A Study exploring Questions relating to Partnership between Police and Muslim Communities in the Prevention of Violent Extremism amongst Muslim Youth.

In the UK, in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings, alongside a series of attempted terror plots, the prevention of violent extremism has become a significant issue for policy makers, with Muslim youth being identified as being particularly 'at risk' from engaging in violent extremism. Within this heightened security context, the police are being viewed by government as taking the lead in strategies that are being developed to prevent violent extremism, alongside local authorities, working in partnership with other agencies, and importantly, working with Muslim communities, since 'communities defeating terrorism' has become an accepted counter-terrorism maxim. Although counter-terrorism policies and practices have been dominated by 'hard-sided' strategies involving surveillance, intelligence gathering, the use of informants and the implementation of a number of anti-terror laws, under the Pursue strand of the government's CONTEST strategy (HM Government, 2006), post 7/7, the Prevent strand within the CONTEST strategy is being given much greater prominence, whereby policing is being viewed as playing a significant role in developing and implementing initiatives that involve community engagement. Importantly, the bombings on July 7th 2005 have helped to blur distinctions between the roles of the police and the security services, with community-based approaches to counter-terrorism policing emerging.

The role of policing in the prevention of violent extremism raises many questions, and the study being proposed here builds on a previous AHRC-funded study that focussed upon partnership work between Muslim communities and the police (Spalek & El-Awa, 2008, AH/F008112/1). For example, the AHRC study that was conducted included a focus upon police-community partnerships involving mosques for the purposes of counter-terrorism, whereby mosque leaders were interviewed about how they have worked with police to try to prevent young people from becoming violent extremists. This issue merits further examination, however, as it may be the case that young people are not generally actively involved in mosques and do not see existing religious leaders as exercising authority. Therefore, it is important to build on and question the study's findings in order to examine more fully whether existing religious leaders exercise authority within Muslim communities and specifically with Muslim youth in London and Birmingham, and whether and how mosques are partnering police for the purposes of preventing violent extremism. The previous AHRC study undertaken by Spalek & El-Awa (2008) also raised wider questions on issues of trust-building in partnership work, the role of police officers and community members in negotiating conflicting values and commonalities on which to build trust and focus on shared goals relating to preventing violence, and, especially interesting to the case of de-radicalisation, the impact of emotions, positive and negative, on those engaged with these issues. In relation to young Muslims, these questions are particularly pertinent: how can police officers and young people overcome the tensions traditionally associated with their relationship and start to build trust ? On what grounds is this negotiated ? How are emotions handled by officers and young people - is there a way to harness anger and frustration in positive ways ? And critically, is there evidence of success, not only in trust building, but in actually preventing violence, actual or ideological ?

This study will focus on partnership work between police and Muslim communities that focusses upon young male and female Muslims aged 16-25, this being the age range identified by security experts as key to violent extremism.