By Michael Mumisa

The previous government’s controversial programme for preventing violent extremism is currently being reviewed by the Home Office. How did it happen that programmes which were introduced with the aim of promoting “community cohesion” and preventing the influence of violent extremists ended up achieving the opposite of what they set out to achieve? Since the introduction of such programmes British Muslim communities have been engaged in what is effectively a ‘civil war’ which has left young Muslims (the intended beneficiaries of the programmes) further marginalised and more vulnerable to extremist ideas.

By Indigo Jo

This weekend the so-called English Defence League held a “homecoming” march in Luton, the town where a small group of al-Muhajiroun held a noisy rally against a homecoming parade by a regiment of soldiers recently back from Afghanistan and got much more publicity than they deserved, prompting the formation of one of the EDL’s precursors. Suzanne Moore’s piece in the Guardian offers a convenient litany of middle-class liberals sneering at members of the EDL as racists, hooligans and “stupid men in casual sportswear” and suggested that the “chattering classes” watched Stephen Lennon AKA Tommy Robinson’s performance on Newsnight last Tuesday and smugly “amused themselves by commenting on his chavdom”.