The United Kingdom on Monday launched a strategy to combat the spread of radicalization among young people, and Muslim groups immediately criticized the program as something that will only alienate Muslims further.
Under the U.K.’s “Counter-Extremism Strategy,” parents of 16 and 17-year-olds who suspect their teenagers are planning on traveling abroad to connect with extremists can now have their passports removed. The initiative also bans any known terrorists from working with children.
The text of the plan identifies schools, charities, prisons, faith institutions and social media as platforms on which extremist views can be shared.
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A number of prevention programs were introduced in response, including a council at universities to “ensure extremist speakers do not go unchallenged.” At faith institutions, the British government is commissioning a “new program of support to help faith institutions to establish strong governance” to counter extremism. Online, the government wants to limit access by extremists and terrorists “without compromising the principle of an open Internet.”
Another newly-christened panel will examine the threat of Shari’a law to the extent that it is being “misused or applied in a way which is incompatible with the law.” A report will be released in 2016.
While the strategy officially purports to quell extremism of all types, including Neo-Nazism, antisemitism and Islamophobia, critics say the move will further stoke anti-Islamic sentiment. That has become a significant issue in recent years with the rise of dangerous extremist groups in the Middle East, including the Islamic State, that have attracted disaffected young people from Europe and elsewhere.
Some radicalized individuals bring the violence home, including two Muslim-converts who hacked a British soldier to death in 2013.
Still, Islamic leaders in the United Kingdom accuse the government of alienating Muslims in the process of stamping out extremism, which they say will ultimately hurt their communities. Muslim Council of Britain Secretary General Shuja Shafi said the British government’s new strategy “continues down a flawed path, focusing on Muslims in particular, and are based on fuzzy conceptions of British values.”
“It risks being counter-productive by alienating the very people needed to confront al Qaeda or Daesh-related terrorism: British Muslim communities,” Shafi added.
Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, said the plan is “a missed opportunity to really engage the Muslim community and work in partnership against terrorism and extremism.”
Even the New York Times published an article on the new British strategy with a headline that read, “Britain Unveils Plans to Fight Extremism in Young Muslims.”
In a blog post published in tandem with the new strategy, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron focused solely countering the threat of radicalized Muslims.
“The fight against Islamist extremism is, I believe, one of the great struggles of our generation,” Cameron said.
