we do and build legitimacy in policing.’ (T1-​Police-​PreventLead) There was however disagreement between counterterrorism policing and social services in relation to whether Prevent should involve itself when it was thought that a family might ascribe to a radicalized ideology but not be in violation of any law. Counterterrorism policing in these cases indicated that they would consider such a thing to be a child protection issue (T1-​ Police-​PreventLead). Conversely, social services rejected the notion that they should be involved in the policing of family ideology, particularly through the courts (T1-​SocialWork-​PreventLead).

7.4 Involving women in practice The details of the problems related to involving women in Prevent have been realized over a number of years. It is worth remembering that when 158

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Prevent began, a working group was set up to look at how women could best be included, indicating that these problems were in many ways expected. This working group, and all the efforts put into the programme since that time, also indicate that women have always been important in some way to Prevent, even if the work on the ground was sloppy, one-​sided, or failed to really take women seriously. At the local level, the practitioners spoken to here indicated the seriousness with which they approached women as a group, seeking to overcome problems and get them involved in Prevent delivery. The strategies developed to get women involved in practice differed from area to area, with both local circumstance and local priority designation having an effect. This section deals with how local practitioners sought to access women, and how they used women’s groups as an effective way of getting women involved in Prevent.

7.4.1 Access As noted in the Introduction, Prevent is highly localized, and thus differences can appear in the implementation of Prevent in areas of differing priority. This is due to both the discretion afforded to local Prevent practitioners in commissioning projects, and differences in local risk. It is also directly related to the structure and funding of Prevent in local areas. High priority areas will receive both funding and a dedicated Prevent practitioner from the Home Office; conversely, low priority areas will receive little funding, and will have to draw on local council staff and already existing council funding and facilities (Mastroe, 2016). Low priority areas will have to rely more on already existing relationships, community groups and facilities, which will pull them to a Prevent model which is more integrated with pre-​existing local concerns. Thus, a Prevent Officer from a Tier 3 area noted that their budget for community safety had been so drastically cut that much of the Prevent work was done in partnership with other council agencies, integrating Prevent into other functions of the local safeguarding board. For women, this included forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and hate crime (T3-​Prevent-​Coordinator). The Prevent team would also be able to support local community groups in Prevent-​related activities through the provision of in-​kind support, such as access to council-​owned facilities (T3-​Prevent-​ Coordinator). Due to the lack of funding and low priority, the local police in this area invested a lot of time in building community relations and trying to ensure that local community groups had access to information on Prevent, so that the policy could be disseminated across those networks (T3-​Police-​ ChannelLead). This however also meant that Prevent would find itself mixed in with the agenda of that community group (T3-​Police-​ChannelLead). Many of the staff working on Prevent would also have other responsibilities 159

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around safeguarding including domestic violence, drug use and community safety, further integrating Prevent with other types of safeguarding work (T3-​Police-​PreventLead). Another low priority area confirmed that much of the Prevent work was unfunded and thus relied on ‘co-​production’ with community groups, meaning that the Prevent message would be mixed in with other types of messaging including substance misuse and sometimes health and maternity (T3-​Prevent-​Coordinator2). To access women in these low priority areas officers would then have to go to them in pre-​existing spaces, rather than create dedicated Prevent spaces themselves. Aside from community groups, schools would also be a place where women were reached out to in low priority Prevent areas. Schools were places where Prevent officers would be more likely to find women. They would also be more likely to find women alone (T3-​Prevent-​Coordinator2; T3-​Police-​ChannelLead). The latter point is important, as while men would not be turned away from these meetings if they turned up, there would be a hope that the turnout would be all women. A lack of funding in many cases prevented holding women-​only meetings, unless a special project were being run (T3-​Prevent-​Coordinator2). However, the reliance on school groups and the lack of funding would also mean that Prevent would have to be delivered alongside other safeguarding concerns, and in line with what the hosting school would want covered (T3-​Police-​ChannelLead; T3-​Police-​ PreventLead; N-​Prevent-​PreventProjectLead). Again, Prevent would be mixed with other kinds of messages and interventions, and Prevent could not be imposed in these spaces (T3-​Police-​PreventLead). The strategy of accessing women at schools was also pursued by Tier 1 areas, with the insight that Prevent could “[tap] into that existing relationship the school has with … mothers … who drop off at the school gates” (T1-​ Police-​PreventProjectLead). The relationship between schools and mothers could be then leveraged to get women involved in Prevent-​funded projects where the agenda would be in line with the local Prevent strategy, and under the direction of a Prevent officer or someone implementing a Prevent project (T1-​Police-​PreventProjectLead; T1-​NGO-​Safeguarding). A larger budget also meant that Tier 1 areas would not have to rely on a hope that men would not turn up to meetings for them to be women only. Wider access to resources would mean that such meetings could be designed to be exclusive in the first instance.

7.4.2 Women’s groups Another way that women were accessed was through engagement with existing women’s groups, or by setting up new women’s groups. Similar to Prevent’s work with Shanaz, many of these groups were set up by Prevent officers, engaging with local women, and then relinquishing most control 160

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so that the group was not police-​or Prevent-​controlled. All the areas under study set up or facilitated women-​only community groups as an important part of Prevent delivery. These groups would be encouraged to hold regular meetings and feed back to local Prevent staff. At these meetings, which were largely led by local women, issues such as mosque access, FGM, bullying, domestic violence, childcare and English language lessons were addressed. The local Prevent team would occasionally introduce guest speakers who would talk on issues related to radicalization, Prevent and extremism, including inviting mothers whose children had travelled to Syria. Importantly, these groups would not necessarily be funded via the local project budget. They could be funded via one-​off grants given out of a general Prevent local budget or through in-​kind grants. Prevent officers also indicated that they would support applications to non-​Prevent grants, assisting with grant writing or providing contacts within funding agencies. In this way, two local projects were identified that were nominally not Prevent projects, but were funded via external agencies with the support of Prevent officers and continued to receive support from local Prevent officers (T1-​Police-​PreventProjectLead). These projects also worked with Prevent, promoting the safeguarding message of Prevent and advising those who were concerned about radicalization to get in touch with a Prevent officer. This indicates that some Prevent work is masked by funding from other bodies, or funding from a general budget, which would not appear in local area budgets. The mixing of non-​Prevent issues with Prevent in women’s projects is evidently a common occurrence. One reason given for this is that it allows Prevent practitioners to build trust and to associate Prevent with progressive causes: “[i]‌f you start with Prevent, it has become so politicised, then groups won’t engage. But if you start with … raising a family … then that can be a better start for the conversation” (T1-​Police-​PreventLead). Another reason given was that the issue of radicalization is seen as interlinked with other issues that face women: “this is not a single issue. If we can talk to loads of women about Prevent then we should talk to them about other stuff too, like domestic violence and STIs [sexually transmitted infections] because their husbands are sleeping with prostitutes” (T1-​Statutory-​PreventLead). Additionally, if the women’s groups used were under the direction of women from the community, then it would also be likely to cover wider issues than just radicalization and Prevent. As a result of the way that many of these groups were organized –​with men being excluded, and with the groups being presented as having a broad focus, rather than only covering Prevent, practitioners were finding that “some of the things that come out are nothing to do with radicalization and extremism. They will talk about things like domestic violence and forced marriage, issues that the men didn’t really want them talking about” (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator). 161

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The way that so many issues seemingly not related to radicalization come through in these meetings is not an aberration. Again, thinking back to the national Prevent documents, issues such as sexual health, diet, art and sport –​among other things –​appeared prominently next to policies about engaging women in Prevent. However, in describing how these issues came to be included in women’s discussions, including these issues seems as much as result of allowing women to take the lead as anything else. In talking about the decision to allow wider issues than Prevent to be aired, a Prevent practitioner said that: ‘The nature of what is said is up to them and them alone, so there is no accusation that we are directing the conversations. The only trade-​off is … they must also tackle radicalization, e-​safety, and Islamophobia. How they do that is up to them –​if they want a speaker, I can help them, but if they want to source their own, that is up to them.’ (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator) As such, at the local level it appears that a variety of issues appear as a result of Prevent facilitating but then backing away from women’s groups. Thus, Prevent is more tapping into a local desire for women’s autonomy and space, and providing it with the caveat that Prevent is engaged with. Other practitioners stated something similar –​that women’s groups were designed in such a way that wider issues facing women could be aired, organized around and discussed, and that Prevent was included in these conversations as a result of attaching Prevent training to financial or in-​kind support. Aside from providing access to women, these groups were also a valuable resource. For instance, some of these groups were used to recruit talented women to Prevent. Those women were then tapped to talk at meetings on Prevent with other local women, providing a non-​police face for the policy. Others who had direct experience of issues such as migration, diaspora or radicalization would also be used to facilitate relationships with minority women, or to talk about their experiences in a way which supported Prevent objectives. Some women were also supported in other ways, providing them with funding or in-​kind support for their business ideas in exchange for including Prevent as part of the delivery. One such project was a women’s wellbeing centre. The Prevent practitioner who facilitated the funding of this business through Building a Stronger Britain Together –​another counter-​extremism project, unrelated to Prevent –​spoke about the value of this business to local Prevent practice: ‘[In the spa] they do a lot of active routines about health and wellbeing [and] do a lot of one-​to-​one work with women who they feel are being radicalised. They do it in a therapeutic way; … 162

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they want women to come in and relax and talk to other women.’ (T1-​Police-​PreventProjectLead) This project was developed after the founders of the wellbeing centre attended a women-​only Prevent meeting. This meeting was developed with the purpose of creating networking opportunities for women in the local area, giving them an opportunity to organize to solve common problems, as well as providing a space within which Prevent training could be delivered (T1-​Police-​PreventProjectLead). However, while these groups would be led by local women not employed by Prevent, the involvement of Prevent support would also mean that certain women would not be able to be fully involved. As since 2011 Prevent no longer engages with ‘non-​violent extremists’, this means that there is a limit to the activities that the groups could undertake and still receive support. For instance, “Salafi women … have been completely ignored because of that disengagement” (N-​NGO2-​CounterExtremism). So while “support groups [and] discussion forums work better if they are … organically formed from within the community” (T3-​Police-​PreventLead), Prevent officers would “pick and choose which groups to engage with” (T3-​Police-​ChannelLead). If an existing group found itself hosting someone considered to be a non-​ violent extremist, then the local Prevent officer could step in and discuss how this would mean that the group could no longer receive Prevent support, or require a Prevent referral (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator). Therefore the groups are only nominally independent, as funding is contingent on meeting Prevent guidelines. This practice is something which is widespread in Prevent, with universities subject to the duty also policing the content and attendance of meetings on campus (Degli Esposti and Scott-​Baumann, 2019). However, the amount of influence that practitioners could have over groups in this manner is dictated by the priority level of the area. While Tier 1 areas would be able to bring more financial influence to bear, being able to fund speakers, venues and refreshments (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator), local areas would have to rely on in-​kind resources. As such it would be more difficult to police such meetings.

7.5 Women and the family As seen in the national and local strategies, the family is elevated to an important role in Prevent, as a site where both radicalization and resilience can take place. This site appears to be the most important link between Prevent and women, allowing Prevent professionals to access the private sphere of the home which might otherwise be off-​limits (Johnstone, 2009). While several practitioners emphasized the focus that Prevent places upon the individual, rather than characteristics such as sex, race or sexuality, many 163

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practitioners also articulated an exception to this in relation to the role of women in the family. Within this framework women exist as a potential protective factor, who if given the right training would be able to increase resilience within the family and keep a watchful eye upon others for signs of radicalization. The priority given to women’s role within the family has existed in Prevent since the start of the strategy, as explored in Chapter 4. While initially women were thought of within this role as a “conduit to men” with project development leaning towards the creation of “community hubs [where] women could report on their sons and husbands”, by 2016 the increasing amounts of young women who were travelling to Syria had problematized this notion (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism). This shift also coincided with the realization, explored in Chapter 5, that women were not well engaged with Prevent, and that more effort would need to be made if they were to be integrated into the policy. Thus, by 2016, the role of women in the family had developed into one where women would be protective of daughters, as well as sons and husbands. The logic of this expansion however remained the same, with women being thought of “in terms of the family; … [they] hold the family together. They are the ones who are basically, constantly, emotionally invested” (T1-​ NGO-​Safeguarding). In this sense, the mother is thought of as “being the go-​to person in the family … and being trusted, and being that sort of non-​ confrontational role, the carer and nurturer” (T1-​Police-​PreventProjectLead). Mothers are also thought of as being the “primary educators” of children (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism) and the “first responders” to crises (T1-​ Prevent-​Coordinator). Thus, women are thought of primarily through their relational ‘selfhoods’, being defined in relation to others (Spelman, 1988). As such, women are expected within this framework to be the persons who set rules, regulate behaviour and maintain harmony within the home. This care role extends into the wider community, with women expected to mediate relations within their home and the community at large. This relationship between the home environment and the community is reflected a broad statement given about the role of women within Prevent, in that “women are seen as the heart of the community. They are in the home, they are main educators, they are more face to face with issues that kids are facing” (T1-​Prevent-​PreventProjectLead). This role become more pronounced in relation to Muslim women. The assumption in this case is that not only are the women the “carers, the nurturers … there all the time”, but they are also the persons who “impart the religion on the children –​they learn from the mothers first” (N-​NGO-​CounterExtremism). This role of women was seen in some cases as something that needed to be bolstered within the family. The trope of pacific femininity also consists of ideas about women’s weakness and fragility (Alison, 2004). Thus, while women might be able to 164

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have a peaceful influence on the family, this could also be tempered by the violence of men “because the man is overpowering, remember –​particularly in Muslim families. And for a woman, it is a very big step to go outside the family” (T1-​NGO-​Safeguarding). Due to this, Prevent would also have to work to challenge patriarchy and misogyny. The broad-​brush generalization of this latter comment is something which reflects wider debates about whether Muslim women ‘need saving’ (Abu-​ Lughod, 2002). While there are some obvious truths to the assertion that men can be overpowering within families, this is not something which is solely the problem of Muslim families. It is worth pointing out that controlling behaviours and intimate partner violence are problems that women will contend with irrespective of whether they come from an ethnic or religious minority background (Johnson and Leone, 2005). However, Sharia courts, the dominance of older, conservative men in religious institutions, and battles over women’s dress are things that affect Muslim women in detrimental ways (Kariapper, 2009; Manea, 2016). While many of these problems have analogues in other communities in the United Kingdom (famously women around the world have to battle non-​stop to have a measure of control over their choice of clothing), the nature of these problems can also be culturally specific and thus should not be ignored or minimalized. As such, as with general stereotypes about women, Prevent practitioners must walk a tightrope of recognizing problems, but not generalizing or stereotyping even if they, personally, see patterns in the referrals they receive or the persons they work with. The result of the idea that women are peaceful and a nurturing influence in the family is that much of the engagement with women remains in relation to the family and motherhood. As demonstrated in previous chapters, this has been a consistent way of engaging women in Prevent. As such, many of the projects developed for women look to engage on this level. These projects seek to provide training and raise awareness of issues related to radicalization, and to encourage mothers to report concerns to Prevent officers or other institutions which are subject to the Prevent duty (T1-P ​ reventEducationOfficer; T1-P ​ olice-P ​ reventLead). Networking events for mothers were also set up so that women could support each other and share concerns both related to Prevent and beyond Prevent (T1-​Police-​ PreventProjectLead; T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator). The content of these interventions and projects revolved around the spotting of signs of radicalization, and good practice in increasing resilience. One practitioner described an intervention as giving understandings of the dangers of the internet, and how to mitigate them: “[s]‌o a mother can understand that it isn’t good for my son to be on the computer in his bedroom at all times of the day … and he’s on his phone and he’s becoming more secretive and aggressive, [then] something’s not quite right” (T1-​PreventEducationOfficer). 165

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Others would provide space where women could network in an environment provided by the police, where speakers could attend to build awareness of radicalization, and “also providing them with a place to go to address problems with mosque leadership and being cut off from communities” (T1-​Police-​PreventProjectLead). Other networking projects would provide a space for women to air concerns about their children’s conversion to Islam, and to provide further theological understanding of the religion so that they could steer them away from radical narratives that they might encounter online (T1-​Prevent-​PreventProjectLead). In general, the role of women within the family here remains consistent with the role presented in Chapter 4: “the primary thing I suppose is the recognition that mothers in particular have a big role to play in safeguarding their children, safeguarding their families, and spotting vulnerabilities” (T3-​Police-​PreventLead).

7.6 Radicalized women Of course, Prevent is not solely occupied with women as builders of resilience. The primary mission of the policy, being to prevent radicalization, also means that it is concerned with any individual who might be being radicalized, including women. While women as radicalized persons have not featured heavily in the strategy, as outlined in previous chapters, local conditions have made practitioners more sensitive than the national policy. This is especially apparent post-​2014, when increasing amounts of women migrated to Islamic State-​held territory. Since this time, those working on Prevent have reflected that the progressive reaction to this event shifted from criticism of Prevent for failing to safeguard young women, to criticizing Prevent for seeing women as simply passive and brainwashed, lacking in agency, before finally criticizing Prevent for not seeing women as brainwashed, and instead leaving women to be held in Kurdish prison camps with the explanation that they had made their choice to support Islamic State. Evidently this is a complex environment for practitioners to navigate. It is because of this complex environment –​and the need to react immediately to cases that seem risky –​that practitioners are found to hold much more nuanced views about the roles of women in radicalization than what is found in national policy. Indeed as reflected on in earlier chapters, national policy, being so slow to change, can only provide a framework of action, and practitioners can choose whether that framework exists as a skeleton or fully fleshed-​out body. Thus, while radicalized women are rarely found within the wider Prevent strategy, local Prevent professionals offered several examples on the subject. However, even with the possibility of departure from the national strategy, many of the responses relied on gendered tropes about men and women’s motivation for action. However, they also reflected on these tropes, noting that they appear prominently 166

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in the ideologies and actions of extremist and terrorist groups. Thus, one project worker noted that “the far right stuff is very gendered; … the EDL [English Defence League] Angels and all that. … There is interesting theology about women on the battlefield in Islam; … it’s about men protecting women, protecting our women, our land, our people” (N-​ NGO2-​CounterExtremism). This is theorized by other Prevent practitioners to be something which will affect how men and women get involved in these movements. As noted in Chapter 2, the (lack of) presence of women in terrorist groups could be better explained by a demand problem, rather than a supply problem. As these interviews were conducted between 2015 and 2020, much of the discussions on the subject of radicalization and women revolved around the aforementioned migrations to Islamic State. Typically these discussions evoked the “shock” that many in Prevent experienced in reaction to young women travelling to Syria from 2014 onwards (T1-​Statutory-​PreventLead). Up until this point, the role of women in terrorism was described as “underestimated”, and that “people did not realize that that [women travelling to Syria] was going to happen, they thought it would be your stereotypical teenage males that went out” (T1-​Statutory-​PreventLead). This moment of shock had not, at that time, developed into an explicit theoretical framework for how women got involved in terrorism. There was disagreement, or confusion, as to whether radicalization was contextually different for males or females, or ‘gendered’ in some way. At the beginning of the interview, many practitioners stated that they did not consider it to be so. This was especially prevalent when practitioners spoke about radicalization purely through the lens of vulnerability. A Prevent Education Officer put it as such: “I think young females are just as vulnerable as young boys because it depends on [universal] vulnerabilities” (T1-​ PreventEducationOfficer). Similarly, a Counter-​Terrorism Unit (CTU) Commander offered the explanation that “there is a vulnerability there with young people who are looking for belonging, identity or inclusion and they are offered and opportunity to join a group that gives them [that] … [and] a sense of security that is missing in their life because of a range of other vulnerable factors” (T1-​Police-​PreventLead). This explanation fits neatly into Prevent, where radicalization is seen as a product of the individual. A similar explanation was offered by a local project worker, who considered that the diversity of backgrounds that all radicalized persons come from precludes any social explanation that we can offer, including gender (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism). This explanation was not, however, shared between all interviewees, and many offered gendered perspectives on female radicalization. Additionally, those that offered the explanations that refused a gendered perspective on radicalization then went on, in further questions, to offer gendered 167

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perspectives on radicalization, suggesting that the Vulnerability Assessment Framework and the vulnerable individual radicalization model therein is more of a heuristic than an actual working model. These are explored in the following sections.

