UK’s Prevent strategy had in-built anti-Muslim bias. Now it is under review

A UK government anti-terrorism programme that disproportionately targetted Muslims has come under the scanner once again after Prime Minister Keir Starmer admitted that it failed due to inherent flaws and announced its complete overhaul.

The UK premier’s announcement over the controversial Prevent programme came after a British teen was convicted and sentenced to life with a minimum of 52 years in prison for murdering three girls and attempting to kill 10 other people in what a prosecutor said was a “meticulously planned” stabbing rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England last summer.

It has been revealed that the convict, Axel Rudakubana, had been referred under the scheme three times as a schoolboy.

After Rudakubana’s conviction, Starmer announced a review to investigate why institutions failed to prevent the attack.

Starmer also announced that he has appointed David Anderson as the independent commissioner for the programme to assess how effective Prevent is. Anderson’s first task will be to investigate the failures in the Rudakubana case.

What is Prevent?

Prevent is a programme within the UK government’s counter-terrorism strategy designed to safeguard “those vulnerable to radicalisation and prevent them from becoming terrorists”.

It was launched after the 2005 London bombings, initially targeting Muslim communities, but faced widespread criticism for discrimination and being used as a surveillance tool.

According to civil society, 50,000 people have been referred to Prevent since its inception.

In recent years, referrals for "extreme right-wing concerns" have outpaced those related to "Islamist concerns". However, critics reveal that the referrals involving Muslims remain disproportionately high relative to their population size in the UK.

For example, the latest statistics indicate that 1,314 referrals (19 percent) were linked to far-right concerns, while 913 (13 percent) were associated with Islamist issues. Notably, 36 percent of all referrals involved individuals deemed to have “no ideology or counter-terrorism risk”.

Criticisms

Since becoming law in 2011, the strategy has been criticised by equality and rights groups for the challenge it is believed to pose to liberties and the justice system’s foundations.

Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, said the strategy has had a “negative and discriminatory effect on Muslim communities”, and its implementation is “inconsistent” with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

While the effect of the initiative “has not been felt equally by all children,” Ni Aolain said, “minority ethnic or religious communities” were impacted in particular.

Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have called for Prevent to be abolished, citing its “racist and discriminatory impact.”

Similarly, earlier this month, Rights and Security International reported that Prevent enables authorities to collect and share vast amounts of data, with children and young people being especially vulnerable.

Amidst long-standing calls for reform, the Labour government has faced mounting pressure to overhaul the Prevent strategy since returning to power in July 2024.

Starmer discussed the changing nature of terrorism in the UK last week.

He said that the UK now faces a “new and dangerous threat” from “loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom, accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety,” a shift from the organised groups like al-Qaeda that previously dominated counter-terrorism efforts.

“It is a new threat; it’s not what we would have usually thought of as terrorism when definitions and guidelines were established. We must recognise this reality today.”

Starmer concluded that the country needed to be appropriate to the “new threat”, and whatever changes were necessary in the law would be made.