Muslim Community resoundingly condemn PREVENT and Shawcross Review

London – CAGE is a signatory of a community statement that includes over 550 Muslim scholars, community leaders, civil society organisations, mosque councils and national and regional bodies, condemning PREVENT as ‘counter productive’ and rejecting the appointment of William Shawcross to lead the review of the policy for his “long and proven track record of Islamophobia”. Commenting on this, Muhammad Rabbani, CAGE Managing Director said: “Contrary to manufactured government reports, the Muslim community and its leadership resoundingly reject the PREVENT policy and the Shawcross review. This policy must be scrapped and the government held to account for pursuing it despite the mounting evidence of its failings, fake-science basis and embedded racism.” [END] Full statement below:  Call to Boycott the Shawcross Review of Prevent We, the undersigned, pledge to boycott the government’s Review into the Prevent policy. We boycott the Review because its new chair, William Shawcross, has a long and proven track record of Islamophobia and support for the most extreme measures to have been justified in the War on Terror, including forms of torture. William Shawcross has: - said in 2012, “Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future. I think all European countries have vastly, very quickly growing Islamic populations.” - overseen a huge increase in statutory investigations carried out on Muslim charities, 38% of the total in his first year of chairing the Charity Commission. - defended torture as a “natural response” to terrorism, and the detention camp at Guantanamo. We boycott the Review because its new remit, as has been reported, will only deal with strengthening the existing policy, which is wholly unacceptable. We boycott the Review because Prevent disproportionately targets the civil liberties of British Muslims and demonises the Islamic faith. Prevent is counter-productive and leaves both liberty and security damaged and diminished for all British citizens and residents, not just those of the Muslim faith. We call on all concerned citizens and residents in Britain to join us in boycotting the Review. See list of over 550 signatories here. Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash