Terrorism: Action with a reaction

           EVERY terrible action must have a reaction. Since the brutal murder on May 22nd of Lee Rigby, a British soldier, reportedly by fanatical Muslims, the question of how to prevent terrorism has been reopened. Theresa May, the home secretary, wants to make it easier to spy on internet communications. She also wants more powers to take down extreme Islamist websites and to ban unpleasant organisations. In common with the aftermath of previous terrorist attacks, the reaction has itself provoked a reaction: that the authorities do not need more powers.
          The government reckons there are several thousand people who are vulnerable to becoming terrorists. The majority never will. Those who do will not be easy to spot. According to research by the Home Office and MI5, the domestic intelligence service, Islamist terrorists vary enormously. They often come from non-Muslim or fairly secular families. Not all are particularly religiously observant. Many appear relatively well-integrated into British society. Some are well-educated, others less so. Most are single young men, but a few have wives and children.
The government’s policy for dealing with radicalisation is scarcely more coherent than the profile of would-be terrorists. There are two internal debates over how to tackle the threat. The first is between those who believe in tackling hardline Islamist views generally and those who want to concentrate on its violent strains. The second pits those who wish to deal with non-violent groups with extreme views (in the hope that they will provide an outlet for the already radicalised) against those who want to shun them (lest they radicalise potential terrorists).

Jihad in Whitehall

The government’s anti-radicalism strategy, “Prevent”, which was updated by the coalition in 2011, leans towards taking on Islamism generally, not just in its violent forms, and shunning all hardline groups. But the details have been heavily fought over within Whitehall. Mrs May now wants to toughen it up. A new task force will consider how to crack down harder on extremist groups, especially in prisons and universities. The home secretary has suggested that censorship be toughened up too. Broadcasters and internet service providers could face greater restrictions—the BBC and Channel 4 were criticised for interviewing Anjem Choudary, a hardline preacher, in the aftermath of the killing
Most controversially, Mrs May also wants to revive the Data Communications bill, which was effectively vetoed in April by the Liberal Democrats after a long tussle over civil liberties and the cost of enforcement. The bill would expand the range of digital information that internet service providers have to keep on file, so as to give the security services the ability to monitor messages sent on services such as Skype.
All this may come to little. Whitehall is just as divided over strategy as it was in 2011: many civil servants and ministers from different departments have a hand in it. The Lib Dems are still opposed to putting the Communications Data bill onto the statute book. Given that the law would probably not have stopped the killing of Mr Rigby, Mrs May is unlikely to overcome that opposition. Indeed, she is careful to sell the bill as a crime-fighting measure as well as a counter-terrorism one.
But where the government could improve is in pushing better alternatives to Islamism. British mosques and university Islamic societies have already become more moderate, argues Ed Husain, a writer on Islamism who now works for the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. A broad crackdown on Islamist radicalism could be counterproductive. “We drive debate underground”, he says, where “black-and-white answers to world problems fester”.
Too many young Muslims are cut off from mainstream British life—including Muslim life. Extremists prey on them, even trying to recruit people at weddings. Tariq Abbasi, director of the Greenwich Islamic Centre, says that the zealots’ teaching is “buzzful”, whereas traditional preachers can be dull. In 2007 trustees took out a court injunction to eject extremists who had been trying to take over the centre. Still, he thinks, more needs to be done to give young Muslims “a place where they can go and talk to people” if they are to avoid the lure of radicalism.
Those who drift into extremism do so for many of the same reasons as those who drift into gang violence—indeed, the same people have been known to get into both. The police now accept that gangs are best tackled by a combination of intensive policing, surveillance and proper outreach programmes, so that troublemakers can escape their predicament. The government is trying to tackle Islamist radicalism with a much less sophisticated recipe.