7.6.1 Radicalization and romance The romanticization of women’s involvement in terrorism is something which is well documented. As noted in Chapter 2, many analyses of women in terrorist groups argue that women get involved in terrorism because of love, the loss of family members, or some other relationship or romantic reason. This is criticized within the feminist literature as something which perpetuates, and relies on, gendered stereotypes about women’s behaviour. This theme appeared as a common explanation for women’s radicalization in interviews with Prevent practitioners. This theme was offered especially in relation to young women, but was also used as an explanation for the actions of older women in some cases. An illustrative story recounted by one of the interviewees talked about “[a]‌young girl of 16 who was being groomed online by a member of Da’esh, who was persuading her to … leave her family, and go over there to live with him. … Good looking guy, huge biceps, six pack” (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism). A contrasting explanation was given for male radicalization, with men being attracted to “the whole Kalashnikov and the whole macho thing, and women are like –​fit man with a gun, brawny … that’s what I want” (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism). This romantic/​macho dichotomy of male and female radicalization is a common thread that flows through many interviews. In relation to those women who migrated to Islamic State, “[w]‌omen were not necessarily taken to Syria to go out and fight, but they go out there because of promises of these big, striking, handsome men they will be married to” (T1-​PreventEducationOfficer).2 While this idea clearly links with more stereotypical ideas about the romanticism of women, it also was linked to a cultural conflict between Muslim parents and their children: “I saw more that it was a symptom of the restrictive life that young women lived in this country –​that they couldn’t reconcile being a good Muslim with living the life that they wanted. … Romance, freedom, work” (N-​NGO-​CounterExtremism). This conflict is seen to manifest itself in the seeking of romantic ties with others when they cannot be found in the surrounding family or community environment, resulting in alienation and loneliness (N-​ NGO3-​CounterExtremism). As explained by one Prevent officer, it is this intersection of different factors that brings to the fore an issue as a point of radicalization. As romance intersects with cultural clashes, desires for more freedom and religious questioning, skilful radicalizers are able to manipulate 168

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desire and resentment, and then encourage support for or engagement in terrorism (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator). This particular portrayal matches wider understandings of female terrorism in both mainstream practice and the media –​that women fight for love and romance, and not for politics (Nacos, 2005; Eisenstein, 2007; Yarchi, 2014).

7.6.2 Radicalization, patriarchy and abuse Within the family context, radicalization was also presented as something which could be a product of women’s isolation. One local project worker noted that when women are more constrained in the home, they build relationships online and therefore expose themselves to radicalizers, or they create “sister circles” which can be infiltrated by radical women (T1-​ NGO-​Safeguarding). This family context also translates into problems related to domestic abuse, and the possibility that domestic abuse might be either a factor in radicalization or that women are not truly radicalized, but are simply compelled to go along with the wishes of abusive men (T1-​ Prevent-​Coordinator). In that sense, one interviewee stated that radicalized women are simply seeking escape, in that they might be a “young mother, being jihadi brides but looking to get away from the day to day life that they are used to, whether that is [domestic violence] or parents” (T1-​ Police-​PreventProjectLead). Women being particularly vulnerable to abuse in the family space is something accepted in the literature (Johnson and Leone, 2005; DeKeseredy and Dragiewicz, 2007), as well as being a space that victims find it difficult to escape from (Kim and Gray, 2008). Some terrorism literature finds this to be contributory to women’s involvement in terrorism (Naaman, 2008; Bloom, 2011). However, Patel (2008) finds that the privileging of religious leadership and voice allows for further space for this abuse, since these voices tend to be conservative and male. She also finds that the power of these male leaders has been amplified by policies such as Prevent, which trades in the rights of women for state security (Patel, 2011). While this demonstrates how domestic violence referrals might result in a Prevent response, social work responses to Prevent disputed the usefulness of this. This extends to the linking of radicalization and safeguarding, in that social workers being co-​opted into a securitized response to vulnerability would mean a hampered ability to provide the human rights and social justice responses that the discipline places at the centre of its work (T1-​SocialWork-​PreventLead). Abuse being a consideration in women’s radicalization is something that appears across many interviews and is not limited to the context of Muslim families. One local practitioner talks about a case where a non-​Muslim girl was “sexually exploited by Pakistani Muslim men and who was becoming radicalized because of that” (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism), and in at 169

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least two cases the local Prevent board would accept referrals where there had been cases of domestic violence (T3-​Prevent-​Coordinator2; T1-​ Police-​PreventLead). Another muses that “in Islamist extremism, far right and White supremacist extremism, instances of domestic violence is very high, … where you have hostile attitudes towards women and women’s rights, does that equate to higher instances of extremism? I don’t know” (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator). As with the considerations about how romantic ideas might lead to radicalization, the family is also considered as a point at which multiple risk factors can interact with each other. Domestic violence is certainly one major concern that has now been integrated into Prevent responses. The concern that women are isolated within some families and do not leave the house (T1-​Statutory-​PreventLead) might also dovetail with the fact that Islamic State are targeting women with a promise of an Islamically sanctioned life with meaning and purpose (T3-​Police-​PreventLead). As such, radicalizers are presented as persons who can exploit the gap between cultural expectations placed upon women that might see them confined to the home, a desire for freedom, and the fact that religion provides a stable point of meaning through which both of these desires can supposedly be reconciled (T1-​Prevent-​ Coordinator; N-​NGO-​CounterExtremism; T3-​Prevent-​Coordinator2).

7.6.3 Radicalization and ideology While the accounts offered in this chapter talk about the manipulation of women’s desires and vulnerabilities as primarily causal in radicalization, a limited account of the role of ideology and religion was also offered in some cases. In one case it was noted that in cases of radicalization where ideology is a key factor, women tended to be much more committed than men, and in these cases, it makes interventions much more difficult (T1-​ Prevent-​Coordinator). This matches research by Schmidt that finds that women joining Islamic State are more ideological than men (Schmidt, 2020). Thus, the ideological nature of Islamic State in comparison to Al-​Qaeda is theorized as one reason why women might be more attracted to the former rather than the latter (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator). It was also noted that this recognition did not always translate into effective action by the police –​in the cases of radicalization within a family unit, cases were described where the husband was arrested and the children allowed to stay with the mother, when in fact the local community were reporting that it was the mother that was the truly committed ideologue (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator). Indeed this kind of event was noted as an oversight by Prevent in that many people would not consider women as persons to be radicalized ideologically as “why would women want to go to a place where they are ultimately going back to the dark ages?” (T1-​Statutory-​PreventLead). Recently this view 170

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has evolved, with recognition that women can play proactive roles in both Islamist and right-​wing terrorism (T1-​Prevent-​Coordinator). However, there remains a concern that across the counterterrorism field we are still playing catch-​up with the idea that women can be active and willing participants in terrorism (Schmidt, 2020). As such a report produced by the United Nations found that many states had failed in their responsibility to prosecute Islamic State-​affiliated women (Counter Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, 2020). In most cases the role of ideology and faith in women’s radicalization is put down to a lack of understanding. A Prevent Education Officer posits that “if we are talking about girls, it might be the lack of understanding of the role of women in Islam. … For boys, it might be a complete misunderstanding of certain roles of the faith” (T1-​PreventEducationOfficer). This lack of understanding is the most common factor in explaining ideological or religious factors in women’s radicalization. A lack of access to local mosques or a lack of political engagement by authority figures is posited to leave young women vulnerable to manipulation by others, particularly on the internet (N-​NGO3-​CounterExtremism). A reference point here is that of Roshonara Choudhry, who appears prominently in the wider Prevent literature as a case study in women’s radicalization (T1-​PreventEducationOfficer). A key point of intervention here is given to be the provision of correct information by authority figures, such as Islamic scholars, who will be able to put misled women back on the right path. One project worker describes this process: ‘Sometimes we find that, the women who are being radicalized, … they are the ones who get actively involved with female practitioners and debate strongly. ... [I]f you ask them, can you tell us about your religion, the basic prayers … the five pillars, … they know nothing. … They get totally lost, and they just talk their script out. … And we say, OK, you are ready to get killed, and you don’t even know how to pray? How will you get to heaven?’ (T1-​NGO-​Safeguarding) As explored in previous chapters, a lack of religious knowledge is pointed to as something which leaves women uniquely vulnerable to radicalization (T1-​Police-​PreventProjectLead) and thus religious or ideological education appears as a crucial point in the radicalization of women. The assumption that women simply do not understand Islam and therefore are easily radicalized belies the fact that many men supporting Islamic State know little about the religion (Neumann, 2013) and indeed that many people are religious in general while knowing little about the substance of their faith (James, 2009). As argued in Chapter 2, many women in terrorist groups join knowing exactly what they are signing up for. It is infantilizing to suggest otherwise. In light of this we should also be careful in ‘deciding’ who is 171

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and is not a member of a religious community; we can think back to the Leytonstone attack in 2015, after which David Cameron enthusiastically endorsed the shout of a bystander to the attacker –​“you ain’t no Muslim, bruv!” Deciding who is and is not a ‘real Muslim’ has been a hobbyhorse for leaders for some time now. Indeed, building a ‘British Islam’ has been a project of Prevent, and wider counterextremism efforts. However creating an ‘authentic’ religion, including approved interpretation and practice, is likely to be difficult to the point of impossibility if we consider religion to be experiential and relational, rather than fixed (Montemaggi, 2019). Tying religion to the state is likely to only make that difficulty worse.

7.7 Conclusion As explored in the first chapter on Prevent, there is a lot of flexibility in Prevent delivery locally. While the documents reviewed prior tell us a lot, it is also clear that the Prevent workers in this chapter bring a lot more nuance to Prevent delivery than is found in these documents. Indeed, the documentary analysis uncovered the paucity of women in the strategy, appearing mainly as mothers and carers. This is found here too –​women are obviously important as mothers and as custodians of the family. Access to these women is paramount, and is supported by the concentration on the ‘empowerment’ of women, which allows them to take part in Prevent activities and to have a more powerful voice. However, we also find here a prominent concern with women’s radicalization. As noted before, this became important after 2014. However, the documents on Prevent lack the depth and nuance that those working on Prevent at a local level bring. Constant interaction between those working on Prevent and the local communities that they work in no doubt influence this –​many of those working on Prevent noted how important this interaction was, and highlighted that a successful local Prevent strategy meant listening to the local community, and trying to meet their concerns as best as possible. Reacting to the national policy environment was also important, with Prevent locally being able to react to developments that the local community thought concerning. Therefore while the ‘jihadi brides’ narrative was nationally prominent, this was not pushed locally, as it could be stigmatizing. However while women are placed at the forefront of prevention, they are not offered the same agency in understandings of radicalization. The narratives of women’s radicalization offered certainly outline that practitioners on the ground are more concerned with this than local policy makes out. It however also outlines that this concern has not evolved much beyond a highly gendered and sexist understanding of women’s involvement in terrorism. Many of the arguments outlined in Chapter 2 resurface 172

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here, and highlight that the reactionary nature of Prevent misses much of women’s involvement in terrorism. It should be remembered that Prevent is, despite all the pretensions to women’s rights and empowerment, still a counterterrorism strategy. It is using these concepts instrumentally, and thus the contradiction between promoting women’s rights and maintaining sexist ideas is not necessarily one of great concern to the strategy. It is, after all, not the purpose of Prevent to upend these ideas. Rather, it is the purpose of Prevent to protect the British state.

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Women’s Perceptions and Experiences of Prevent: Muslim and Secular Black and Minority Ethnic Women, and Right-​wing Women 8.1 Introduction This chapter explores the opinions of women in relation to Prevent. This chapter demonstrates complexity in the policy’s reception and considers the perspectives of women in relation to the delivery of Prevent both locally and nationally. This chapter draws on interviews with Muslim and secular Black and minority ethnic (BME) women, and right-​wing women. Their responses are considered separately. The coding reflects the identity of the interviewee, and any organizational affiliation. Thus, some codes for Muslim and BME women present two voices, that of the participant, and that of the organization they represent. Codes for right-​wing women do not reflect this, as none were interviewed formally as representatives of an organization. However, some were active in political or journalistic organizations. Further information on this is given in the Appendix. Concerning Muslim and secular BME women, it notes that not only do women feel anxiety and pressure in relation to being responsible for the household by Prevent, but they also they suffer from self-​censorship. The wider context in which Prevent operates has also seen the de-​funding of secular BME women’s services in favour of faith services which can largely only find funding through Prevent. This is problematic in that it extends the surveillance apparatus of Prevent to services for vulnerable women. Women spoken with here also argued that issues of domestic violence and abuse should be considered in relation to extremism and terrorism, but 174

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that Prevent should not be involved in the lives of women who suffer from domestic violence and abuse. Some women also considered Prevent to be infantilizing and diminishing to the agency of women. Concerning the responses of right-​wing women, this chapter finds that women on the right consider Prevent to be something that should only deal with Islamic extremism. It also notes that much of women’s right-​ wing activism in the context of extremism and terrorism is framed in relation to women’s rights, and a fear of the loss of these rights in the future, necessitating action.

8.2 Muslim and Black and minority ethnic women Throughout Prevent’s lifespan, it has been subjected to criticism that it is Islamophobic and that it securitizes the relationship between British Muslims and the state. Due to this, it was important to get the voices of those who are affected by Prevent, in order to balance the analysis of policy with an understanding of how Prevent is perceived and experienced. This section looks at the experiences and perceptions of Muslim and BME women in regard to Prevent. Prior to outlining this, it is worth exploring how the category of Muslim and BME women came to be in this project. This slightly awkward categorization was not planned in the research, but rather arose as a result of the grounded theory methodology. Initially, this project sought to interview just Muslim women –​considering the diversity of the Muslim population and the time demands of doing qualitative research, this approach seemed like one that would give rich data, as well as falling within the limits of my own research schedule. However, the use of theoretical sampling, where a sampling strategy follows uncovered categories in the data to saturation, meant that the project quickly broadened. For instance, interviewees would frequently mention unexpected topics and highlight how Prevent racialized Muslims, broadening the strategy to those who might ‘look Muslim’. This was driven home when one interviewee unexpectedly brought along a friend, who was not Muslim, who she thought would be interesting to the project. The three of us spoke at length about how the government’s reliance on religious gatekeepers to minority communities had strengthened older, patriarchal men in minority communities to the detriment of women. From that point on, it became clear that concentrating on only Muslim women would be detrimental to the project, and I began to think about BME women as a group affected by Prevent. The category is kept as a concatenated one as the interview data indicated that these concepts were inherently linked; to be Muslim is to be racialized, and thus Muslims are subsumed into a wider policy discourse about minorities, race, religion and culture in the UK. While one could 175

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make an argument that these concepts should be analysed separately when talking about particular racialized categories, it is more difficult to argue that there is no relationship between race and Islam in the UK, and especially in UK government policy. As such here they are presented together, although with the caveat that further research is required on this subject. All in all, the discussions with women from Muslim and BME backgrounds were fruitful, interesting, thoughtful and illuminating. The approach to analysis in this section follows grounded theory as much as possible, in an attempt to allow the data to speak for itself. The approach to the right-​wing women cohort is the same, and in each section short subheadings denote the themes that were uncovered in analysis.

8.2.1 Families and mothers Many of the interviews with Muslim and BME women began with the question of what they knew about Prevent. Without fail, every woman interviewed was able to give an accurate summary of the policy, including its scope, purpose and how it operated. While each got their information from diverse sources, each made it clear that they knew about Prevent because they felt they needed to, in case one day they were referred or otherwise to help them navigate public spaces. From there, each recounted what they thought was important to know about the policy; how it affected their lives; and what they thought was most relevant to them, as women. As noted in previous chapters, families are a big focus of Prevent. Practitioners look to families as sites of resilience and radicalization, and policy is centred around strengthening the role of the mother, tapping into her supposed natural affinity for care and nurturing. It is of little surprise, then, that the greatest burden on women noted by respondents was in relation to motherhood and family. All respondents in this cohort mentioned this issue in a critical light. All noted that women can be affected by Prevent not just through the direct targeting of them as women, but also through the indirect targeting of them as the mothers of children. For four of the respondents, this was also seen as a form of spying, in that mothers were expected not just to keep an eye on their families, but also to report them to the police should they be suspicious of their behaviour. The sentiment given in the following quote was common to those respondents: “you can’t ask every Muslim woman to spy on the house … and I feel like that’s what they’re trying to do more and more [to] get Muslim women as informants” (MuslimWoman3). Responses here indicated that some women found being expected to “police the family” (CommunityOrgRep1) and being made responsible for the actions of those others living in their household to be anxiety-​inducing (MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1). Many women reported this –​they did not want to work with Prevent but considered that 176

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overtly resisting the imperative to watch to be something too dangerous to do. The negative effects of doing so were reported as experiencing harassment from Prevent officers, inviting suspicion upon the family, the possibility of losing employment, and the fear that family courts might remove the children of non-​compliant families (MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1; CommunityOrgRep1; MuslimWoman3). One respondent reported that their sister and mother now no longer go out alone after refusing to engage with Prevent (MuslimWoman4). Instead of actively resisting, most respondents noted they engaged in more passive forms of resistance, publicly censoring their behaviour so as not to be suspicious, but refusing to engage in Prevent. This is explored more in section 8.2.3. While Prevent officers interviewed denied that child protection orders were being sought in relation to Prevent cases, the organization Legal Aid for Women links Prevent with ‘repeated incidences of the threat and on occasion the bringing into being, of children being removed from their mothers’ (Neale and Lopez, 2017, p 16), mostly in relation to cases where the father has been suspected of involvement in offences under the Terrorism Act 2001 (TACT). As discussed in the previous chapter, and Chapter 4, the family courts are an emerging space within which radicalization is being discussed, and while there is limited evidence of –​specifically –​Prevent’s role in family court interventions, it is clear that the women within the sample are well aware of this development and link this to Prevent’s increasing intrusion into family life. It is this intrusion, coupled with a perceived inability to contest Prevent alongside the policy’s lack of transparency, that is a cause of anxiety for the women interviewed. One interviewee sums it up as “if you go after the children … as a mother you become very protective. And that causes a lot of sort of uncertainty and fear and also anger of course because you know, first of all with Prevent often what we see is there’s a lot of lack of transparency” (CommunityOrgRep1). This linking of women with children was also noted as something which strengthens patriarchal norms, in that it reinforced the gender stereotype that it is the woman’s role to raise and nurture children. One participant framed this within her experiences with patriarchy in the South Asian Muslim community, in which “your whole raison d’être as a woman is to have children and raise … children” (MuslimWoman-​BMEViolenceAgainstWomenOrg1). Thus, by linking women to childrearing for the purposes of countering terrorism, Prevent was ignoring the negative stereotypes and practices that some women suffer under (BMEWoman1-​SecularOrg2). Again, this was linked to the shrinking provision of secular women’s services and the increasing reliance on male community ‘gatekeepers’ for governance, “which is about … keeping the lid on communities … to the extent it may stop a massacre. … But it also means you just keep [women’s] rights private” (BMEWoman1-​SecularOrg2). 177

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While all respondents were highly critical of Prevent’s intrusion into the family space and the policy’s instrumentalization of motherhood for counterterrorism, not all participants were completely negative about the policy. One interviewee, who was previously a Prevent officer, noted that mothers are an appropriate target for education surrounding extremism as “[b]‌eing the carers, the nurturers, being there all the time. Particularly in the Islamic context, we impart the religion on the children, they learn from mothers first. It is about engaging them in the realization of what is happening” (N-​NGO-​CounterExtremism). She, however, went on to note that counterterrorism is not the appropriate vehicle for such education, particularly as such work with women should also tackle issues of inclusion, cohesion, and tackling patriarchy and religious supremacism. This latter perspective was echoed by another respondent, who noted that while mothers are important members of the family, any education should be done through an anti-​racist, secular community lens and “not to have a debate about which interpretation of a particular hadith or a particular surah is appropriate” (MuslimWoman-​BMEViolenceAgainstWomenOrg1). Indeed, four participants gave tentative support to the idea of women’s education to counter extremism, but not to its delivery through Prevent. However, all linked it to austerity in the United Kingdom and the subsequent reduction in women’s and secular services, a reduction that they saw as being detrimental to women, and especially detrimental to BME women who would now only be able to seek assistance and support through religious institutions (MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1; MuslimWoman- ​ B MEViolenceAgainstWomenOrg1; BMEWoman1-​ SecularOrg2; ViolenceAgainstWomenOrg2Rep). As such, while Prevent seems preoccupied with creating the ‘liberal Muslim’ subject, especially in women, it also puts additional pressure upon women to be organizers and custodians of the home. As explored in previous chapters, Prevent sees women as effective agents for counterterrorism within the home environment. It also, as argued in Chapter 6, warns mothers that their child might die if they do not act according to Prevent’s advice. This pressure is especially evident in Muslim households. In 2015 the Muslim Council found that 18 per cent of Muslim women aged 18–​74 were ‘looking after home or family’, compared to 6 per cent of the UK population (Sundas, 2015). This was found to be a significant factor in the social and economic engagement of Muslim women, with Bangladeshi and Pakistani women earning less than women from all other ethnic minority groups and with only 38 per cent of women from these ethnic groups in work (Griffith and Malik, 2018). Thus, as argued in Chapter 6, ‘counterterrorism-​as-​ care’ weighs most heavily on some of the most disadvantaged women in the UK, refusing to take into account the additional costs and penalties of domestic labour. It also places a dual pressure on these women; to liberalize, 178

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and be ‘leaders’ in society and thus throw off their ‘backwards’ heritage (Bhopal, 2019).

