Islam, Security and Policing in the UK

1
Islam, Security and Policing in the UK

• Dr Basia Spalek
• Reader in Communities Justice
• University of Birmingham

2
Islam in the UK

• Multiculturalism traditional focus on racial
  and ethnic identities.
• Rushdie affair
• 9/11 counter-terrorism legislation
• Focus on religion in equality legislation
• Prevent agenda Islamist radicalisation, Muslim
  youth

3
Policing and Muslim Communities

• Focus on young Muslims viewed as vulnerable to
  radicalisation
• Pre-crime risk paradigm operating in the criminal
  justice system looking for signs of
  radicalisation
• Who is best placed to work with Muslim youth
  deemed at risk ?
• Who decides who is at risk ?

4
The Research Study

• Engagement and Partnership work between Muslim
  communities and the police in a counter-terrorism
  context
• Religion and Society programme AHRC/ESRC
• Spalek, El-Awa McDonald Police-Muslim
  Engagement and Partnerships for the purposes of
  Counter-Terrorism

5
The Research Study

• Small-scale, in-depth ethnographic research
• Muslim Contact Unit
• Muslim Safety Forum
• Semi-structured interviews with 13 police
  officers and 29 were members of Muslim
  organisations 2007 - 2008

6
Key Findings

• The study highlights the potential role that
  community policing can play in a c-t context
• Community policing relies upon organizational
  decentralization and a reorientation of patrol in
  order to facilitate two-way communication between
  police and the public. It assumes a commitment
  to broadly focused, problem-oriented policing and
  requires that police be responsive to citizens
  demands when they decide what local problems are
  and set their priorities (Skogan Hartnett
  1997 5)

7
Trust

• Hard policing strategies can erode trust within
  those communities that are targeted.
• Tension between community-based soft models of
  policing, which involve engaging with Muslim
  communities under the Prevent agenda, and the
  hard policing tactics traditionally used for
  intelligence gathering, investigations and
  arrests, under the Pursue.

8
Trust and Community Intelligence

• Trust and confidence towards the police is a
  precondition to community intelligence.
• A lack of community intelligence may then lead to
  further intrusive, hard based policing
  strategies to be employed because suspicion tends
  to be of the community as a whole rather than
  being limited to specific groups or individuals
  and so generating and/or reinforcing community
  anger, frustration and paranoia.

9
Building Trust

• Communities as Complex
• Age, ethnicity, politics, strands within Islam
• Cultural and emotional intelligence in police
  officers context is one of conflict and
  distrust
• Policing based on consent

10
Risk-Laden Work

• An individual turns up in a big mackintosh
  because he had a dispute
• with another Muslim and the size of the weapon he
  had down the
• back of his coat and what did we do? Did we
  panic and run and call
• the police? We took him round the corner, my
  colleagues, spoke with
• him, really calmly. What are you doing? You're
  coming to a religious
• place, this is the house of God, its a mosque.
  And you're coming to kill
• a Muslim? Do you know that killing a Muslim
  means that you go to
• the hellfire straight away? Eyes wide. Really?
  So if I killed this
• individual I will be punished? Yes you will.
  And even if he was wrong
• and he do this youll still do this because you
  are not an authority to
• take anybodys life. What did he do? Jumped in
  the car, went home,
• put his weapon away, came back, made up with the
  individual.

11
Politicised Context

• Wider, global context to policing Salafi and
  Islamist communities, War on Terror War on
  Islam ?
• National Politics
• The main issue just at the minute is the bugging
  of
• the MP when he visited Babu Ahmed recently ...
• bugging an MP in this country is totally illegal
  and
• ... of course why was it a Muslim MP? I cannot
  imagine
• the authorities going eavesdropping upon a
  non-Muslim
• MP. Directly we get the impression well we are
  being
• targeted. Its always our community that seems
  to be
• zoned in on or focused upon as being a threat.

12
Next Project

• AHRC/ESRC Religion Society programme
  (2009-2010) A Study exploring Questions relating
  to Partnership between Police and Muslim
  Communities in the Prevention of Violent
  Religio-Political Extremism amongst Muslim Youth
  Spalek, El-Awa McDonald