Fighting Ideological War

The Heritage Foundation hosted a lecture on Thursday, May 24 with Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo of the Westminster Institute contrasting the UK’s methods of radical Islamic terrorism engagement to those of the U.S.

“This is a topic that is not for today, but for this particular time in history,” host and Vice President of External Relations at the Heritage Foundation Becky Norton Dunlop said.

Sookhdeo first examined the positive steps that both the U.S. and UK have taken before talking about the ineffective approaches when addressing the issue of terrorism.

“In engaging in a policy of engagement with the Muslim communities (the U.S. and UK governments) recognized that it was vital for Muslims to be brought on board in any counterterrorism strategy,” Sookhdeo said. “In other words you could not leave the house of Islam out of this discussion and in particular their communities who are to be found here in the U.S. and in the UK.”

According to Sookhdeo, the UK developed a counterterrorism framework known as Contest to respond to terrorism. It consists of four parts: prevent- by discouraging people to become or support terrorists, pursue- to stop the attacks, protest- strengthen protection against attacks, and prepare- reduce the impact of attacks.

However, in a quote Sookhdeo provided from The Prevent Strategy of the UK Home Office, “It failed to tackle the extremist ideology at the heart of the threat  … and in trying to reach those at risk of radicalization, funding sometimes even reached the very organizations that Prevent should have been confronting.”

After noticing that their current Prevent Strategy was not working, the UK decided to adjust the program and focus on ideology, institutions and individuals. It is in this aspect that Sookhdeo believes the U.S. is handling Islamic extremism with a system similar to the old Prevent Strategy instead of adjusting their system like the UK has.

“The ideology of extremism and terrorism is the problem; legitimate religious belief emphatically is not. But we will not work with extremist organizations that oppose our values of universal human rights, equality before the law, democracy and full participation in our society,” read the Prevent Strategy as presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for the Home Department by Command of Her Majesty in June 2011.

One observation that Sookhdeo noticed is that the American government has slowly been drifting away from facing the Islamic issue head on. There has been a drastic change in the language used in terms of terrorism from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. Sookhdeo suggests that Obama is trying to be sensitive Muslims when he should be using accurate terminology to address the issue.

Sookhdeo argues that unless the American government can start addressing Islamic issues by naming and understanding them that the government is going to keep backsliding in its efforts to prevent and further understand terrorism.

“I think the remarkable thing about both our countries which has a secular basis to it, is that we allow for the existence for all religions and none under the law,” Sookhdeo said. “And then when it comes to the followers of those religions then they must be protected by the law against all evil intentions and I think both of our governments are to be praised for pursuing such a course of actions and policies.”

Kate Powley is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.

If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail contact@academia.org