8.2.2 Infantilization and depoliticization of women In relation to the national campaigns conducted by Prevent, such as Prevent Tragedies, and in relation to the operation of Prevent in schools, four women spoke about feelings of infantilization and depoliticization. The depoliticization of activism by Prevent is explored in Chapter 4, and is argued by some to be a fundamental component of the policy (de Goede and Simon, 2013). These concerns were brought up especially in relation to the phenomenon of women travelling to Syria being labelled as ‘jihadi brides’ in the media, and discourses which primarily spoke about their ‘grooming’ online. There was an element of racialization to this, which draws both on wider social ideas about the passivity of Muslim women and the operation of Prevent within Muslim women’s social and political lives (Evans, 2012; Cainkar and Selod, 2018). One interviewee posited that “there’s this idea that girls are more … easily indoctrinated … which isn’t true –​but there’s that level of infancy that I guess they place on women anyway” (MuslimWoman5). One reason for this is considered to be a lack of understanding, in that non-​Muslim, liberal and White policymakers could not imagine any reason why a woman would want to leave the United Kingdom for Syria, and so imagine it to be an illogical, emotional or manipulated decision. This is a similar argument to the post-​9/​11 ‘liberal interventionist’, in which women in Afghanistan and Iraq need saving by the West and thus form a feminist reason for military action. This argument however could not comprehend when those women rejected the new liberal system (Abu-​Lughod, 2002; Ayub and Kouvo, 2008). In that sense “this whole concept of jihadi brides is baffling … because you can see exactly how we’ve just imposed our own … imagery … our own mentality on these girls who’ve gone abroad” (MuslimWoman3). The effect of this is that it plays into a wider perceived social effect of the depoliticization of women’s subjectivity (MuslimWoman5). As Muslim women especially are expected by the state to be either liberal or backward (Kyriacou et al, 2017) it cannot understand why a woman might turn away from British society and embrace other ideologies or political movements. This point was noted by one interviewee (BMEWoman1-​SecularOrg2). It was thought that White women do not suffer this as much, in that a White woman who might embrace an extremist group is not considered to be acting illogically, as she is still working within the confines of the liberal state (MuslimWoman5). This is something explored by Ali (2020), who notes that attitudes such as anti-​immigrant or anti-​refugee sentiment that might be 179

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expected to lead to a Prevent referrals are in fact part of mainstream British politics. Similarly, Berntzen (2020) argues that anti-​Islamic far-​r ight activism is rooted in liberalism. As such we can understand Delphy’s (2015) view that the ‘Other’ does not form in relation to what that ‘Other’ is, but is a position formed through lack of power. Thus, Prevent contributes to this by empowering ‘British Islam’ and ‘liberal’ Muslim women, at the expense of those who do not identify with the politics of the British state, thereby conferring recognition on those that follow ‘British Islam’. This infantilization and depoliticization plays into the dynamics of the family as already discussed, in that women are engaged with primarily as mothers and wives, reinforcing the gendered dynamic that pushes them into the private sphere and out of the public sphere. When women appear in the public sphere, their opinion is seen to be either less valuable as they are not seen as ‘gatekeepers’ of the faith communities that the government wants to engage with (MuslimWoman-​BMEViolenceAgainstWomenOrg1; BMEWoman1-​SecularOrg2), or as illogical, emotional and manipulated extremists whose opinion cannot be taken seriously as they have been brainwashed (MuslimWoman5; MuslimWoman2). These perceptions mirror the arguments made by Awan (2012).

8.2.3 The hijab and self-​censorship The problem of self-​censorship is something which is raised in the literature, usually referred to as a ‘chilling effect’ on freedom of speech (Davies, 2016). It is also linked to the imprecision of Prevent’s training and definitions of extremism and terrorism, in that the inability to know where ‘the line’ is means that one is always wondering where it might be crossed (Spiller et al, 2017). Eight of the respondents reported that Prevent had such a chilling effect on them that it resulted in self-​censorship of their speech, including political and academic work (MuslimWoman1; MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1; MuslimWoman2; CommunityOrgRep1; MuslimWoman3; MuslimWoman4; MuslimWoman5; MuslimWoman6). Although not all of these interviewees wore the hijab, all indicated that they considered the wearing of the hijab as something which would make this problem worse, and if they did wear the hijab, that it did make them feel more aware of what they were saying and doing (MuslimWoman-​M uslimWomensOrg1; MuslimWoman2; MuslimWoman3; MuslimWoman6). This is not surprising, considering the range of research demonstrating that women wearing the hijab are more vulnerable to hate crimes and abuse (Awan and Zempi, 2015; Pai, 2016). The problem of self-​censorship was thought to be worse with women from a migrant background, indicating the intersectional nature of this anxiety (Mirza, 2013). Women from a migrant background were posited to have less knowledge of the Prevent policy and fewer social connections within 180

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the community to support them in an area which is already anxiety-​causing (MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1). Due to this they were less able to resist the policy as they were unsure as to whether cooperation with Prevent was voluntary or not (CommunityOrgRep1). Through mothers, self-​censorship is also imposed upon children. One participant describes how mothers, in seeking to avoid the stress that would come with challenging being a target of Prevent “have to train their children to be quiet, to not say anything in school that may be questioned” (MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1). Thus, mothers were found to not engage with schools, nurseries and other services for fear of being reported to Prevent, and would seek children’s religious education outside of state schools so the child does not expose themselves to suspicion. Reports of children being reported to Prevent for Palestinian activism, mis-​ pronouncing words or wearing t-​shirts with religious slogans furthers this fear,1 with the latter appearing in two discussions relating to why women self-​censor (MuslimWoman5; MuslimWoman3). This is compounded by the added fear that Prevent has the power to remove children from families (CommunityOrgRep1). Reports from CAGE that argue that ‘PREVENT is facilitating the removal of children, and the attempted removal of children in the family courts of the United Kingdom’ (Qureshi, 2018) further this fear, even if their accuracy is contested (Stanley and Guru, 2015). The idea that a vague conception of ‘extremism’ or ‘radicalization’ can be used to remove children from mothers further ties into the lack of transparency that Prevent suffers from (MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1; CommunityOrgRep1; MuslimWoman3). As has been argued extensively in feminist literature, it is women whom are expected to ensure their child performs well in education (Reay, 2005). Therefore, as with much of Prevent’s intrusion into the family, it creates extra unpaid, domestic labour –​whether women cooperate or not. As argued previously, this labour is further exacerbated for Muslim women, who are some of the most deprived in UK society. This self-​censorship can also further create anxieties, however. Being “overly quiet” within a place that has received Prevent training is thought to be something which might be picked up on as “strange behaviour” (MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1). Similarly, the hiding of religious activity, such as prayer or wearing the hijab, can then create problems as the seasons change, or as Islamic holidays approach. Those who avoided wearing the hijab or praying at work before noted that during Ramadan, when they would strive to act in line with their Muslim identity as far as possible, would fall under suspicion for engaging in religious activity which was previously hidden (MuslimWoman1). The wearing of the hijab at any point was something which would invite suspicion as an indicator of extremism. One interviewee recounted how she had sat in a Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent (WRAP) training session and “they were 181

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writing on the board the indicators for extremism to look out for –​and one was [the] wearing [of] a headscarf. And no one challenged it, and [others] would have left that room thinking that wearing a headscarf could be an indicator of an extremist ideology” (MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1). Again, this problem was something which women with a migrant background would suffer under more, as they would not want to speak out against it for fear of losing employment (MuslimWoman-​ MuslimWomensOrg1; CommunityOrgRep1). The wearing of the hijab would thus make women more conscious of what they say and do. Those that did wear the hijab recounted stories of changing university dissertations, not speaking on certain topics, or purposefully mitigating strong opinions by reiterating allegiance to ‘British values’ afterwards, so that their opinions would not be mistaken as extremist (MuslimWoman3; MuslimWoman5; MuslimWoman6). The problem of an association between ‘Muslim-​ness’ and suspicion is something that is found in other reports (Scott-​Baumann et al, 2020), with Muslim women bring found to be particularly vulnerable when they wear religious dress (Tyrer, 2013). This is raised as especially problematic in the education and health sectors, where Prevent is a legal duty and is found to impede the core enterprise of each sector (Ramsay, 2017; Younis and Jadhav, 2020). Younis and Jadhav (2020) in particular find that National Health Service (NHS) professionals will self-​censor to avoid receiving information that would warrant a referral, and that the sudden adoption of the hijab can function as a marker of something being wrong, and therefore trigger a referral. The use of Remembrance poppies and Union Jack print hijabs2 was also criticized by three respondents, albeit for differing reasons. One considered this to be the “weaponization” of Muslim women, constructing a form of Islam that was acceptable to British society through the projection of problematic symbolism upon women (MuslimWoman-​ MuslimWomensOrg1). Thus, the Union Jack hijab symbolizes the attempts to co-​opt Muslim women into a sanitized, state-​friendly version of Islam. Other respondents noted that this sanitized version of ‘British Islam’ ignores that fact that fundamentalism is a British problem and that the British state has had a hand in the growth of Islamic fundamentalism around the world (MuslimWoman- ​ B MEViolenceAgainstWomenOrg1; BMEWoman1-​ SecularOrg2). In addition to this, it further pushes a religious identity upon Muslim women, which two interviewees criticized as silencing those Muslim women who wished to engage, and be engaged, through a secular rather than religious lens (MuslimWoman-​BMEViolenceAgainstWomenOrg1; BMEWoman1-​SecularOrg2). This is a problem linked with the wider social organization of multicultural neoliberalism, which privileges a broad notion of ‘community identity’ over individual and women’s rights (Cowden and Singh, 2017). The state embrace of the religious over the secular is argued 182

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to be particularly detrimental to women’s rights (Manea, 2016), and through the privileging of the religious over the secular, Prevent has a hand in this (Patel, 2011; Gupta, 2018).

8.2.4 Prevent and women’s projects An issue noted by nine of the interviewees was in relation to how Prevent funding has begun to be the primary funding source for BME women’s groups. This shift has been made in the context of a wider austerity agenda in the United Kingdom (Dardot et al, 2019), intertwined with a communitarian and faith agenda which has seen the prioritizing of faith identity over secular ethnic identities (Dhaliwal and Patel, 2017). In the women’s voluntary and service sector this has resulted in a shift away from secular women’s services, towards funding services for women based on faith (Dhaliwal and Patel, 2017; Rehman, 2019). This problem is seen to extend beyond funding for projects in relation to extremism and counterterrorism. In relation to this, one respondent noted that “[w]‌hen you are a Muslim women’s organization looking at domestic violence … the … pot of money for you is Prevent. I remember … one worker at a [domestic violence refuge] … said [the refuge is] only ever offered Prevent funding’ (MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1). In line with this, a review of funding found that a decrease in funding for specialist BME women’s organizations has led many to see Prevent funding as the only option for survival (Rehman, 2019). Griffin (2015) sees this as a part of neoliberal ‘crisis governance’, where crisis logics allow for the removal and moving of public funding. In the context of the War on Terror, this crisis is ongoing and seemingly never-​ending (Jackson, 2005). A result of this is that those organizations which once provided essential, specialist BME women’s services are now also subject to the risk logic and oversight of Prevent. An interviewee who worked in the sector noted that domestic violence funding was particularly low in relation to demand, and this this effectively forced organizations in this area to seek Prevent funding or fail (ViolenceAgainstWomenOrg2Rep). The low level of funding available for this sector is well documented, with one study noting that ‘[t]‌hirty-​one percent of the funding to the domestic violence and sexual abuse sector from local authorities was cut between 2010/​11 to 2011/​12, a reduction from £7.8 million to £5.4 million’ (Towers and Walby, 2012, p 3). Interviewees argued that this is especially harmful to women from a BME or immigrant background who would need specialist, culturally aware services (MuslimWoman-​B MEViolenceAgainstWomenOrg1; BMEWoman1-​SecularOrg2). While Prevent is not responsible for the drop in funding in these sectors, the focus on safeguarding as counterterrorism practice and the need to 183

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integrate women into the policy has seen Prevent intruding here, as argued in Chapter 5. For many respondents, the intrusion of Prevent into this kind of work is damaging. Five respondents specifically said that they would not attend Prevent-​funded services or projects, and three more noted that the presence of Prevent in these projects is detrimental to their relationship with service users. Specifically, respondents noted that since Prevent-​funded projects are not transparent with how data is used and the requirements for receiving funding, and there is a requirement to report suspected vulnerability, services funded by Prevent could not be trusted (MuslimWoman-​M uslimWomensOrg1; MuslimWoman-​ BMEViolenceAgainstWomenOrg1; BMEWoman1-​SecularOrg2). For instance, two interviewees spoke of individual experiences where they either did not seek help, or knew someone who did not seek help, from mental health services due to fear of being reported to Prevent (MuslimWoman6; MuslimWoman3). Imkaan, a membership organization for specialist and dedicated BME women’s organizations, noted this problem in a 2015 report, writing that ‘strategies such as Prevent … have already started to have impact on women’s trust in services’ (Imkaan, 2015, p 16). As argued by Anitha, this is even more detrimental to women with insecure immigration status, as a police presence in any service could result in unwelcome attention (Anitha, 2010). The framing of BME –​and specifically Muslim –​women that this creates was also raised as a concern. Put simply, participants recognized the necessity in some of the work funded by Prevent, especially in relation to cohesion and women’s empowerment. However, this should not be done under Prevent: “when you look at community cohesion and that kind of stuff, the funding stream, especially when it comes to Muslims … is Prevent. It’s just more insidious. It’s like why do we need to do it under counter terrorism?” (MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1). The message that this is seen to give is that the participation of Muslim women within British civic life is only valuable as far as it contributes to national security (N-​NGO-​ CounterExtremism). Many respondents argued that it was not necessarily the nature of the projects that they objected to, but the involvement of Prevent. Cooperation or non-​cooperation is not taken on a case by case basis, but by looking at the “bigger picture” of state–​Muslim relationships and whether Prevent in general is seen to be framing Muslims in a negative light or not (MuslimWoman5). Thus, a number of interviewees recognized the need for women’s empowerment work and work which brought different communities together, with one stating that ‘[F]‌rom my view of women here, who are very working class, single mothers, they don’t know how to do much on their own and rely on 184

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a dominant male figure; … you do more work on empowerment, let them stand on their own feet. … Some women find it hard to be in the same room as men, so maybe a women’s morning, and a mixed evening … there is some level of segregation, but it’s about encouraging as many as you can.’ (MuslimWoman1) She, however, noted that such work should not be done through Prevent. When asked about a specific Prevent-​funded project run locally, the interviewee said that she would not attend any “empowerment” events, whether community empowerment or women’s empowerment, that were run or funded by any counterterrorism or counter-​extremism initiative. Those initiatives were “selling out”, lack independence and were also linked to all the other problematic notions that Prevent was associated with, such as the creation of suspect identities (MuslimWoman1). As explored in Chapter 8, some women who work with Prevent do however see this aspect of Prevent as positive, allowing them access to space and funding that they might not have got otherwise. These perspectives are also outlined by Winterbotham (2020) who finds that some women do feel empowered by Prevent and the platform that it offers. Prevent also removes agency from the community. Prevent is still seen by some Muslims as an Islamophobic policy which frames religiosity as suspicious, although this view is being challenged by some (Clements et al, 2020). The view that Prevent was Islamophobic was shared by eight of the participants. These participants considered organizations taking Prevent money to be restricted or corrupted in some way; either they were working against the interests of Muslims, or they were unable to act freely due to the ideologically restrictive nature of Prevent funding. This perspective loops back round to the issue of trust, which remains pertinent in all discussions surrounding Prevent. As Prevent could not be trusted, no organization that takes Prevent money can be properly trusted, and as the Prevent agenda is not transparent, no organization that takes money can be either fully transparent. A lack of transparency was noted as a big problem in Prevent in this regard. Trust is highly valuable in all Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programmes (Cherney, 2018). The secrecy of Prevent meant that those who attended events could not be sure of who was running the event and how far their voices would be able to influence the project. This meant that one could not have proper agency in political organizing, as Prevent-​ funded projects would have glass ceilings preventing certain kinds of action being taken or limiting what could be articulated. Both as women and as Muslims, this raised the questions of who is in control: “the dominant community or the marginal one?” (MuslimWoman1), and whether Prevent is attempting to socially engineer and “weaponize” a moderate Muslim woman (MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1). This ties into the wider argument 185

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made in Chapter 4, that Prevent is an ‘Ideological State Apparatus’ (Althusser, 2014), something which has been explored by a number of authors now (Edwards, 2015; Elshimi, 2015; Skoczylis and Andrews, 2020).

8.2.5 Prevent and domestic violence While much of the discussions revolved around participants’ perspectives and experiences with Prevent, each participant also took the time to frame Prevent within the context of women’s issues in the UK, particularly in relation to domestic violence. A universal perspective was that Prevent could not be de-​linked from these issues, whether it was engaging with women or not. A number of researchers have argued similarly. Feminists have argued that domestic violence and violence against women exists on a continuum of ideological, patriarchal violence that seeks to maintain male dominance over women (Pain, 2014, 2015; Gentry, 2015; Sjoberg and Gentry, 2015). Others have argued that it is a risk indicator, and that prior violence is the best indicator of future violence (Fineman and Mykitiuk, 1994; Smith, 2019). As such a common perspective was that (male) extremists are also misogynists. In this sense, one participant notes that “[m]‌ost [terrorists] have a history of abusing women, right? That’s something that has been consistent as well … an ex-​wife or an ex-​girlfriend or something that’s come out and said –​this guy didn’t follow Islam. He used to abuse me” (MuslimWoman3). Another participant put it as such: “[Male violence] is transferable and it doesn’t stay in one category and the men who start out abusing their wives, abusing their mothers … a small proportion … will escalate and start doing public violence” (ViolenceAgainstWomenOrg2Rep). This perspective is thus expanded to how women experience and are made vulnerable by domestic violence and abuse. As outlined in Chapters 5 and 7, Prevent utilizes domestic violence as an indicator of vulnerability and as risk. The multi-​agency safeguarding focus that Prevent now has also exposes victims of domestic violence in general to the oversight of Prevent. Several participants –​despite opposing Prevent –​outlined how domestic violence should be taken more seriously as not just an indicator of extremism, but as extremism. Domestic violence and abuse are thus described as a symptom of men seeing women as inferior and stemming from a need to control and dominate women (BMEWoman1-​SecularOrg1; ViolenceAgainstWomenOrg2Rep). The fact that domestic violence could be an indicator of risk or vulnerability was also criticized, as this could have the effect of pulling a vulnerable woman into the Prevent space. Women who are suspicious of Prevent could thus seek to avoid getting help should this be a risk (MuslimWoman-​MuslimWomensOrg1; MuslimWoman-​ BMEViolenceAgainstWomenOrg1; BMEWoman1-​SecularOrg2). Hence participants agreed with the thesis that domestic violence was ideological 186

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and an indicator of risk of further violence, but however disagreed that this should be a space for Prevent to intervene in, as this would shift the priority from protecting vulnerable women to protecting the state. A recent joint letter headed by Women’s Aid gave the same view (Women’s Aid, 2020). As with other discussions, this problem is framed in the context of the lack of transparency in Prevent. As Prevent cannot be trusted, and it is not known what happens with Prevent data and how referrals are assessed, it is inappropriate to place Prevent alongside other services for women –​ especially those that deal with vulnerable women, such as domestic violence services. Further to this, it was argued that while domestic violence could be considered a form of extremism or terrorism, it is inappropriate for the police to involve themselves in this sphere, considering their poor history of handling cases of domestic violence (BMEWoman1-​SecularOrg1). While domestic violence needs to be tackled and women need to be protected, assessing cases of domestic violence within the Prevent sphere means that women can suffer secondary victimization as they come under investigation by counterterrorism officers (MuslimWoman5). Further to this, as argued in section 8.2.4, the current funding model of the UK tends to push minority women into faith-​based services, which also might not be appropriate for them. That these services are increasingly pressured to take funding from Prevent means that even those women avoiding contact with the police in seeking support will be drawn into the apparatus of Prevent if they attend a service in receipt of Prevent funding. That the area profiled in Chapter 6 is mainstreaming Prevent in all grants means that it will be increasingly difficult to escape the gaze of the policy.

