The hon. Gentleman is right. He will see that in schedule 3 to the Bill there is a list of educational organisations that will be subject to the general duty in clause 21. I am pleased about that, and hope that the Minister will give us the assurance that, as well as formal education institutions, madrassahs will also be covered by this kind of work. Sometimes informal educational settings do not have standards that are as robust as we would all like.
Sara Khan has also given a good example of where community resilience building has worked really well, in Bristol. Five or six years ago, when local people were worried about young people being drawn into extremism, they set up an organisation called Naseehah, which trained 25 local people to recognise radicalised people, and then support and deradicalise them using Islamic theology. A potential suicide bomber who wanted to blow up Bristol town centre was sent to prison, where he was deradicalised. He then sent a message of endorsement to the community organisation, saying how important it was to challenge extremist ideologies.
That is one of the best illustrations I have seen of preventing extremism. It is about building resilience in communities, directly challenging the ideology, supporting vulnerable individuals and then referring them on to a channel project for an early intervention. If all the parts of the circle work together, we have a really powerful mechanism. At the moment, the Minister has a general duty on Prevent and his channel provisions, which deal with individuals. I honestly think there is a gap on challenging ideology and building the resilience of communities so that they can take that work forward.
When I have raised that matter previously in the context of the Bill, people have said that that is implicit in clause 21—if there is a duty to prevent people being drawn into terrorism we will have to challenge the ideology. If it is implicit, what is wrong with making it explicit? The Prime Minister has said time and again—in his Munich speech, for example, and in his speech in Canberra—that this is a long-term generational struggle. It therefore ought to be explicit within the legislation. [Interruption.] The Minister talks about the Prevent review, but that was in 2011. I hope to persuade him today that it is a tiny step to say that work under clause 21 will include combating ideology.
I will move on now to online messaging. We have discussed previously some of the excellent work done by Erin Saltman of Quilliam, who has pointed out that, yes, it is important to take pernicious material off the internet so that people cannot access it, but that is not enough. People will find other ways to put that information back up, perhaps via another website, as there is still the technology. Therefore, what Quilliam has classed as counter-speech is very important. The hon. Member for New Forest East has talked a lot about that issue and has a lot of in-depth knowledge on it.
Quilliam has been good at saying what that counter-speech should look like. We need three things: a good message, credible messengers and a means of getting the message across. Quilliam has made the distinction that that should be done through a partnership between civil society, the Government and local government, and has pointed out that civil society organisations are often the best placed to deliver that message. It is not always the case that the Government have to do everything; they can facilitate, help, encourage and provide financial assistance, but the people out there in civil society organisations are crucial to efforts on this matter. Quilliam has made the point that many extremist groups are themselves peripheral civil society groups, so what better way to challenge them than robust civil society groups with really good values that want to do the right thing?
3.15 pm
That point brings me on to the role of scholars and of theology. We have already had a good discussion on that. Ed Husain, who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has written a very good article, called “Until We Understand ISIS, We Cannot Hope to Defeat It”. He talks at great length, in a much more expert fashion than I can, about the way in which religious ideology drives ISIS. He talks about the Salafis and their adherence to a violent creed around Islam:
“To the violent Salafi, tawheed is political as well as credal. To rule by democracy is to violate God’s sovereignty. Man-made law is the ultimate violation of pure tawheed”—
That is, under the ISIS version—
“and, to oppose this corruption of monotheism, extreme Salafis will walk the path of jihad. Their jihad is not to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or a secular government; it is to create ‘God’s government’ or a caliphate that holds up God’s law by applying their form of sharia.”
That is an interesting analysis of why people hold so dearly to that kind of ideology. Fortunately, only 3% of Muslims hold to that creed, but it can be influential in the wider sphere. When something is explained by reference to religion—the things that people hold really deeply and have a real adherence to—that can be very powerful indeed.
Ed Husain goes on:
“Isis offers a caliphate and death. Our message needs to be of life, an Islam of the Muslim majority supported by 1,400 years of history.”
So he has an optimistic message as well as a dire warning. Many of us in this House will never have that depth of knowledge and expertise; if we are not of the faith and have not been brought up with it, we will have some knowledge, but being able to work with people who have that depth of understanding will be really important for us. Will the Minister make absolutely sure that when we are doing Prevent work and building resilience, we draw on all the skills and talents of people who increasingly are doing a lot of academic research on this area and have a lot of in-depth knowledge?
In other places around the world, people are engaged in exactly the same work as we are. In Singapore, a religious rehabilitation group has set up a counselling centre and reference centre for religious teachers, researchers and the community. The Australian Government have just produced their first strategy on countering violent extremism. That strategy discusses building
“community cohesion and resilience to violent extremism”
and the need to work with communities,
“both through their own activities and in collaboration with government”
to do this kind of work. If building community resilience can be in the Australian strategy on countering extremism, I am sure we ought to be doing precisely the same in our legislation.
This is an emerging area of study. As we said on Second Reading, no one has all the answers. It is a complex and developing area, and we are learning a great deal as we go along. I was heartened to see Bradford’s action plan for the Prevent programme for the next two years, “Working Together to Challenge Extremism”, which is very practical. I was pleased to see that it says:
“Our approach is centred on challenging the ideology which leads individuals to extremist views and actions. Prevent will work with young people offering them forums to express themselves. Through education and dialogue we will provide access to a wide range of knowledge and opinions enabling groups to further develop ‘critical thinking’ skills and to make informed choices.”
That is a really good encapsulation of what the duty in clause 21(1) should be doing. If in their action plan Bradford Prevent workers can talk about combating ideology, I am again at a loss to see why we cannot incorporate amendments 30 and 31, on combating ideology, into the Bill. That is a really important message that we should be sending out to people in everything we do.