8.3 Women on the right As with others interviewed for this project, I interviewed women with right-​ wing views using a grounded theory methodology. As with the Muslim women interviewed, there was great diversity in this group. As with the label ‘Muslim and BME women’, the label ‘right-​wing women’ is rather clumsy, and a product of trying to group together some women who otherwise might not be grouped together. All the women spoken to for this project who were ‘right-​wing’ were in some way involved in right-​wing activism, although with different groups, ideologies and intensities. One woman I spoke to told me how before being involved in right-​wing activism, she had been a member of Black Lives Matter, and had taken part in a few protests. In the end she felt alienated by this group and attracted to the transgression and community offered by right-​wing activism. She later became a prominent right-​wing activist in her own right. Another was involved in organizing anti-​Islam protests and identified as an Identitarian. Other women became involved in right-​wing activism after attending marches in support of freedom 187

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of expression, or in demand of immigration restrictions. While all of these women are grouped in the one ‘right-​wing women’ category, it would be a disservice for anyone to think that the women who appear in this chapter are all far-​r ight or extreme-​r ight. What they share is a collective commitment to activism in support of right-​wing values or movements. The follwoing sections outline the views of the women I interviewed between 2015 and 2020, including some reflections from 2021/​2022.

8.3.1 Prevent: just for Muslims? As with the other interviews, these interviews were largely unstructured, but with a small framework of questions that I wanted answered included. One of these questions was: what do you know about Prevent? This question was key for me, as it was clear from my prior research that although Prevent was ubiquitous, a lot of information that people work with is second-​hand. Most people had probably never knowingly interacted with something Prevent-​related, and were getting their information from the news, or from peers. So I wanted to know what kind of cognitive framework people were framing their information around when we spoke. As it turned out, only one right-​wing woman had knowingly interacted with Prevent, having been contacted by their university about some posts they made on social media. This didn’t go anywhere in the end, and there was no referral, although she had wanted to pursue legal action against the university for all the trouble it caused her. The other women I spoke to had some knowledge of what Prevent was. However this knowledge was stilted and incomplete. A core belief of women in the right-​wing cohort was that Prevent was just for Muslims. Those who knew about Prevent’s newfound (at that time) interest in the right-​wing further believed that this was a mistake, and Prevent should continue to focus on Muslims, and that looking at the right-​wing as a threat was a mistake. This belief was present across all women in this group, and reflects the wider social view that radicalization is a process that mainly occurs in Muslims (Ali, 2015; Andersen and Mayerl, 2018). Prevent was also universally seen as a bit of a joke policy; clearly unable to prevent terrorism from happening and pushing odd and incoherent ideas about ‘British values’ instead of tackling what were seen to be the real threats to society. There was a view that ‘radicalization’ and ‘Prevent’ seemed to be concepts and ideas that were incoherent and policy-​driven. The former, especially, was criticized for being overly focused on terrorism. The women interviewed thought that while terrorism was atrocious and needed to be stamped out, the focus only on radicalization to terrorism was a mistake. The articulation of this mistake came in the form of rhetorical questions: what about people who want to enforce the burka? What about those who think gays should be banned? 188

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What about those who think that our constitution should be based on Islamic law? Those things, to them, could be achieved without terrorism, and perhaps might even be a bigger long-​term threat. Those threats can be boiled down to two things: threats to women’s rights stemming from cultural change, and threats to wider society stemming from Islamist terrorism. The latter is deal with in this section. The threat of Islamist terrorism is seen as universal and both something that the police and wider society are aware of and something which the police do not do enough about. It is seen to be a widely acknowledged thing in British society, even if it is swept under the rug. One participant noted that “[i]‌f someone … English with Western clothes, drops a bag and runs away, [people] won’t react … but if someone comes in and looks Muslim and drops a bag and starts running, I’m sure all of us will start running!” (RightWingWoman8). It is this acknowledgement that leads to the policing of the Muslim community by Prevent, and the perspective that counterterrorism is rightly concentrated on Muslim communities. This concentration is justified not only because of the recent rise in Islamist terror, but also because violence is seen to be uniquely inherent to the religion –​“only Islam has Jihad as a central tenet” (RightWingWoman2). Again, this reflects a dominant conception in British society. Despite recognition that there is an awareness in wider society, and in the police, of this perceived problem, there is also a perception that the police are not doing enough about it either because of a lack of understanding, or due to a policy of turning a blind eye to Islamists. Thus, Prevent is thought to either “mean well” but “does not really understand the issues and politics behind Islam” (RightWingWoman7), or the government are purposefully “sweeping issues under the carpet” (RightWingWoman1). Both these perspectives led to activism. In either case, the public needed to be told the truth and action was demanded to be taken. When activists do get swept up in Prevent, the explanation too falls into one of these themes. The government and police are found to be wanting in their understanding of contemporary activism and the grievances that accompany it, especially when dealing with youth. Two younger activists noted how the use of irony was widespread in their political circles. One recounting how she drew a “gay pride swastika”3 on her arm, drawing the ire of her teachers –​although notably not being reported to Prevent, but having the behaviour reported to her father (RightWingWoman3). Another recounted how she enjoyed agitating left-​wing activists and “normies” by spreading offensive internet memes4 which to her only had meaning in relation to the offence they caused (RightWingWoman5). Both considered this activity reactionary in that it was a kick back against a society that was ignoring their concerns. Both also said how these actions are increasingly being seen as indicators of extremism, with some of the memes appearing 189

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on databases of far-​right symbology. Being called out on posting these stickers, or drawing gay pride swastikas, was for them something which was an indicator of the police’s lack of ability to understand their concerns and fears (RightWingWoman3; RightWingWoman5). Thus, they saw Prevent’s targeting of the right as being symptomatic of a political elite being unable to understand the grievances of the everyday person, and the iconoclastic culture of youth and the internet. Similarly, another interviewee noted how her activism was not engaged with by the police or the government. Authorities were not interested in her proposals or fears, but simply labelled her as a “right-​wing extremist”, despite people not knowing her political views –​“[a]‌ll they see is the criticism of Islam” (RightWingWoman8). One interviewee who was referred to the police defended themselves by stating that what they said was no different to what is printed in the right-​wing press (RightWingWoman9).

8.3.2 The threat to women’s rights A second significant theme relating to Prevent and right-​wing activism was the need to protect women’s rights. All the women interviewed in this cohort considered women’s rights to be under threat today in the United Kingdom. This tied in with the earlier observations on the perceived ignorance of the government and police in relation to Islamist extremism: “I’m worried about the quality of life for young women in the country … in terms of extremism, there’s just loads of elephants in the room that we aren’t addressing” (RightWingWoman5). All the women in this cohort interviewed noted that they felt unsafe in British society, and that they felt that their rights as women were being traded for some loose right to religious freedom. This was linked with an anxiety about cultural change within the United Kingdom, and the increasing visibility of Muslims in public life. This reflects newer theses about right-​ wing activism, in that it is no longer driven by racial difference, but by cultural anxiety (Modood, 2005; Fekete, 2018; Mintchev, 2020). It is also linked with several cases which were prominent in the media, including the ‘grooming gang’ cases in Rotherham which were seen to be dealt with poorly (Cockbain, 2013; Tufail, 2015). Thus, the link between extremism and issues of forced marriage and FGM made in the Counter-​Extremism Strategy are reflected in these concerns, and escalated: ‘I feel really afraid for my future because I see all these women being told to cover up. … It is male domination over women. … And it is the same people who are going over to [Syria] and we are letting them cover us up and blow us up.’ (RightWingWoman5)

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‘To wear veils, to cover up, … FGM –​no one’s been prosecuted for that! And how many is it happening to? I can’t recognise the country that I live in anymore.’ (RightWingWoman1) While women’s rights were perceived to be under threat, a perceived multicultural agenda meant that the police would not take these concerns seriously. Worse, it also meant that occasionally right-​wing activists would find themselves the subject of police investigation for speaking out against this threat. Those that did speak out were subjected to being labelled ‘far-​ right,’ as discussed above, or unfairly reported to Prevent. This perception of unfairness meant that while many of the right-​wing cohort supported the aims of Prevent, they would refuse to cooperate in a meaningful way. This perception of unfairness cannot be divorced from the fact that Prevent exists within a framework of jingoistic politics that still refuses to deal with the legacy of colonialism, Empire and racism (Tomlinson, 2019; Gopal, 2020). Similarly, the dichotomy of extremism/​liberalism which is linked with women’s rights continues the legacy of using oppressed women ‘to render morally justifiable its project of undermining or eradicating the cultures of colonized people’ (Moghissi, 1999, p 16).

8.3.3 Strengthening and cooperating with Prevent Prevent was thus seen as something that needed to be strengthened if it were to be useful and made more transparent if it were to be fair. There was a consensus that “[s]‌omething needs to be done” (RightWingWoman8). All of the interviewees in this cohort said that Prevent needed to be strengthened. This strengthening included the removal of the voluntary aspect of Prevent and the removal of the ‘safeguarding’ aspect of Prevent, instead arguing that if someone were dangerous enough to be of concern to the police then it is society that needs to be protected, not that person (RightWingWoman6). However, all the participants, as noted, argued that they would not cooperate with Prevent in any meaningful way. While some might consider talking with police officers to find out their interest in their person, in the main the reaction would be anger: “It would probably make me chain myself up outside parliament or something, I would be incensed! Because I’m just protecting my culture, my country, you know?” (RightWingWoman1). Those that would talk with the police considered it an opportunity to rectify improper beliefs about right-​wing activism, and perhaps to air grievances to policymakers (RightWingWoman3; RightWingWoman5; RightWingWoman6). They too would however not entertain the idea that their ideas might be radical enough to consent to an intervention.

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8.3.4 Misogyny on the right: missed opportunities?5 One point which was visited in a few interviews related to the position of women who are activists in right-​wing movements. A lot of scholarship has highlighted the ambiguous place of women in such movements. For instance, the EDL took great pains to appear inclusive in many respects, with smaller groups set up to represent the interests of minorities or vulnerable persons within the movement. This led to a Jewish bloc, a Sikh bloc and a women’s bloc called the EDL Angels (Allen, 2011; Kassimeris and Jackson, 2015; Mehta, 2015). This is not something which is necessarily aberrant –​a number of right-​wing movements have taken similar moves, with women’s groups being present on the White nationalist forum Stormfront, and other movements carving out spaces for those that they think should be represented within the movement, albeit within the confines of the ideology (Blee, 2002; De Koster and Houtman, 2008). However, this seemingly welcome attitude does mask negative attitudes which can run rampant within such groups. Latent nationalist, nativist or supremacist attitudes can push minority members to the sides, or see them harassed or facing violence from dominant members of these groups who are not in favour of their presence (Mudde, 2019). Women, while being central to the ideology of many right-​wing and far-​r ight movements, hold a place within this ideology which largely side-​lines them when it comes to political activism. These political movements typically see the place for women as being within the home and raising children. Leadership and activism, being a public domain activity, is reserved for men. This is also because women are not thought to have the physical and mental capability, as well as political acumen, to succeed in these roles. This is also linked to the idea that women have certain negative traits that makes them unreliable –​ they are considered to be more narcissistic, both manipulative and easily manipulated, and overly emotional, clouding their rationality (Bjork-​James, 2020). The celebration of masculinity within these movements can also lead to the glorification of violence, including a violent sexuality. When violence erupts it can be celebrated as an expression of power, and when sexual violence occurs, it can be overlooked as the natural result of women encroaching into men’s spaces. While the majority of the women within the right-​wing cohort stated that they never felt threatened while they were engaging in activism, some felt that they had been side-​lined because they were a women. Indeed, a number of women online within the so-​called ‘Alt-​Right’ movement, around the time of this study, were opening up about the misogynistic attitudes that they had encountered within the movement. This included dismissal of their activism, the elevation of men over them in spite of their superior work, and statements about how they should be looking for husbands 192

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and starting families rather than working as activists. The latter included likening a women to an emptying egg box, and using this analogy to argue that time used for activism was eating into the time they had left as fertile White women. The implication here being that they were more valuable as mothers raising the next generation of White children than they would ever be as activists. Alongside this, some women did experience physical and sexual abuse while being active as right-​wing activists. One participant stated that when she had experienced abuse, it was discounted as either attention seeking or brushed aside because the movement shouldn’t “punch right”. This led, eventually, to her alienation with the movement and her eventual disengagement. A number of other women (not interviewed here) also noted similar experiences. These women were unable to get support from their peers because of the reasons noted. Additionally, these women were unable to get support outside of the movement. Left-​wing and feminist activists would not engage with them, because of discontent with their political actions. This leaves a question mark over what Prevent could be doing here. Studies have shown that disillusionment or internal conflict can lead to disengagement with extremist groups (Windisch et al, 2018). However, most VAWG programmes that Prevent works with appear to be geared more towards domestic violence or violence experienced by BME persons than violence that comes from within primarily White political groups. The lack of support given within these groups for abused persons, and the lack of external support available, also means that there is a gap that Prevent could step in to. Whether this is a missed opportunity however depends on a number of things, not least one’s opinion on whether Prevent should be involving itself in issues of VAWG. As noted in the interviews with Muslim women, this has resulted in some women being suspicious of VAWG services and lowering trust between service providers and service users. That women involved in right-​wing movements are experiencing physical and sexual abuse does not mean that it is appropriate for counterterrorism agencies to get involved. Although Prevent is already involving itself in these areas, and in this sense it is a missed opportunity, it is not necessarily true that further expansion in this area should be welcomed. Indeed many of the right-​wing women spoken to would not welcome it; none thought that any service should be contingent on accepting ideological interventions, and would therefore balk at the idea that VAWG help and ideological interventions should be linked. A very careful line needs to be tread here so as not to alienate women who are vulnerable and in need of help. Rather, as noted by those who work on VAWG issues, a better solution would be greater funding for VAWG work. That this might lead to discussions around misogyny in political movements is something that is noted by some VAWG organizations as a positive side effect, but not a contingent part of the work (Dhaliwal, 2020). 193

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8.4 Conclusion The opinions on Prevent presented in this chapter problematize what this book has presented thus far. Prevent has indeed expanded into the VAWG sector; it concentrates on women as mothers as a vector of resilience; and it exists in a climate when Muslims are made suspicious by wider government actions. These aspects of Prevent are noted to negatively affect the women who were interviewed here. Prevent is thought to be unworkable to the point that while the Muslim and BME women interviewed thought that Prevent should pay more attention to the far-​r ight, they did not think this would make it more effective or fair. Those on the right similarly thought that the government had got it wrong on counterterrorism policy, and that their needs were not being addressed. All of this points to the fact that while many concentrate on Prevent as the locus of the problem, the problem is actually found beyond Prevent. Indeed, Islamophobia might be exacerbated by Prevent, but Prevent did not create it. Thus, Prevent is more fundamentally flawed as a policy not only through its framework, but also because of its linkage to wider British society, which itself it flawed. This chapter has also demonstrated that the way Prevent integrates women causes anxiety for Muslims, and provides pretext for right-​wing activism. In this sense criticism should not always be isolated to Prevent alone; we must see the policy within a wider framework of British politics where anxiety about immigration, Islam and culture abounds, and where the legacy of Empire has not been properly dealt with. The ongoing expansion of Prevent into various safeguarding practices should also be criticized for the effect it can have on women –​especially migrant and women of colour. This is not only a structural issue to do with funding, but also one to do with whether women will trust services which cooperate with police. This chapter argues that many will not. What does this mean for counterterrorism, then? Is it possible to have a policy that can be preventative, and avoid the pitfalls of Prevent? This is undoubtedly a big ask –​this analysis indicates that wider social reform is needed before such a policy can be enacted. The final chapter looks at this problem through the lens of Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatus theory. This has been a running theme throughout this book –​how Prevent has fed into nationalism, patriarchy and wider ideas about what a woman should be or should be doing within the state. By picking up these critiques, an exploration of the possibilities of future Prevent is made.

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Conclusion: Ideologies and Counterterrorism Practice This book sought to understand how women were integrated into Prevent, looking at how the policy understands and includes women, and what impact this has on women aligned with targeted groups. This final chapter provides an overview of where we are with this question. It also goes beyond this –​it is the final argument of this book that Prevent is a policy that cannot be taken in isolation. As with other countering violent extremism or preventing terrorism policies around the world, many of which were influenced by Prevent, the realization that terrorism is a phenomenon that is overdetermined results in a policy that encompasses the ‘whole of society’ (HM Government, 2018, p 75). This is partially a problem of trying to predict and stop low-​incidence events (Gill et al, 2020). However it is also related to the nature of counterterrorism, which at its core is ideological. As explored in the Introduction, terrorism is ideological in that it looks to overturn dominant forms of government in favour of a different way of doing things. Where terrorism is associated with an extremist ideology, it necessarily falls outside of the dominant ideology. Because of this, countering terrorism is not just about stopping attacks –​it is also about protecting that dominant ideology and shoring up legitimacy in the face of this challenge. As preventative policies deal do not deal with terrorists per se, but rather with those who might be at risk of supporting terrorism, these policies are highly ideological. Analysing counterterrorism policy should then not just be about what works in stopping terrorism. We should also look at how counterterrorism actively produces legitimacy and reproduces ideology. Prevent’s work with women falls into this. Previous chapters have analysed how Prevent has worked to encourage women’s involvement in art, sport and employment; how it has utilized women’s right and arguments for gender equality as part of a wider effort to counter extremism; and how it relies heavily on the care work of mothers to watch over homes and to build resilience against extremism and terrorism. Taken apart, some of these 195

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efforts seem laudable. Certainly it is a good thing to fight for equality and encourage engagement with arts and culture. However, they do not stand alone within the socio-​political order and taken together these efforts fit into a wider pattern of ideological reproduction which benefits the state and the dominant ideology. For instance, feminists argue that patriarchal ideologies push women into the private sphere, reserving the public sphere for men. In this private sphere, women are expected to look after the home, produce and care for children, and be subservient to men. More broadly, some ideologies expect this of women because they are assumed to be naturally caring and maternal. Socialist feminists point out that this labour, done for free, is a necessary part of capitalism as it allows the men time to relax and recuperate after working (Toupin and Roth, 2018). Through this work in the home, women are not just the subjects of ideology, but also producers of it. As Althusser argues in his theory of the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA), ideology is not just ideas, but also material processes. What we do reproduces ideology and keeps it ticking over, at the same time producing us as subjects within the ideology. In this model, the home is one key site of ideological reproduction (Althusser, 2014). Women in this space enact the ideology that they are part of through practices of childcare, home-​making and domestic labour, thus bringing it into existence. They also impart the ideology on children by encouraging their engagement in ideological practices through both play and chores. They too then become embroiled in the ideological system. This final chapter explores this idea more, looking more deeply into the ISA theory and how Prevent’s work with women is part of this process of reproduction. In particular, it looks at the key role of mothers in Prevent, and how the relationship between mothers and children within the policy reproduces what is known as ‘motherhood ideology’. Through exploring this, it is made clear how Prevent is more than just counterterrorism, but part of a wider ideological system. This chapter begins with an overview of the previous chapters, summing up the research on how women appear in Prevent, and how they perceive the policy. Following this, the theory of the ISA is explored, before looking at how motherhood appears in Prevent and feeds into the ISA. Finally, a brief conclusion is provided, and some ideas about where research might turn next are offered.

9.1 Understanding and including women in Prevent Prevent has been running since 2003 and has undergone four revisions since it began. While Prevent has changed substantially since inception this book argues that women have been conceptualized in the policy in remarkable consistent ways. In the first instance, women are generally found as peaceful 196

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and caring individuals for whom violence is an aberration. This assumption aligns with traditional ideas about women –​that women’s femininity is something which naturalizes their peacefulness. This assumption also diminishes women’s role in public and political life and elevates their role in the domestic realm to natural destiny. This also feeds into women’s role as mothers with the policy. Thinking of women maternally generates ideas of care, nurture and love, which further reinforces their peacefulness, and emphasizes their importance in the domestic sphere in relation to their role within the family and community. These ideas are found in the national policy documents, in national projects, local Prevent strategy and in the practices of practitioners. By getting women on board with Prevent, the government would be recruiting persons thought to have a substantial influence on how others think. It would also receive intelligence from the persons thought most close to others in the home and community. Supposed qualities of empathy and communication mean that they are, more so than men, presumed more able to pick up on changes in those around them, and therefore act as an early warning system for radicalization. While women have been targeted by Prevent since 2006, their inclusion into this policy has not always worked well in practice. Many local strategies did not adequately include women, and by 2011 this necessitated national interventions to encourage more women to get involved in Prevent. Since then, there has been an effort to further include women in the policy, with more local strategies including women-​only and women-​inclusive projects. More attention has been paid to women, and the assertation that they are a key target of Prevent has been taken more seriously. This is especially evident when talking with local Prevent workers, who are increasingly aware of some of the challenges to get women involved in the policy. Many of the projects that are undertaken with women assume no involvement in political violence, and thus do not place politics or Prevent front-​and-​centre. Rather they give space to women to explore other issues thought important to them. Initially many Prevent projects looked at issues thought interesting to women, such as sexual health, diet and family relationships. These however have a nebulous relationship with terrorism, and as noted by some providers that engaged with Prevent at that time, it was not clear that these projects were run by Prevent. Later Prevent projects have included female genital mutilation (FGM), forced marriage and sexual equality within their framework, although now with an explicit link between women’s rights and counterterrorism, with the government arguing that terrorists violate women’s rights, and thus women’s rights are linked with counterterrorism. Interviews with Prevent professionals demonstrate that this is not just government posturing, and that those working on Prevent do see women’s rights as part of their remit. This is also evident in local 197

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strategy. Hence while we can argue that women’s issues are effectively used as a way of gaining policy compliance, it is also worth pointing out that their inclusion is also due to a genuine belief in their goodness. As Prevent delivery is highly local, differences in priority affect how women are approached. Tier 3 areas are forced to integrate Prevent with other issues as they do not have money for standalone projects. In these areas, existing groups are tapped for outreach, whether these are already locally funded or community run. Through this kind of practice, programmes that deal with issues like drugs, crime or community integration have Prevent agendas integrated into them. Tier 1 areas do not suffer from this. These areas have the money and time to develop their own Prevent-​specific projects, which are structured not according to existing relationships and issues, but according to what the local Prevent strategy deems useful and effective. This has resulted in a mixture of projects which can range from the explicitly terrorism-​focused, to projects which appear to deal with wider issues but have a Prevent aspect. Women’s projects in these areas tend to focus on a range of issues interesting to women, so that women are attracted to attend the project meetings and Prevent becomes one mandatory session of many non-​Prevent-​related sessions. This strategy takes advantage of the marginalization of (especially minority) women in public life and a lack of available funds for women’s projects. In these sessions the message that Prevent is about safeguarding, and that the duty of a carer is to look after their vulnerable charge, is something that appears frequently. These strategic choices were empowered further by the integration of safeguarding with Prevent, leading local safeguarding agencies to integrate their strategy with Prevent. Nationally, a greater availability of resources means that the problems of Tier 3 areas are avoided, and whatever agency is undertaking the project can implement as they see fit. In the two national projects looked at, Shanaz and Prevent Tragedies, the peaceful, maternal and non-​violent nature of women found in the national policy comes through clearly. Alongside this there is an appeal to safeguarding, asking women to leave counterterrorism to the experts, reinforcing traditional ideas about the political naivety of women. This rather clear picture is muddied somewhat in 2014. The alignment of some UK women with Islamic State meant that Prevent could no longer look at women as solely peaceful. This change is something which primarily looks at young women as a ‘risky’ group. While this evolution did acknowledge the possibility that women were getting involved in terrorism, it did not however mean a reconsideration of how women were seen by the policy. Women were still considered to be largely peaceful, and most powerful in their mothering role. This role was given even more prominence here, as it is assumed that mothers would be most able to connect with their daughters, and to understand when their behaviour was becoming worrying. Those women who joined Islamic State also remain with the idea of a peaceful 198

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woman, as they are framed as persons who were brainwashed or led astray by nefarious agents who warped their minds. They were not considered as persons who might make the choice to join Islamic State of their own volition. Interviews with Prevent professionals show that there is nuance in this position, and that manipulation can be in relation to romance, ‘getting away’ from an oppressive culture, or a lack of religious understanding. Many of these ideas about radicalization further draw upon stereotypical ideas of women’s nature, in that they are more attracted to romance than they are violence, and that their lack of political and religious acumen makes them vulnerable. This also ties more generally in with the narrative of the oppressive ‘other’ culture that demeans and degrades women’s rights. Within Prevent, it is minority cultures that are considered in this way. This culture is replete with patriarchal structures, being ruled by men who do not allow women the space to develop and pursue their own aims. Extremist ideologies are presented in a similar way. This provides Prevent with a hook –​by funding projects which ‘empower’ women, Prevent is able to draw women into the fold. Thus, Prevent instrumentalizes women’s rights and promotes a ‘governance feminism’ (Halley, 2006). This was most prominent in national policy during the period governed by the 2006 and 2009 strategies. While the 2011 and 2018 strategies’ focus on individuals meant that these ideas appear less frequently, they are still evident in guidance given to statutory institutions. These ideas are also prevalent in the how Prevent professionals describe getting women involved in Prevent –​many talked about how women were stopped from attending Prevent-​run workshops by their husbands, and the abuse they received for carrying out this work. While these problems should not be discounted, it should also be noted that care needs to be taken to disconnect these isolated problems from wider Islamophobic discourses and the ‘othering’ of minority cultures that is widespread in British society. This is no doubt difficult considering the history of Prevent in perpetuating these discourses. Thus, this book demonstrates that Prevent is gendered. Within this framework, women appear most prominently as peaceful actors. Their role is to utilize their influence in the home and the community to foster resilience and to watch over those around them. They therefore exist as a conduit between policy and at-​r isk individuals. Those at-​r isk individuals are primarily young men. However, since 2014, this has expanded to include young women.

9.2 Receiving and engaging with Prevent The various criticisms of Prevent that have appeared over the years, as well as long-​running campaigns against the policy, have undoubtedly 199

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damaged Prevent’s reputation. Despite this, engagement with Prevent is still widespread. However, the women in this study largely discount Prevent. This is due to the lack of trust in the policy, and the perception that engaging with Prevent is not really in the interests of women. While this chapter is not representative, the reasons for their disengagement reveal some interesting nuances which have largely been missed in much of the literature on Prevent. The over-​reliance on faith as the basis for interpreting women’s actions and perceptions is something which is highlighted. This reflects the fact that despite the move away from the communities-​based, Muslim-​focused policy of 2006–​2011, and towards an individually focused policy post-​2011, faith remains an important lens through which Prevent is enacted. However, the common argument that Prevent is Islamophobic, which dominates much of the discourse surrounding the policy, misses the nuances of women’s experience. This concern is reflected in the interview data, with some of the Muslim women interviewed denouncing Prevent not (just) because it is Islamophobic, but because it exists within a wider policy framework which has seen the shifting of funding from specialist Black and minority ethnic (BME) women’s services towards faith-​based service provision. This leaves many organizations without adequate funding unless they seek funding from Prevent. This then marginalizes many women who would not want counterterrorism objectives intertwined with their service delivery. It also forces some secular services to operate as faith-​based services to receive this funding. This problem is compounded by the fact that some of the most marginalized women are from BME and migrant backgrounds, and so are more seriously affected by this. Women who might have insecure immigration status are further affected, as they would be even less likely to seek help from a service that has a mandatory reporting relationship with the police. That Prevent is now intertwined with other safeguarding services is concerning for this reason, and the presence of Prevent professionals of safeguarding boards that deal with domestic violence was heavily criticized by the Muslim women interviewed. The fact that the burden of domestic care largely falls upon women is also something that is lost in the debate. As Prevent engages heavily with women as mothers, it creates a further impetus for their taking the leading role in household administration and childcare. That the communications within this sector emphasize that if adequate care is not taken, one’s child could end up dead in Syria means that a lot of emotional pressure is placed on Muslim and BME women. Further to this, that some organizations have highlighted the coercion implicit in Prevent means that non-​compliance is potentially dangerous. Although the role of Prevent in the family court and social care systems is contested and understudied, it is clear that organizations working with women affected by Prevent consider this to be a real danger, and something which Muslim women targeted by Prevent feel causes them 200

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deep anxiety. The integration of Prevent with statutory institutions further means that women will be more exposed through their children, having been integrated with safeguarding in schools. Prevent is thus an additional burden upon women. This can be linked to patriarchal stereotypes about women belonging in the household. This was further linked to the perceived infantilization and depoliticization of women, in that considering women only in relation to the household meant that their role in the public sphere is diminished. Those women who were visibly Muslim also reported self-​ censorship. They considered that the wearing of the hijab highlighted them as Muslim, and thus they felt more vulnerable knowing that the gaze of Prevent might be on them when entering schools, universities and other statutory institutions. Women on the right shared this distrust of Prevent, although for differing reasons. They saw Prevent as simultaneously too soft, and overly authoritarian. In this sense Prevent was too soft on Muslims, giving them too much freedom to spread what they consider to be a radical ideology. This fear was gendered, as they also considered themselves to be sexually vulnerable to a stereotypical hypersexual Other. This intersects with arguments made within Prevent itself, that the state is protecting women’s rights while minority cultures and extremists are degrading them. Thus, according to the women on the right, Prevent needs to crack down harder on Muslims. However, they also saw Prevent as too authoritarian, unfairly targeting the political right and censoring what they see as fair criticism of Islam. As such, while they call on Prevent to be tougher to protect women’s rights, they also refuse to cooperate with Prevent so long as it continues to be unfair towards them.

9.3 Ideological State Apparatus: a framework for understanding Prevent As explored in the third chapter, one of the key objectives of Prevent is to counter what it considers to be extremist ideologies. Little mention is made of any ideology it wants to promote in place of extremism, even though it is argued by theorists of ideology that it is impossible to engage in politics without them (Eagleton, 2007). While Prevent does not acknowledge its own ideology, it can nonetheless be seen in outputs of the policy, most clearly in British values. As explored in Chapter 3, British values include democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs (Lockley-​Scott, 2019b). The teaching of these values has become mandatory in schools, alongside the duty to pay ‘due regard’ to Prevent. These values align with the liberal ideology of the British state. Ideological work can also be found in other Prevent interventions, including work done under Channel, trying to reconcile extremist belief 201

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with the reality of life in Britain. In many ways these interventions try to get people to conform to an idea of how the state should be organized and what kind of political action is legitimate within the sphere of politics (Sartori, 1969). Similarly, many of the projects that Prevent undertakes conform to the idea of liberal democracy; an exemplar of this is found in the Empowering Muslim Women: Case Studies document, which outlines how Prevent works to get more women involved in the market, politics, arts and culture. However, many of the projects and activities undertaken by Prevent do not have ideology, or politics, front-​and-​centre. For instance, it is difficult to see ideology in the parenting classes run by Prevent, or in the theatre classes for young girls. Many projects barely touch on the idea of terrorism or extremism, and the use of safeguarding terminology obfuscates ideology further. Such work is not exceptional, and a normal part of state activity. Indeed, Althusser argues that a key part of the sustainment of states is the reproduction of their dominant ideology (Althusser, 2014). Doing this ensures that relationships of power are maintained, and the structures that constitute the state are recognized and respected by citizens. States do this by getting people to produce and reproduce the relationships and constructs that constitute the established order in two ways. One way is through coercion and violence, using the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA). The RSA typically is formed of violent institutions such as the military and police, which can use force to ensure that people fall in line. The ISA instead relies on nominally voluntary interactions, and thus creates a subject that complies and reproduces the social order through their own volition. This is important for legitimacy, as people are engaging with the state through their own choice. Where Althusser’s theory differs most from other theories of ideology is in his argument that the process of reproducing ideology is not about ideas per se, but rather about the material processes that underpin those ideas. He argues that by carrying out the actions associated with the ideology, we begin to create the conditions for that ideology and through this process bring it into existence. As such, something like marriage will reproduce heteronormative and patriarchal ideologies by bringing a married couple into an expected framework of action with associated laws and obligations. The repetition of such acts throughout society is what gives them their ideological power, drawing the person into a web of social relations within which they have little choice but to act as expected. Therefore this wider repetitive social action gives power to the idea, which would otherwise lack the ability to assert itself. Alongside this, the ISA also brings people into order as subjects through a process Althusser calls interpellation. The analogy that Althusser gives is that of a policeman calling out ‘Hey, you!’ The subject of the call turns, recognizing themself in the call, and through this is integrated into the 202

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social order. This is a process of mutual recognition; the call contains a subject position and by recognizing the call, the person is in fact recognizing themselves in the call. Alongside this they are also giving recognition to the caller, granting the ideology legitimacy. While the analogy rests upon a person in authority calling, the actual process of interpellation does not need a person to call out. Someone can be interpellated by realizing that they are being ‘spoken to’ by anything that they interact with, be that advertising, an online forum, or a fashion (Dolar, 1993). So long as it provides a concrete identity and subjective place in the world, any object can interpellate. Althusser argues that this process works because it provides an answer to subjective questions about existence and identity, and a need to have a place in an inherently unknowable world (Williams, 2002). Because interpellation functions in this way, it also conceals the contradictions that are inherent within our social world by providing mutually recognizable roles and relationships within which the subject can fit. This framework helps us understand Prevent in a number of ways. As noted in previous chapters, Prevent has come under a lot of criticism for its supposed ‘unscientific’ nature, for the way it securitizes Muslims and public services, and for its mass reach and opacity. The first criticism is particularly powerful when taken in light of the others –​why run such a policy when we cannot know if it works? Indeed as Prevent does not deal with terrorists, but rather ‘at risk’ people, we cannot really know if it is effective. We can never know, for instance, if a referee to Channel was going to support or commit terrorist acts. Alongside this, Channel only deals with a small amount of people compared to the reach of the entire Prevent policy –​561 persons in the period April 2018 to March 2019 as compared to the millions who are reached via the Prevent duty, British values, e-​training packages and community-​level outreach and communications. While there is some level of coercion in many of these programmes, such as the Prevent duty being a legal requirement, on the whole they are voluntary. Considering the level of threat that terrorism is said to pose, this makes little sense; why put so much effort into a policy that we cannot know the effectiveness of, and that is voluntary? The ISA framework provides some answers to the function of Prevent beyond the debate of whether it works as a counterterrorism policy. Through this, many interventions which seemed to have little to do with counterterrorism come to make sense. This is especially evident in those interventions that target women, but do not seem to be relevant to counterterrorism. For instance, the ‘lifestyle’ projects funded by Prevent, such as the £173,564 spent by Townsville on a culture and lifestyle magazine for young Muslim women, make sense within this framework. This project consisted of live events, YouTube videos and an online magazine, covering issues such as the top places to travel and best TV dramas of the moment. As 203

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looked at over this book, many women’s projects mixed counterterrorism messaging in with everyday lifestyle tips, childcare advice and help with difficult circumstances. The way that this fits in with the dominant ideology is that it teaches you to better fit in with your assigned social role. It calls out to the subject –​the young woman can see advice for travelling abroad and think: that’s me! Through this mechanism of interpellation, she can find herself being called out to and provided a space within British society, as a Muslim and as a woman. Interactions on such sites, or at the live events, further feed into the ideology through the practices that they encourage, including discussing and renouncing Islamic extremism, learning to report hate crimes, and having lunch with other attendees. Whether or not such an event would be successful in deradicalizing an extremist if they showed up is not known, and probably not the purpose. Instead, having young women turn up and engage in practices where if they wanted to fit in they would have to accept the messages being given, is. These young women would be engaging in the kind of material practice that underpins ideology, by entering into social relationships that are contingent on accepting liberal ideology.

9.3.1 Motherhood ideologies A major aspect of Prevent’s work with women concerns how mothers are used for the purposes of counterterrorism. Within the policy literature, mothers are thought of as inherently peaceful, nurturing and influential within the family, and thus useful to counterterrorism efforts if they can be maintained as a conduit between Prevent and the home. While the previous section explored how Prevent functions as an apparatus for promoting the liberal ideology of the British state, it is also useful to look more deeply into the component parts of this ideology. As argued by feminists, the ‘big’ ideologies, such as liberalism and conservatism, hold within them the patriarchal ideologies which delineate gender roles within society. In general, the role of women in society within these ideologies is as subjugates of men (Bahlieda, 2015; Katz Rothman, 2016). An important part of patriarchal ideology is the role of women in the home as mothers. As Conner states, ‘motherhood … is not simply one of the things women do. It is the activity that above all, completes and confirms the female identity’ (Conner, 1974, p 165). Indeed many of the assumptions about women are based on an idea that they are naturally programmed to be carers so they can raise and protect children. Thus, the role of mothers in Prevent becomes dominant because it links with these assumptions. As Downing (2019) argues, even the assumptions that surround violent women become linked to maternity in many analyses –​a nationalist cause is a stand-​in for a child that a woman would be fiercely protecting, and our generalized assumptions about their behaviour fall into our tendency 204

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to see women as a group, as persons who naturally fall together in kinship, rather than as individuals. Because of this, their actions are interpreted as the product of group attachment rather than agentic. Women who migrated to Islamic State territory, for instance, are understood within Prevent as doing so because of an attachment to another, either a husband or some lover overseas. As with the family discussed in previous chapters, motherhood is also something which is steeped in ideology. The different forms that motherhood takes in different societies, and the relationship between motherhood and society, can be analysed as ‘motherhood ideologies’. Traditionally mother ideologies interplay with the idea of a ‘good mother’ in society, which thus is used as a yardstick for assessing how women perform as mothers and within the related spheres of family relations, marriage and womanhood more generally (Johnston and Swanson, 2006). The closer one conforms to the dominant motherhood ideology, the better one is judged socially as a mother. The most dominant model currently is the ‘intensive mothering’ ideology, which sees childcare as ‘all-​consuming, emotionally satisfying, and guided by expert advice, with the child’s needs more important than those of the mother’ (Pedersen, 2016, p 33). Hays (1996) notes that this idea of motherhood dominates women’s lives, raising the child to a sacred object that, to be raised correctly, needs the absolute attention of the mother. She also notes that this idea, which permeates through society, is contradicted by the competitive and individualistic nature of capitalism. To succeed in the capitalistic world, one needs to be individualistic and cut-​throat, with more attention paid to the public sphere than the private. As women are more deeply integrated into the labour force, these dual demands pull women in opposing directions. Escaping this anxiety-​r idden state typically means the embrace of the more traditional, private sphere-​dominated life for a woman, where success is decided by the quality of the child raised. While the intensive motherhood ideology is the most dominant form of motherhood ideology in the West, other motherhood ideologies exist. These ideologies can be more inclusive of non-​heteronormative relationships or integrate non-​White and non-​middle class women into the ideology of motherhood. These competing ideologies arise due to the White, heteronormative and middle-​class nature of the intensive mothering ideology, or are due to migration or the reaffirmation of indigenous traditions (McRobbie, 2013). Indeed the rise of liberal feminism has meant that the choice to become a mother has become something that is no longer a given thing, with a number of women opting to be child-​free or to raise children in non-​traditional ways (O’Reilly, 2010). Indeed more radical feminisms can be anti-​gestation, looking to technology to transform the relationship between the body and motherhood entirely (Firestone, 2015; Hester, 2018). However, as Neyer and Bernardi (2011) argue, even with the rise of liberal 205

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and radical feminism, motherhood still dominates women in modern life due to the social demand that reproduction occurs. Those who fall outside of mainstream motherhood ideologies are challenged by them, and challenge them in their own actions. For instance, same-​sex couples have for years been side-​lined as mothers, both socially and legally. While a number of legal barriers have been overturned in recent years, especially those pertaining to marriage, adoption and the right of both parents to be recognized, social barriers and assumptions about the suitability of same-​sex couples to raise children remain. Lesbians, for instance, have struggled to be seen as ‘good mothers’ within the framework of intensive motherhood, with one or more of the partners not aligning to the traditional conception of what a woman should do as a mother (Kawash, 2011). A challenge here relates to the social desirability of being seen in this way; in spite of the value of social acceptance does one want to fit in with an ideology which has previously been, and for many still is, oppressive? This question is one which affects many women who do not fit in with the White and middle-​class assumptions of the intensive motherhood ideology. Those who draw on other motherhood traditions and ideologies face the dilemma of fitting in and having an easier life in the West, or raising children in a different way. For instance, Hill Collins talks extensively about the role of ‘other mothers’ in Black communities, with grandparents being particularly important in childrearing (Hill Collins, 2009). Likewise, women from Somali communities would have drawn on the care of a communal household within which the paternal grandmother and sisters-​in-​law would have been useful and powerful influences (Phillips-​Mundy, 2011). These options are not always available to pursue considering the social structure of life in the West, but when they are the women involved must consider whether they can bear the social cost of not being thought of as ‘good mothers’ as a result. Indeed this latter point is important in the lives of many mothers. Many choose to ‘opt out’ or ‘opt in’ to working life based on how they will be seen by their peers, as well as whether it is economically viable to do so (Dow, 2016). Even so, those that choose to ‘opt in’ to work are found to still influenced by motherhood ideologies to the extent that they try to come across as ‘supermums’ in order to justify their working life to their peers (Dow, 2016). Those who are single mothers experience an increased pressure because of the influence of these ideologies, and will be blamed if something goes wrong in the child’s life, even when low welfare payments necessitate long working hours as a single mother (Halsa, 2018). This, again, is a culturally specific problem in that women from ethnic minority or religious communities will face competing pressures from the dominant ideology and their own culture to do things in a certain way. One study of Muslim women found that new mothers were aware of the differences between their generation and the generation of their parents, and that the 206

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expectations of motherhood were shifting (Cheruvallil-​Contractor, 2016). Those who raise children in such a shifting landscape can struggle to reconcile their desire to maintain a traditional cultural identity for their children with the patriarchal cultures that their parents grew up in (Oh, 2010). The different practices of mothering that are passed within cultures, and the overarching dominant motherhood ideology, therefore constrain and shape women in their mothering practices (Bhopal, 1998). In exploring the influence of motherhood ideologies, it is important to note that these ideologies are not natural, but rather socially constructed and thus a product of ideological intervention (Johnston and Swanson, 2003). The way that the state articulates motherhood, and develops policies in surrounding it, relates directly to these ideologies. Gambles (2010) writes that the ‘development of policies and initiatives focusing on parenting has been attributed to … a desire to better support parents in the bringing up of their children and to encourage or, if necessary, to coerce, parents to take up certain economic and moral responsibilities in relation to their parenting’ (p 30). It is these aspects of state policy that should be recognized as part of the ISA which structured motherhood, within which even small ritual actions such as making lunchboxes become meaningful (Allison, 1991). State agencies which monitor children and their parents, such as schools and social workers, provide an enforcement mechanism both in the form of sanction and encouragement, ensuring that the dominant motherhood ideology is reinforced and made real through repeat action (O’Hagan, 2006). Fatherhood is also affected by the assumption that women are the primary carers for children. Legislation distinguishes between mothers and fathers, assuming that the latter will be absent and working while the mother cares for the children. For instance, ‘[w]‌hereas mothers always have the right (and responsibility) to take leave during the child’s first year, fathers will only be entitled to do so if they have the requisite labour market connection, thus reinforcing the acceptability of their absence from childcare’ (Busby and Weldon-​Johns, 2019, p 290). Thus, while the state pursues formal gender equality in legislation, in reality mothers are expected to undertake primary care responsibilities and fathers are expected to work. While everyone has ‘the choice’ to work or look after children, the attendant ideologies of the state create the conditions for the reality of mothers looking after children, and fathers working. Indeed this all rests on the drive towards privatization by the state, a result of which is the championing of women entering the labour market alongside the sapping of welfare regimes which would support the children of poorer families should the mothers choose to work (McRobbie, 2013). Further to this, in the context of deregulation having a ‘reserve army’ of labour in the form of women who drop in and out of the labour market is advantageous, as it allows employers to call upon the reserves should the workers decide to organize against poor working conditions. This relates 207

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back to the ‘dual pressure’ that women face; when capital needs them, they can be called upon to work, but equally will be expected to later succumb to the pressures of motherhood before they are organized enough to themselves challenge the reality of precarious working. Thus, motherhood is important in many respects, and like counterterrorism, cannot be taken in isolation. As reproduction in both the ideological and the physical sense is key to the survival of the state, mothers are extremely important and the regulation and reproduction of motherhood becomes an important part of state policy.

9.3.2 Producing the mothering subject: interpellation As argued in this chapter, Prevent interpellates people into liberal subjects through its interventions, and the work that Prevent undertakes with mothers intepellates into a particular type of motherhood ideology. Previous chapters have outlined extensively the work that Prevent does with mothers; this section will analyse how this work interpellates mothers into the intensive mothering subject. Many of the projects funded by Prevent ‘call out’ to a certain subject in order to have them reproduce liberal state ideology. In Chapter 5, Prevent Tragedies was profiled. This project is an example of interpellation in Prevent. Funded by the police, Prevent Tragedies directly calls out to women as mothers. Being police funded, it also correlates directly with Althusser’s analogy of the police officer calling out ‘Hey, you!’ There is some debate around whether the choice to use a police officer as the caller is a deliberate choice (Butler, 1995). While I take the position that interpellation does not require authority, as our desire for identification and recognition supersedes that, it is nonetheless useful to be an authority when interpellating, as authority allows for the call to be interpreted within a particular frame of truth (Andrews and Skoczylis, 2022). For instance, being legally endowed allows some actors to have their assertions heard with more force. Within the communications of Prevent Tragedies there is a lot of interpellative material. The leaflet Working with Mothers to Prevent Tragedies is an excellent example; placed in Muslim communities, in areas which women would frequent, the leaflet directly called out to women as mothers. An eye-​catching cover page in police blue-​and-​white immediately calls out, with only a simple picture of two women in monochrome and the title UK Police and Partners: Working with Mothers to Prevent Tragedies in a standout white. The leaflet is eye-​catching –​I only picked it up because it stood out so well among other leaflets. Because it includes references to the police and preventing a tragedy, it also appears important. The first page, in simple terms and large lettering, spells out how young women are in danger: ‘No parent would want to see their child put in danger, exploited or in a situation where they could face death. Sadly, stories of families who have suffered the 208

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devastating consequences of women and girls who have travelled to Syria and not returned are becoming more common’ (Prevent Tragedies, 2015b, p 1). The rest of the leaflet –​one more page and a back cover –​works hard to interpellate the mother. Indeed the single page matches well to the intensive mothering ideology. To prevent her child’s flight to Syria and possible death, the mother must keep a continuous watchful eye on her, be guided by the advice of the police, and ‘constantly remind them that they are loved, that they are part of a strong family network’ (Prevent Tragedies, 2015b, p 2). More aspects of Prevent Tragedies are explored in Chapter 5. However the leaflet is exemplary of what is found in the project, which concentrates heavily on mothers’ relationships with their daughters. Much of the project outlines exactly what a ‘good mother’ is, and the association of failure with death in this case makes the interpellation particularly hard to turn away from. Indeed as mothers are blamed for many of the mistakes their children make, the warning that one of them might go on to be involved in something as loathed as terrorism reinforces the message of the campaign (Halsa, 2018). Because of the assumption in Prevent that mothers are peaceful and nurturing, many interventions that target them function in this way. The assumption that mothers are the best way to access and influence children feeds off, and into, wider social assumptions about the role that they have in society. One interesting aspect of Althusser’s theory is that the subject of interpellation is always-​already (Althusser, 2014). What this means is that when we are interpellated, we know that it is us being spoken to and not the person next to us because the ideology in question is already permeated throughout society. Similar to the analogy of the police officer’s call, Althusser also gives the example of when a friend arrives at the door; when we ask who it is that is knocking, the friend simply replies ‘It’s me!’. We already know what this means, because we are already know this person and expect them. Like the friend, motherhood ideology is already known; many women experience the pressure of motherhood even when they have no plans to have children (Agrillo and Nelini, 2008). Thus, the idea of motherhood will weave its way through women’s lives, and hence we find the ideology of motherhood in its dominant intensive form in much of Prevent. This makes some sense, as Prevent is a counterterrorism strategy and thus needs to have some cohesiveness in the way it approaches people. The result is the promotion of this particular form of motherhood ideology and the interpellation of the mothers that it comes into contact with into the intensive motherhood ideology.

9.3.3 Mothers and materialism As Althusser notes, interpellation is just one part of the ISA; the material actions undertaken in support of ideologies are extremely important to 209

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their reproduction. The actions that Prevent has mothers undertake as part of counterterrorism work similarly feed into the reproduction of motherhood ideologies. As noted, the work of Prevent positions mothers as particularly useful within the family context. Many of the communications used by Prevent that target mothers encourage the kind of actions that fit in with intensive motherhood; as noted, Prevent Tragedies encourages mothers to remind children they are loved and spend more time with them. None of the communications targeted at mothers found as a part of this research acknowledge the ‘dual demands’ of motherhood and capitalism, and do not take note of the fact that the increased burden of domestic labour demanded by counterterrorism will be detrimental to their standing in the market (Matteazzi and Scherer, 2021). Thus, the demands of counterterrorism on mothers reproduce one ideology –​motherhood –​over another –​capitalism. That fathers do not figure into these communications further reinforces this. There were no projects or policies specifically aimed at fathers found during the research, meaning that childcare is expected to be women’s work. Indeed many of the expectations of the policy and those who work in Prevent is that women will be found attending to children. Thus, something like the school run, where one parent is expected to be taking a child to school or picking them up, is not a place for parents per se, but a good place for accessing women. Alongside the communications there are also projects and actions which do not just encourage such material processes, but actually teach or encourage them. For instance, early on in Prevent funding was provided to ‘build women’s awareness of their role in keeping families together’, as well as ‘holding sessions to educate women in how to provide healthy diets for their families; an understanding of first aid and establishing healthy environments for children both in and outside the house’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006, p 3). Nationally this kind of role for mothers remained important throughout each era of Prevent, with the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) in 2015 writing that ‘[w]‌ithin families, the primary influence on respondents’ beliefs is the mother, highlighting the importance of the mother’s role in their child’s development’ (National Police Chiefs’ Council, 2015, p 5). Growing from this were projects which taught women how to be effective parents, including advice on listening to children, managing their time so that they can spend quality time with their children, and understanding child development in order to ensure that the child would grow up to be a productive member of society (Iacopini et al, 2018, p 16). This kind of work is also found locally, with Townsville spending £137,986 on family related projects between 2012 and 2021, out of a £514,742 total spend on Prevent. These projects included training on good parenting on both a one-​to-​one basis and a group basis, and encouraged 210

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those attending to work on the relationship with their children in order to better the dynamics within the family and avoid behavioural problems. According to Althusser it is the doing of these tasks that form the building blocks of the ideology. Thus, any action that is taught within the wider framework of motherhood, or the mother’s role within the family, is something which builds the motherhood ideology. To take an example from one of the parenting courses taught in Townsville, those attending would be taught to ‘manage their anger; express emotions; teach children right from wrong; handle child fighting or destructive behaviour; handle child refusal to do housework; make suggestions to child’s teacher; make plans to achieve personal goals; access community resources’ (Appendix: Evaluation of Families programme, 2014–​2017). Mostly mothers attended these courses. Doing these actions creates the material framework upon which the ideology sits, in that it is mothers that teach the children morals, take them to school, manage their emotions and train them in housework. Each time that such an action is undertaken, it fits in with the wider social framework of motherhood. The child understands that this is what mothers do. The partner understands that this is what mothers do. Those who talk about who does what around the house understand that this is what mothers do. Even if the mother does not believe that this is the case, and that she is simply taking on these tasks as an individual, it does not matter. The framework of action, relationships and understanding has been created, and dispersed into society. Even if she is cynical, she is a point de caption in the ideological quilt that forms an understanding of how mothers should behave. It is worth noting that there is nothing inherently wrong with teaching mothers how to improve their relationships with their children. It is instead the way that these lessons integrate into motherhood ideologies that is of interest, and how counterterrorism draws women into these programmes for its own ends. Prevent does not teach women to be ‘good mothers’ for their own sakes, but rather for the sake of the reproduction of the state and its ideology. There is little to indicate that these courses included much on how to balance looking after children with pursing education, a better job, fulfilment outside of the family, or the pursuit of any other myriad desires. Indeed if the courses offered wanted to alleviate some of the pressure of motherhood from the women attending and allow them to spend more quality time with their children, they might have done better to encourage fathers to get involved instead of mothers. The idea of the ‘second shift’ is well established in the feminist literature –​when a working woman comes home, she then starts her second job managing the house. This is argued as being something which fundamentally drains women’s emotional and physical energy (Hochschild and Machung, 2012). According to this argument, if the government wanted women to spend more time with their children, they might do better to help them out with the housework in some way. 211

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A further policy idea might simply be the better funding of childcare so that women can pursue their interests and be more enthused and energized when interacting with their family. Instead of this, Prevent fits in with the intensive motherhood ideology, training women to undertake the tasks of domestic labour, childcare and emotional labour better than before. Indeed as intensive motherhood sees the job of women as not just childcare, but in being absorbed by childcare, attending these classes is in itself an action that lays the foundation for motherhood ideologies. As noted in Chapter 6, many of these classes have 80–​100 per cent attendance by women. Stepping into a room full of women learning to be better mothers teaches us that women are the ones who raise children, the ones who are interested in raising children, and the ones we should teach to raise children. According to Althusser’s theory we do not necessarily have to believe that to be the case when we step into that room, but once we do, it lays the foundation for that belief. The classes being attended by mostly women is evidence for the motherhood ideology.

9.4 Epilogue: theoretical and policy implications, and future research The way that women are engaged by Prevent, primarily as mothers, reinforces the burden of care within the home. This is a burden that can weigh heavily, and have can negative effects on women’s independence, wealth, careers and social lives. This is a negative gendered effect that has been identified by feminist activists for many decades, and something which permeates throughout the policy, drawing on and reinforcing related patriarchal ideologies in society. It is, however, almost entirely neglected within the literature. This also dovetails with how Prevent engages with minority communities. These communities are largely presented as patriarchal and controlling within Prevent. However, the way that Prevent structures its understanding of the family and women’s role within it is something which also denies those women some of the support that they would have had from other family structures. Alongside this, little attention is paid to the wider patriarchal structures of the state or dominant motherhood familial ideologies. These two aspects of Prevent warrant further investigation. Recent research by Winterbotham (2020) highlights the complexity of these issues; some women do see Prevent as a chance to escape patriarchal control, and this can drive women’s engagement with Prevent. Because of funding cuts to women’s services, Prevent is sometimes the only way that women can get funding for work furthering women’s rights in minority communities. For this latter reason, any understanding of Prevent’s role in combating patriarchal control needs to be tempered by our understanding of wider government policy. 212

Conclusion

It is also this kind of work that means we have to analyse Prevent beyond an understanding of whether it works in countering terrorism. Indeed, when Prevent engages with women, it does so beyond simple counterterrorism messaging; it funds a diverse array of projects ranging from support for victims of domestic violence to courses to help with parenting. Because of this, Prevent structures how women engage with wider society and within their communities. The policy implications of this are many, and will expand beyond simple recommendations for changes in Prevent policy. Rather, the politicization of counterterrorism policy needs to be argued for and understood within the context of wider social and political structures, and not outside of them. The recent focus of counterterrorism police on domestic violence and violence against women is something that needs to be taken into consideration in this regard. This is a field that has faced repeated funding cuts, with domestic violence services being hard hit both by austerity and a change in focus towards ‘faith-​based’ service provision. That counterterrorism police are now interested in this field means that this sector might face securitization and unwelcome oversight by the police. If funding comes with the caveat that Prevent has access to data on victims and perpetrators, this might result in lower reporting rates and have the effect of increasing the vulnerability of women, especially those from a migrant background. While some arguments have been made regarding violence against women being an ‘early warning’ for terrorism, the wider implications need to be carefully thought about and researched. In short, this means that we need to expand how we carry out counterterrorism research. Much of the criticism of Prevent is related to Islamophobia, due to its historic targeting of Muslims. Recently this has expanded to discuss how the Prevent duty responsibilizes public agencies and jeopardizes the relationship between those subject to the duty and the persons they are responsible for. This includes workers in health, education and social work. This debate needs to expand in relation to women. Firstly, the integration of Prevent into safeguarding structures means that it also is now part of violence against women strategies and assessments of domestic violence cases. While ‘risk’ conceptions might mean that it is Muslim women who come under the most scrutiny in those cases, it is also worth noting that the racialization of Islam means that faith might not be the best lens through which to assess the effects of this. Such a criticism is made by the Muslim and BME women interviewed. Alongside this, the reception of Prevent by the right is also understudied, especially considering the recent focus on the right by counterterrorism police (Home Office, 2020). The data in this research shows a level of distrust and cynicism about the policy in this cohort, which has implications for the effectiveness of Prevent. Considering the recent rise in conspiracist narratives following the COVID-​19 pandemic, it is important to carefully weigh how 213

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police intervention might be received, especially considering that trust is essential to the policy. The parallel between right-​wing narratives about Islam and women’s rights, and government narratives on women’s rights being eroded by both extremism and patriarchal minority cultures, is also well worth noting in this regard. As argued with women in general, we need to take a broad view on the ideological and political nature of counterterrorism. There is little point in the government bemoaning Islamophobia and racism if such narratives are present in their own policies. Whether or not one agrees with Prevent, it is clear that our blind spot regarding women, terrorism and counterterrorism needs to be swiftly addressed lest we perpetuate the harm of these narratives, and we should take pause to think whether the promotion of motherhood ideologies by counterterrorism police is something that is to the benefit of women. Similarly, we need to think carefully about the involvement of counterterrorism in domestic violence services, and how this relates to the state of funding for such services. These fields are little researched thus far, and we should not be naive to the possibility that counterterrorism might be detrimental in this regard.

214

Appendix Chapter 6 Appears as

Description

Advert: local project, 2018

Prevent project advertisement –​training for women with teenage girls

Annual report of sporting organization, 2010

Annual report of a Prevent-​funded sports organization

Annual report: national organization, 2016 Annual report of a national organization receiving Prevent funding, 2015–​2016 Annual report: national women’s organization, 2014

Annual report of a national Prevent-​funded women’s organization

Community Safety Assessment, 2016

Townsville Community Safety Partnership: Strategic Assessment 2016

Community Safety Plan, 2008

Townsville’s original Community Safety Plan from 2008–​2020

Community Safety Plan, 2013–​2016

Townsville Community Safety Partnership Plan 2013 –​2016

Evaluation of Families programme, 2009/​ 2010

An evaluation of the families programme, 2009–​2010. External provider

Evaluation of Families programme, 2014–​2017

An evaluation of the Families programme, 2014–​2017. External provider

Evaluation of Prevent, 2011

An evaluation of local Prevent activities carried out by a third party in 2011

FOI Request, 2013

Freedom of Information request to Townsville Council

FOI Request, 2014

Freedom of Information request to Townsville Council

Grants allocation, 2009

Outline of grants allocation in Townsville

Guidance for parents, 2015

‘Advice to Parents and Carers: Keeping Children and Young People Safe Against Radicalisation and Extremism’. For parents with school-​age children

215

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

Appears as

Description

Guidance on safeguarding and Prevent, 2014

‘Townsville Guidance on Amending Safeguarding Policies to Include Prevent Issues’. Intended for schools

Guidance: Supporting Vulnerable Children, Townsville guidance: ‘Supporting 2015 Vulnerable Children: Preventing Violent Behaviour and Violent Extremism in Townsville’. For schools Local news, 2008

A news report about Islamists attending a Prevent-​sponsored debate and winning

Muslim women’s organization accounts, 2011

Accounts of a Muslim women’s organization that received Prevent funding in Townsville

Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 2016

Overview and Scrutiny Committee report: ‘Delivering the Prevent Duty; Promoting Safeguarding in Townsville: Scrutiny Review Report’

Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 2018

Minutes of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 22 March 2018

Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 2019

Minutes of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 28 January 2019

Overview and Scrutiny Committee Action Overview and Scrutiny Committee Plan, 2017 report: ‘Scrutiny Review Action Plan: Promoting Safeguarding in Townsville’ Presentation on Prevent activities, 2019

Townsville Prevent office presentation to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, January 2019: ‘Prevent in Townsville’

Prevent activities: women’s organization, 2017

Outline of Prevent-​funded activities at a national women’s organization

Prevent plan, [year–​year]

Townsville Prevent delivery framework and action plan for the noted annual period

Prevent plan, 2008–​2011

Prevent action plan for Townsville, 2008–​2011

Propaganda project report, 2009

Report on a Prevent-​funded project covering online propaganda

Report: Prevent and Family Courts, 2015

A report on a local conference about Prevent in the family courts

Reports on Somali population, 2011; 2015 A profile of the Somali population in Townsville and a police ‘task force’ report on policing the Somali community

216

Appendix

Appears as

Description A profile of the Somali population in Townsville and a police ‘task force’ report on policing the Somali community and a report on the policing of the Somali population in Townsville.

Safeguarding guidance, 2018

Multi-​Agency Safeguarding Thresholds Guidance, intended for use by safeguarding professionals and for the assessment of referrals

Somali crime report, 2014

A report on the policing of Somalis across the UK

Theatre Project Annual Return, 2020

An annual return for the company running the Theatre Project

Theatre Project Flyer, 2021

A flyer given to girls invited to the Theatre Project

Theatre Project Outline, 2021

An outline of the Theatre Project

Training for schools: videos, 2016

Training for local schools on how to prevent radicalization in young girls. Three videos

Violence Against Women Strategy, 2016

Townsville ‘Violence against Women and Girls Strategy 2016–​2019’. Created by the Violence Against Women Team

Women and the Hijab: Report, 2010

A report on the Townsville Prevent project, Women and the Hijab

Young women’s project: advert, 2016

Advert for a Prevent-​funded young women’s project

Young women’s project: press release, 2019 Statement on Prevent funding for the young women’s project Young women’s project: website, 2019

Website of a Prevent-​funded project for young women

Interviewees: Prevent professionals Participant code

Description and location

N-​ACPO-​PreventLead Detective Inspector at the National Prevent Delivery Unit, Association of Chief Police Officers –​Terrorism and Allied Matters N-​NGO-​ CounterExtremism

Ex-​local Prevent officer and counter-​extremism non-​ governmental organization (NGO) director (Tier 3/​National)

N-​Shanaz-​Member

Shanaz network member (National)

T1-P ​ revent-C ​ oordinator Prevent coordinator (Tier 1)

217

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

Participant code

Description and location

N-​NGO2-​ CounterExtremism

Counter-​extremism NGO director, delivering Prevent training (National)

N-​NGO3-​ CounterExtremism

Counter-​extremism NGO director, delivering Prevent interventions and training (National)

T1-​ Prevent education officer (Tier 1) PreventEducationOfficer T1-​NGO-​Safeguarding Director of multi-​service safeguarding charity (Tier 1) T1-​Police-​ PreventProjectLead

Police officer delivering women-​centric Prevent project (Tier 1)

T1-​Police-​PreventLead Head of Prevent, Counter-​Terrorism Unit (Tier 1) T1-​SocialWork-​ PreventLead

Lead social worker (Tier 1)

T3-​Police-​ChannelLead Police lead for Channel (Tier 3) T3-​Police-​PreventLead Police lead for Prevent (Tier 3) T3-P ​ revent-C ​ oordinator Local authority Prevent lead (Tier 3) T1-​Prevent-​ PreventProjectLead

Local Prevent worker on a women’s project (Tier 1)

T3-​Prevent-​ Coordinator2

Local authority Prevent lead (Tier 3)

N-​Prevent-​ PreventProjectLead

Third party project delivery contracted to Prevent (Tier 1)

T1-​Statutory-​ PreventLead

Prevent statutory sector coordinator (Tier 1)

Interviewees: Muslim and BME women Participant code

Description

MuslimWoman1

Female Muslim, 18–​30, Tier 1 city

MuslimWoman-​ MuslimWomensOrg1

Female Muslim, head of community organization, 30+​, Tier 1 city

MuslimWoman2

Female Muslim, 18–​30, Tier 1 city

CommunityOrgRep1

White female, employee in a community organization, Tier 1 city

MuslimWoman3

Female Muslim, 18–​30, Tier 1 city

MuslimWoman4

Female Muslim, 18–​30 charity worker, Tier 1 city

BMEWoman1-​SecularOrg1

Female ex-​Muslim, 30+​, representative of an organization for ex-​Muslims, Tier 1 city

MuslimWoman5

Female Muslim, 18–​30, Tier 1 city

MuslimWoman6

Female Muslim, 18–​30, Tier 1 city

218

Appendix

Participant code

Description

MuslimWoman-​ Female Muslim, member of a Black and minority BMEViolenceAgainstWomenOrg1 ethnic violence against women (VAW) organization, 30+​, Tier 1 city BMEWoman1-​SecularOrg2

South Asian female, member of a secular organization, 30+​, Tier 1 city

ViolenceAgainstWomenOrg2Rep White female, feminist, member of a local VAW board, 30+​, Tier 1 city

Interviewees: right-​wing women Participant number Description RightWingWoman1

Right-​wing female, 30+​, Tier 3 city

RightWingWoman2

Right-​wing trans female, nationalist and counter-​jihad activist, 30+​, Tier 1 city

RightWingWoman3

Right-​wing female, activist, 18–​30, Tier 1 city

RightWingWoman4

Father of participant 33, 30+​, Tier 1 city. Responses not included here.

RightWingWoman5

Right-​wing female, employee of a radical right media network, 18–​30, Tier 1 city

RightWingWoman6

Right-​wing female, 30+​, Tier 1 city

RightWingWoman7

Right-​wing female, 18–​30, Tier 1 city

RightWingWoman8

Right-​wing female, Identitarian political organizer, 30+​, Tier 3 city

RightWingWoman9

Right-​wing female, independent journalist and activist, 18–​30, Tier 1 city

219

Notes Chapter 2 1

The only exception to this is the Desistance and Disengagement Programme (DDP), which takes persons who have had some involvement in terrorism and looks to stop that. This is dealt more with in Chapter 3, although we don’t know much about it at this time.

Chapter 3 1

2

3

It is not possible to break down the number of priority and supported areas by year, as the information is not public. Private correspondence with a local Prevent officer. This information is also not public, and so it is difficult to get up to date information. According to the website, http://​www.cage.ngo, CAGE is an ‘independent advocacy organisation working to empower communities impacted by the War on Terror’. CAGE has produced a wide variety of research on counterterrorism in the UK, and has been variously praised and condemned for its stance opposing counterterrorism laws in the UK.

Chapter 5 1

This film was funded by the Home Office in 2011–​2012, separately to Shanaz.

Chapter 6 1

Full data for 2017 is not available.

Chapter 7 1

2

A charitable interpretation here is that this is the case because the conversation at the time was about Prevent, and local Prevent practitioners might personally recognize this structural disadvantage. Whether or not this is the case is not something that is discernible from the data. It is interesting to note that this explanation was given by an interviewee who considered Prevent not to be gendered at all.

Chapter 8 1

It is worth pointing out that many practitioners contest the accuracy of these stories. This is discussed in Chapter 3, but it is worth reiterating here that inaccurate reporting doesn’t necessarily cause anti-​Prevent views. It can also be the case that it simply reinforces already existing views, which could have developed from some other experience entirely.

220

Notes

2

3

4

5

This is a reference to the #MakingAStand campaign, which saw the use of a ‘Union Jack hijab’. The ‘Poppy hijab’ was a commercial product. The former were part of a Prevent-​ funded campaign. More information is available from Allen (2014b) and Hooper (2016). Presumably a swastika in rainbow colours, but I didn’t ask her to redraw it during the interview. In this case, posting stickers of Pepe the Frog and the Kekistan flag. The former is a cartoon frog from Boys Club by Matt Furie, which for some time was adopted by the Alt-​Right, to Furie’s annoyance. The latter is a flag for a made-​up country popular on 4Chan. The flag is similar to a German Nazi war flag. Good times are had by laughing at people getting mad at a cartoon frog and the flag of a fake country. No interview codes are used in this section. While a number of measures have been taken to protect participant identities, it is always possible that someone networked with a participant will be able to pick them out. While a small possibility, for this reason it is better not to use any codes so that participants are fully protected.

221

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261

Index References to figures appear in italic type; those in bold type refer to tables. A Afghanistan  35, 179 agency, removal of  60, 64, 73, 110, 118, 120, 199 Algeria  38 Al-​Qaeda  35, 36, 38, 45, 170 Althusser, Louis  2, 5, 64, 186, 196, 202, 209 An-​Nisa Society  75–​76 Arabic  78 arts and culture, participation of Muslim women in  80, 85, 131 Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO)  87, 93, 99, 101, 106–​107 Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) -​Terrorism and Allied Matters (TAM)  99, 101 B Baldét, William  56 Ball, Helen  115, 116, 117, 120 ‘Bethnal Green girls’  72, 140–​141 biological determinants of behavior  26, 107 Black and minority ethnic (BME) groups  funding of services for  200 Muslim and BME women  19–​20 Townsville projects targeted at male youth  128–​129 see also Muslim and BME women, opinions on Prevent Bouattia, Malia  57 Bourdieu, Pierre  26 Britain First (BF)  139 ‘British Islam’  172, 180, 182 British values  51, 64, 71, 104–​105, 201 Building a Stronger Britain Together  98, 162 C CAGE  64, 181, 220ch3n3 Cameron, David  59, 172 Cantle Report  45–​46, 77 capitalism  196, 205, 207–​208, 210

case study areas  12–​13 Channel programme  45, 53–​58, 60, 63, 203 case studies  55–​56, 63 domestic violence  93, 95 mentors  55, 59 women as a percentage of cases  72 child protection issues  137, 139, 158 child protection orders, Prevent threatening families with  177, 181 ‘childhood radicalization’  61 children of migrants  138 Choudhry, Roshonara  72–​73, 90, 108, 171 colonialism, legacy of  191 Commission for Countering Extremism  52, 94 communities  engagement with ‘hard to reach’  155–​156 women in  81–​82, 88–​89, 106–​108, 113, 154, 164 see also Muslim communities community cohesion  45–​46, 47, 48, 49 criticism of funding stream  184 links between Prevent and  124, 126, 134, 139, 142 Shanaz project  103–​104, 105–​106, 106–​107 Townsville pilot projects  123 community policing  127 Community Safety Plan  125, 134, 135, 136, 137, 143 Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT)  13–​14 CONTEST  1, 42, 44 2006 strategy  44–​45, 68 2009 strategy  70, 82 2011 strategy  70 2012 annual report  58 2013 annual report  91 2014 annual report  89 2018 strategy  55, 72, 92 four strands  1, 44 Corcoran, M.S.  32

262

Index

Counter-​Extremism and Safeguarding Bill  4–​5 Counter-​Extremism Strategy  50, 61, 87–​88, 190 dichotomy of ‘British values’ and ‘extremism’  51, 91, 104–​105 religion  90 violence against women  93 women’s rights  71, 94–​95 Counter-​Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019  43 Counter-​Terrorism Policing  94, 110 Counter-​Terrorism and Security Act (CTSA) 2015  50, 51, 70, 92 culture  arts and culture, participation of Muslim women in  85, 131 and oppression of women  74, 78, 95–​96, 199 ‘othering’ of minority  199 participation of Muslim women in arts and  80 and religion  84–​85, 89–​91 Cumann na mBan  35 Cutts, D.  38 D data collection  5–​6, 14 documentary data  10–​11, 14–​15 interviews  11, 15–​16 Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG)  43, 46, 49, 61, 68, 69, 74, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 91, 92, 210 depoliticization of activism  63–​64, 73, 154, 167, 179–​180 women travelling to Syria  110, 118, 120, 179 deradicalization  52 Desistance and Disengagement Programme (DDP)  52, 54 documentary data  10–​11, 14–​15 domestic violence  advice given to schools on referring cases  136 and extremism  136–​137, 149, 170, 186 funding  183, 187, 213 marginalized women accessing services  22, 200, 213 a risk factor for radicalization  93, 138, 169–​170, 186–​187 women’s views on Prevent and  186–​187 see also violence against women Domestic Violence Forum  134 E education of Muslim women  79, 87 employment  mothers ‘opting in’ or ‘opting out’ of  206 Muslim women  79, 87, 105–​106, 127, 177

Empowering Muslim Women: Case Studies  69, 70, 73–​74, 78, 79, 80, 83, 202 English Defence League (EDL)  139, 167, 192 Prevent workshops on  139–​140 Equalities Act  92, 100, 120, 153, 156 ETA  25 Evaluation of Families programme  144–​145, 211 extremism  advice given to schools on recognizing  136 domestic violence and  136–​137, 149, 170, 186 failure at local level to agree on a definition  123 far-​r ight  4 functions of women extremists  34–​39 gender and analysis of  29–​30, 41 hijab inviting suspicion as an indicator of  181–​182 joining extremist groups  30–​34, 40–​41 –i​lberalism dichotomy linked to women’s rights  68, 71–​72, 91, 95, 157, 190–​191 media and representation of women extremists  39–​40 misogyny and  137, 186 of parents as a child safeguarding issue  61, 134, 140, 177 political, constructed concept  4–​5 women underrepresented in literature on  24–​25 see also Islamist extremism Extremism Analysis Unit  50 F Fairweather, E.  32, 35, 37 families  fear of Prevent’s removal of children from  177, 181, 200–​201 ‘good parenting’ and protective  144–​145, 149–​150 problem of radical  141–​142 role of women in  163–​166 and spotting radicalization  89, 141, 147, 165–​166 support for families of referees and those arrested under Terrorism Act  158 Townsville projects  143–​145, 147, 210–​211 women in home, community and  81–​82, 88–​89, 106–​108, 113, 163–​166 women’s views on Prevent’s intrusion into space of  176–​179 Families Matter  89, 109–​110 family courts  61, 134, 140, 177, 181, 200 far-​r ight  activism rooted in liberalism  180 Channel programme referrals  53

263

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

extremism  4 gender and voting for  24–​25, 38 hyper-​masculinity  36–​37, 192 misogyny  36–​37, 38, 192–​193 positioning of women as in the home  35, 37, 38 Prevent broadens focus to include  52 Townsville concerned with  139–​140 types of Prevent intervention for individuals  59 violence against women  170, 192, 193 women joining  33 see also right-​wing women, opinions on Prevent fathers  88, 207, 210, 211 female genital mutilation (FGM)  134, 159, 190, 191, 197 feminist literature  25, 27–​30, 33, 41 forced marriage  93, 94, 106, 159, 161, 190 freedom of speech  62–​63 Freiheitliche Partei Osterreichs  38 funding  46, 97–​98, 184 changes to Prevent funding after 2011  49–​50 domestic violence  183, 187, 213 meeting indicators for extra  69 non-​Prevent  161 prioritizing of faith-​based  183, 189, 200 priority level of different Prevent Tiers  10, 49–​50, 159, 198 Townsville projects  127–​130, 129, 142–​143, 143 women’s groups  161, 163, 183, 200 G gender, social construction of  8, 28–​29 ‘gendered’, Prevent as  152–​154 Gohir, Shaista  76, 98 Gonzalez-​Perez, M.  29, 37, 38 ‘governance feminism’  96, 119, 146, 199 Guidance for parents, 2015  138, 139, 145, 215 H Halley, J.  83, 96, 199 Hamas  36 Hassan, Ahmed  55–​56 hate crimes  79, 109, 127, 134, 146, 159, 180 Hearn, J.  152 hidden populations  17–​18 hijab  anxiety around wearing  138, 180–​181 feminist discourse on  30 a Muslim female police officer speaking about  131 projects on women and  131, 132, 146 self-​censorship and  180–​183, 201 suspicion as an indicator of extremism  181–​182

Union Jack  182 a visible ‘sign of difference’  62, 79 Hounslow, London Borough of  92 I identities  intersectional  8, 29–​30 sidelining of conflicting  38 Ideological State Apparatus  5, 22, 64, 196, 202–​204 interpellation of mothering subject  208–​209 motherhood ideologies  204–​208 mothers and materialism  209–​212 ideology  motherhood  204–​208, 211 patriarchal  196, 201, 202, 204, 212 and Prevent policy  49, 57, 58–​63, 64 radicalization, safeguarding and  58–​63 and radicalization of women  170–​172 reluctance to tackle extreme Islamist  50 reproducing of  195–​196, 202 state vs. extremist  68, 71 –​values dichotomy  51, 64, 71–​72, 91, 104–​105 women central to right-​wing  192 imams  46, 59, 85 Imkaan  94, 184 ‘Incel’ violence  94 infantilization, women’s feelings of  179–​180 intensive motherhood ideology  205–​206, 210, 212 internet and radicalization  141, 145, 146–​147, 157, 165, 169, 171 interpellation  202–​203, 204 of mothering subject  208–​209 subject as always-​already  209 interviewees  218–​219 interviews  11, 16 Irish Republican Army (IRA)  31–​32, 35, 37 Islamic State  advice to schools on teaching about  141 appealing to women at risk of travelling to territories of  71–​72, 141 changing role of women in  35–​36 forcing a rethink on Prevent policy  23, 72, 166, 198 Kurdish soldier girls fighting  39 open letters from Syrian mothers describing  114–​115 Prevent narratives of women who travel to  6, 120, 121, 166, 198–​199, 205 Prevent Tragedies created in reaction to increasing influence of  119 reasons for young men joining  168 targeting young women online  141, 170 women joining  6, 27, 72, 168, 170–​171, 198–​199

264

Index

women members of  27, 35–​36 women returnees from territories of  72, 117–​118, 120–​121 see also Syria, travelling to Islamist extremism  4, 37, 49, 90, 170 Channel programme referrals  53 reluctance to tackle  50 threat of  189 types of Prevent intervention for  59 women’s roles  33, 37 Islamophobia  30, 57, 138, 185, 199, 200, 213 J Jackson, R.  3, 4, 183 jihadi brides  103, 110, 119, 172, 179 K Khaled, Leila  40 Khan, N.  103, 104, 105, 108 Khan, Sara  56, 64, 93, 157 Khatun, Shiria  106 Kundnani, A.  2, 44, 46, 62, 64, 125 L language skills  78, 87 leaders and role models, Muslim women as  79–​80 LGBTQ+​ people  46, 156 liberal feminism  33, 205–​206 colour-​blindness  29 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)  34 literature on terrorism and extremism, paucity of women in  20, 23–​27 local delivery of Prevent  priority level divisions by tier  10, 49–​50, 198 see also Townsville, local delivery of Prevent London bombings 7/​7  45, 68 M #MakingAStand  98, 221n2 male-​dominated power structures  30–​31 materialism and mothers  209–​212 May, Theresa  48–​49, 59, 108 McKie, L.  152 media, women terrorists and extremists in  39–​40 men  attractions of Islamic State for young  168 male-​dominated power structures  30–​31 ‘masculine domination’ of social life  26 overpowering within families  165 in public sphere  26, 196 stereotypes  26, 165 Townsville project targeting BME youth  128–​129 traits associated with  28

see also misogyny; patriarchy methodology  13–​14 Metropolitan Police  97, 99, 110 records  98–​99 Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA)  12, 72, 74, 77–​78, 79, 81, 83, 114 misogyny  extremism and  137, 186 in Muslim community  83–​84, 157, 165, 186 in right-​wing and far-​r ight movements 36–​37, 38, 192–​193 in terror groups  35 mosques  attitudes to Prevent  65 lack of access and vulnerability to radicalization  90, 108–​109, 157, 171 patriarchal attitudes  100, 105 police reliance on male gatekeepers  100 reaching out to women who do not attend  108–​109, 145 representation of women on committees  77, 132, 157 social networks  33 Townsville projects with  131–​132, 145, 147 women’s access to and participation in  76, 82, 84, 90, 99, 157, 171 motherhood ideologies  204–​208 interpellation of mothering subject  208–​209 material actions in support of  209–​212 mothers  35, 81, 88–​89, 117, 196 dealing with concerns over criminalization of children by Prevent  117–​118 dual demands of capitalism and motherhood  205, 207–​208, 212 Muslim and BME women’s views of Prevent targeting of  176–​179 open letters from Syrian  114–​115 Prevent an additional burden upon  176, 200–​201, 212 Prevent professionals’ views on care role of  164, 166 Prevent Tragedies  advice on how to spot signs of radicalization  115–​117 leaflets for  114, 208–​209 targeting mothers of daughters  112–​115, 121, 198–​199 prominent in Shanaz project  107–​108 Townsville Prevent  to build awareness of internet radicalization of daughters  146–​147 support network for  131 Your Mother documentary aimed at  98, 108 ‘Muslim and BME women’  19 categorization in this project  175–​176 see also Muslim women

265

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

Muslim and BME women, opinions on Prevent  13, 21–​22, 137, 174–​175, 175–​187 families and mothers  176–​179 hijab and self-​censorship  180–​183 infantilization and depoliticization of women  179–​180 passive forms of resistance  176–​177 Prevent and domestic violence  186–​187 Prevent and women’s projects  183–​186 trust and transparency issues  185–​186, 187 Muslim communities  anxieties over Channel programme  56 construction of ‘risk’ groups in  62 criticisms of Prevent in regard to  43, 46–​47, 57–​58, 87, 117 partnerships with government to prevent extremism  68–​69 patriarchy in  83–​84, 100, 105–​106, 118, 156, 157, 165 Prevent first era policy focused on  43, 45–​48, 77, 85–​86 Prevent policy after 2011 dropping explicit focus on  86, 87, 96, 118–​119 ‘responsibilization strategy’  46, 48, 51 risk profiles in Townsville  127 social networks  33 support for Prevent  65 women in home, family and  81–​82, 88–​89, 106–​108, 113, 163–​166 see also community cohesion Muslim Council of Great Britain  57, 178 ‘Muslim Sisters’  37–​38 Muslim women  challenges of patriarchy and misogyny 83–​84, 156, 157, 186 culture and religion as barriers to participation in public life  84–​85, 89–​91 education  79 employment  79, 87, 105–​106, 127, 177 ‘empowerment’  71, 74, 77, 83, 96, 98, 146, 180, 184–​185, 199 engagement with police  87, 100, 117 in home, family and community  81–​82, 88–​89, 106–​108, 113, 163–​166 as leaders and role models  79–​80 #MakingAStand  98 marginalization in feminist discourse  30 mosques, access and participation in  76, 82, 84, 90, 99, 157, 171 reaching out to women who do not attend  108–​109, 145 participation in arts and culture  80, 85, 131 Prevent 2006 and 2009 and focus on 68–​72, 77, 77–​81

Prevent 2011 strategy and move away from focus solely on  70–​71, 118 Prevent Tragedies project  109–​118, 119 Shanaz project  87, 99–​109, 118–​119, 120, 121 stereotypes  78–​79 SuperSisters online magazine  98 Townsville Prevent projects targeting 130–​132, 130, 143–​148, 144, 147, 203–​204 see also mothers; Muslim and BME women, opinions on Prevent N National Health Service (NHS)  63, 116 self-​censorship in  182 National Indicator 35 (NI35) indicators  65, 69, 125, 126 National Muslim Women’s Advisory Group (NMWAG)  69, 70, 76, 79, 82, 85, 98 National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC)  15, 73, 89, 99, 210 national projects, Prevent  see Prevent national projects post-​2011 Neocleous, M.  2 Northern Ireland conflict  31–​32, 35, 37 O Office for Security and Counter-​Terrorism (OSCT)  44, 49, 71, 97, 98–​99 Office for Students  52 Open Society Justice Initiative  2, 58 oppression of women  feminism and  29–​30 minority cultures and  74, 78, 95–​96, 199 in Northern Ireland  32 Prevent and tackling  67–​68, 74–​76 outsider, working as an  6–​10 P pacific femininity  31, 99, 107, 120, 164–​165 Palestine  31, 40 parenting  policies  207, 211–​212 projects for ‘good’  144–​145, 149–​150 see also mothers parents, extreme beliefs and child safeguarding issues  61, 134, 140, 177 participants, research  16–​20 Muslim, BME and right-​wing women  19–​20 Prevent professionals  18–​19 Pathfinder  44, 76 projects 2007  85 year funding of Prevent in Townsville  123, 123, 126 patriarchy  in Muslim community  83–​84, 100, 105–​106, 118, 156, 157, 165

266

Index

patriarchal ideologies  196, 201, 202, 204, 212 police reinforcing attitudes of  100 Prevent accused of strengthening norms of  177, 212 radicalization, abuse and  169–​170 police  accusations of spying levelled at  117, 125–​126 challenging stereotypes within  131 ‘community policing’  127 efforts to prevent travel to Syria  110, 112 encouragement to call police over radicalization concerns  112, 117 engagement with hard to reach communities  155–​156 involvement in Townsville  124, 125, 127, 131 issues with presence on Prevent boards  125–​126 Muslim women’s engagement with  87, 100, 117 Prevent Tragedies and  99, 110, 117, 208 referrals to Channel  54 reinforcing patriarchal attitudes in Muslim community  100 Shanaz project and  99–​102, 103, 109, 119 understanding of contemporary activism  189–​190, 191 ‘policy spirals’  126, 137 ‘policy transfers’  137, 139 positionality  6–​10 Prepare  44 Prevent  1–​2 criticism of  2, 11, 43, 46–​47, 50–​51, 57–​58, 62–​63, 87, 203, 213 depoliticization of women’s activism 63–​64, 73, 154, 167, 179–​180 duty  2, 20, 50–​51, 53–​54, 57, 92, 95, 213 and effect on freedom of speech  62–​63 evaluating effectiveness of  203 a framework for understanding  201–​212 issues of trust and transparency  177, 181, 184, 185–​186, 187 locating problem in individual  63–​64, 167 misrecognition of  11 at national, regional and local level  10 quality of public information on  64–​65 receiving and engaging with  199–​201 spying accusations  2, 43, 46, 64–​65, 117 women and  5–​6, 196–​199 Prevent, women’s opinions on  see Muslim and BME women, opinions on Prevent; right-​wing activist women, opinions on Prevent Prevent Advisory Group  134 Prevent Equality Impact Assessment 2011  86, 89, 91 Prevent Guide for Local Partners  66, 80, 81

Prevent local delivery  priority level divisions by tier  10, 49–​50, 198 see also Townsville, local delivery of Prevent Prevent national policy documents  12, 20–​21, 66–​96 occasional themes 2006 and 2009  77–​86 culture and religion  84–​85 patriarchy and misogyny  83–​84 seeking to remove barriers to Muslim women’s participation  77–​81 women in family, home and community  81–​82 occasional themes 2011 and 2018  86–​95 culture and religion  89–​91 violence against women  92–​94 women in family, home and community  88–​89 women’s rights  91–​92, 96 overarching themes  67–​76 rationale for engagement of women  72–​74 tackling oppression of women  67–​68, 74–​76 women as a key target  68–​72 theme of the peaceful woman  73–​74, 80 working groups  68, 77, 78, 81, 91 Prevent national projects post-​2011  12, 21, 97–​121 access to information on  98–​99 focused on Muslim women  118–​119 Prevent Tragedies  99, 109–​118, 119, 120, 121 RICU products  97 Shanaz project  87, 99–​109, 118–​119, 120, 121 Prevent policy overview  20, 42–​65, 198 concepts  Channel programme  45, 53–​58, 63 Desistance and Disengagement Programme  53, 54 ideology, safeguarding and radicalization  57, 58–​63 concepts and components  53–​63 development  44–​53 2006  44–​47 2009  47–​48 2011  48–​50 2015  50–​51 2018  52–​53 political policing  53 priority level tiers and funding  10, 49–​50, 198 Prevent professionals and understanding of women  13, 21, 151–​173 challenges to including women  155–​158 safety of women reporting their spouse  157–​158 women-​only meetings  156–​157, 160

267

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

gendered nature of Prevent  152–​154 interviewees  18–​19 involving women in practice  158–​163 access  159–​160 mixing of non-​Prevent and Prevent issues  161–​162 recruiting talented women to Prevent  162–​163 wellbeing centre for women  162–​163 women’s groups  160–​163 radicalized women  166–​172, 172–​173 ideology and  170–​172 patriarchy and abuse  169–​170 romance and  168–​169 women and family  163–​166 Prevent Strategy: Local Best Practice Catalogue  71, 97 Prevent Tragedies  99, 109–​118, 119, 120, 121 delivery  111–​112 development  109–​110 document collection  15 an example of interpellation  208–​209 general content and messaging  112 how to spot signs of radicalization  115–​117 issue of women’s rights  115, 120 leaflet campaign  114, 208–​209 mothers and daughters  112–​115, 121, 198–​199 objectives and structure  110–​111 open letters from Syrian mothers 114–​115 promoting Prevent  117–​118, 121 radio campaign  114 Preventing Extremism Together  68 Preventing Violent Extremism Action Plan  69 Preventing Violent Extremism Community Leadership Fund  68 Preventing Violent Extremism: Next Steps for Communities  82 Preventing Violent Extremism: Sixth Report of Session 2009–​10  81 private sphere  26, 35, 201 extremist rhetoric placing women in  35, 37, 38 of family, home and community  81–​82, 88–​89, 106–​108, 113, 163–​166 women pushed out of public sphere into  29, 180 Protect  44, 180 public sphere  205 marginalization of women in  29, 84–​85, 119, 180, 196, 198, 201 men in  26, 196 Pursue  44 Q Qurashi, F.  57–​58

R racism  57, 60, 138 Islamophobia  30, 57, 138, 185, 199, 200, 213 racist movements, women joining  34 radical feminism  33, 205–​206 radicalization  advice given to schools on recognizing  136 of ‘Bethnal Green girls’  140–​141 childhood  61 Choudhry case  72–​73, 90, 108, 171 domestic violence a risk factor for  93, 138, 169–​170, 186–​187 explanations for male  168 factors in  28, 48 families and spotting  89, 141, 147, 165–​166 and family courts  140 ideology, safeguarding and  57, 58–​63 internet  141, 145, 146–​147, 157, 165, 169, 171 lack of access to mosques and vulnerability to  90, 108–​109, 157, 171 linking of safeguarding and  139, 169 in Prevent strategy of 2006  45, 47–​48 in Prevent strategy of 2011  49 in Prevent strategy of 2018  52, 62 Prevent Tragedies on how to spot signs of  115–​117 Prevent Tragedies targeting mothers of daughters at risk of  112–​115, 121, 198–​199 Prevent training to spot  50 radicalized women  ideology and  170–​172 patriarchy and abuse  169–​170 romance and  168–​169 recognition of risk of women’s  72–​73, 90, 108–​109, 120, 140–​141 religious education and  90, 108–​109, 157, 171 and removal of agency  60, 64, 73, 120, 199 Townsville project in response to risk of women’s  145–​147, 150 Townsville theatre project for girls at risk of  147–​148 women considered at low risk of  67, 72–​73 women getting interested in politics a ‘sign’ of  116 women to prevent radicalization of others  73–​74, 81, 106–​108 mothers and daughters  112–​115, 121, 198–​199 of young women as akin to grooming for sexual abuse  60, 139, 141 religion and culture  84–​85, 89–​91

268

Index

religious education  81, 82, 145–​146, 157, 171–​172 of children  181 and radicalization of women  90, 108–​109, 157, 171 Repressive State Apparatus (RSA)  202 research  design  10–​12 future  212–​214 method  13–​14 sampling  16–​20 working as an outsider  6–​10 Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU)  81, 97, 98, 101, 102, 108 Rigby, Lee  50 ‘right-​wing women’  19 see also far-​r ight right-​wing women, opinions on Prevent  13, 22, 175, 187–​193, 201 belief Prevent is just for Muslims  188–​189 knowledge of Prevent  188 misogyny  192–​193 perception of being unfairly reported to Prevent  191 Prevent failing to address needs of right-​wing women  189–​190 strengthening and cooperating with Prevent  191 threats to women’s rights  190–​191 risk groups  British Pakistani males constructed as  62 in Townsville, 2008–​2011  126–​127 in Townsville, 2011–​2021  137–​142 for travel to Syria  116–​117, 140–​141, 153–​154 see also vulnerability S safeguarding  50, 93, 96, 110, 120, 139, 158 of children of extremist parents  61, 134, 140 guidance on school referrals  60–​61, 136, 138, 139 ideology, radicalization and  57, 58–​63 integration of Prevent into structures of  137, 139, 159–​160, 198, 213 policy transfer  137, 139 radicalization and links with  139, 169 Townsville referrals  125, 133–​134 training  143 Sageman, Marc  24, 29 sampling  16–​20 Muslim, BME and right-​wing women  19–​20 Prevent professionals  18–​19 Schmidt, R.  36, 72, 142, 170, 171 schools  advice on safeguarding  60–​61, 136, 138, 139

Prevent presentations on EDL in  139–​140 strategy of accessing women at  160 Townsville advice on recognizing extremism and radicalization  136 training resource for  141 securitization  4 security forces, overlooking of women  33, 36, 142 self-​censorship  180–​183 sex and gender  28 sexism  35, 40, 172–​173 sexual abuse  139, 141, 169–​170, 183, 193 sexual health advice  74, 75, 82 sexual violence  31, 32, 34, 75, 192 sexuality of women fighters  39–​40 Shanaz project  87, 99–​109, 118–​119, 120, 121 addressing barriers to  105–​106, 119–​120 development  99–​101 dissolution  109 document collection  15 guidance document  103 integration of women’s organizations into  104, 119 moving beyond Prevent  105–​106, 119 myth-​busting document  103, 104 objectives and delivery  102–​104 promoting Prevent  104–​105, 121 representing women in  106–​109 social media output  103 structure  101–​102 Shining Path  34 Sian, K.  57, 62, 138 Sisters Against Violent Extremism  98, 108 snowball sampling  17 social networks  33 Somali community  128, 129–​130, 147, 206 Spierings, N.  25, 38 sporting activities, participation of Muslim women in  80 stereotypes  men  26, 165 Muslim women  78–​79 women  22, 23, 25–​26, 39, 81, 155 suicide attacks  27, 36, 38, 73 SuperSisters  98 Supporting Vulnerable Children  136, 138, 145 Syria, travelling to  attractions for young men of  168 attractions for young women of  116–​117, 141, 168, 199 dealing with women returning  72, 117–​118, 120–​121 debate after Bethnal Green girls travel  72, 140–​141 depoliticization of women  110, 118, 120, 179 ‘grooming’ of women  110, 120, 141

269

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM

numbers of people  120 Prevent professionals’ ‘shock’ at women travelling  167 Prevent Tragedies in an effort to stop  109–​118 Prevent Tragedies leaflets on danger of  208–​209 risk factors  116–​117, 140–​141, 153–​154 safeguarding and Prevent in schools to address  139 Shanaz project addressing crisis in  103 Townsville project in response to risk of  146–​147 see also Islamic State

family projects  143–​145, 147, 210–​211 integration of agendas of VAWG and 134–​136, 139 issues with ‘bottom-​up’ approach  125–​126 Pathfinder year projects  123, 124, 126 ‘policy spiral’  126, 137 ‘policy transfer’  137, 139 propaganda project  128–​129 referrals  125, 133–​134 women, projects with  148–​149, 149 women ‘instrumentalized’ in  127 trust and transparency issues  177, 181, 184, 185–​186, 187

T terrorism  explanations of women’s engagement with  73, 141, 167, 169 gender and analysis of  29–​30, 41 moving further away from politics  62 political, constructed concept  3–​4 support for families of those arrested for  158 threat of Islamist  189 women underrepresented in literature on  23–​27 Terrorism Act 2000  42–​43 Terrorism Act 2001 (TACT)  126, 177 Terrorism Act 2006  43 terrorists  fetishizing of women  39, 40 functions of women  34–​39 leadership  30–​31, 36 media representation of women  39–​40 women acting as couriers for  33 women joining groups  30–​34, 40–​41 Islamic State  6, 27, 72, 168, 170–​171, 198–​199 theoretical sampling  16 Timms, Stephen  72–​73 Townsville, local delivery of Prevent  13, 21, 122–​150 2008–​2011  124–​132 project funding  127–​130, 129 at risk groups  126–​127 structure and objectives  124–​126, 124 women in Prevent  130–​132, 130 2011–​2021  132–​148 project funding and objectives  142–​143, 143 at risk groups  137–​142 structure and objectives  132–​137, 133 women in Prevent, 2011–​2019  143–​147, 144, 203–​204 2020–​2021 projects  147–​148, 147 Community Safety Plan  125, 134, 135, 136, 137, 143 document collection  15

U UK Police and Partners: Working with Mothers to Prevent Tragedies  208 V values–​ideology dichotomy  51, 64, 71–​72, 91, 104–​105 violence  female  26–​27, 38 relationship between women and  27–​30 women as biologically less disposed to  107 violence against women  as a form of extremism  136–​137 integration of Prevent and VAWG agendas  134–​136, 149 in Prevent policy  92–​94 in right-​wing and far-​r ight movements  192, 193 see also domestic violence Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG)  122, 134–​136, 149, 193 vulnerability  Counter-​Extremism Strategy on  51 factors of  116 ‘grooming’, removal of agency and portrayals of  60, 63, 64, 73, 110, 118, 120, 137, 141 Prevent policy and language of  47–​48 Prevent professionals on  167 Prevent training to spot  50 and safeguarding  60, 110, 137 Vulnerability Assessment Framework  48, 54–​55, 61, 62, 116, 168 W wellbeing centre for women  162–​163 women  challenges for Prevent in including  155–​158 ‘emotional’  22, 120, 141, 154 and family  163–​166 functions of women terrorists and extremists  34–​39 as ‘hard to reach’  155–​156 involving women in Prevent practice  158–​163

270

Index

joining terrorist and extremist groups 30–​34, 40–​41 a key target for Prevent  68–​72 pacific femininity  31, 99, 107, 120, 164–​165 and Prevent  5–​6, 196–​199 Prevent an additional burden upon  176, 200–​201, 212 Prevent and rationale for engagement of  72–​74 Prevent and tackling oppression of  74–​76 in Prevent national policy documents  66–​96 Prevent professionals and understanding  151–​173 radicalized  166–​172 recruiting talented women to Prevent  162–​163 relationship with violence  27–​30 representation in Shanaz  106–​109 safety of women making referrals  157–​158 security forces overlooking of  33, 36, 142 stereotypes  22, 23, 25–​26, 39, 78–​79, 81, 155 terrorists and extremists in media  39–​40 Townsville Prevent projects targeting  130–​ 132, 130, 143–​148, 144, 147, 203–​204 traits associated with  28 see also mothers; Muslim and BME women, opinions on Prevent; Muslim women; oppression of women; right-​ wing women, opinions on Prevent; violence against women

women-​only Prevent meetings  156–​ 157, 160 Women’s Aid  187 women’s groups  160–​163 funding of  161, 163, 183, 200 in right-​wing movements  192 women’s views on Prevent involvement with  183–​186 women’s rights  dichotomy of extremism/​lberalism linked to  68, 71–​72, 91, 95, 157, 190–​191 embrace of religious over secular as detrimental to  182–​183 Islamic State and disregard for  141 oppressive ‘other’ and degrading of  199 Prevent and promotion of  74–​76, 173 criticisms of Prevent’s claims to promote  75–​76 Prevent Tragedies pledge to protect  115, 120 right-​wing women’s views on threat to  190–​191 in service of state  22, 71–​72, 91, 197–​198 a theme of Prevent national policy documents  91–​92, 96 Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent (WRAP)  57, 59–​60, 136, 181–​182 Y Your Mother  98, 108 Z Zaslove, A.  25, 38

271

“A highly original study, bringing women to the forefront of analysis of Prevent. Sam Andrews’ impressive empirical work demonstrates the reductive conceptions of women used in counter-extremism programmes.” Charlotte Heath-Kelly, University of Warwick

“Sam’s book gives us an excellent glimpse into the world of Prevent and the role of women within it. His work challenges how women are seen within the world of preventing violent extremism and the issues they face. His book is a must-read for practitioners and academics alike.” Joshua Skoczylis, University of Lincoln

Sam Andrews is Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Lincoln.

The UK’s ‘Prevent’ strategy aims to dissuade vulnerable groups from supporting terrorism, and women have been involved since its inception in 2006. Sam Andrews argues that women are still viewed within a traditional gendered framework as primarily peaceful and are mostly engaged as mothers, enlisted by Prevent to watch over and guide their families and communities. Drawing on interviews and case studies, this book reveals how Prevent goes beyond simple counter-terrorism messaging to fund a diverse array of projects, from support for victims of domestic violence to parenting courses, shaping wider engagement with women in society.

ISBN 978-1-5292-2155-8

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