Towards a Cure for Prevent? Building Resilience to Religious and Political Forms of Violence within British Muslim Communities

Abstract

Abstract This article engages with community-led responses to religious and political forms of violence within British Muslim communities. The focus here is on ‘bottom-up’, community-led responses to religious and political forms of violence, a relatively underrepresented topic, given the extent of policy and research literature concerning the nature and effects of ‘top-down’ counter-terrorism and counter-extremist initiatives such as the UK Government’s Prevent strategy. The article argues two main points. First, that solutions to the problems of extremism, radicalisation and terrorism (to use the linguistic framework of the UK Government), or to the problems of religious and political forms of violence (the term used here), might be found as much within the realms of religion, culture, family and community as within the realms of security, policing and legislation. Second, that an analytical framework for the development of community-led approaches may be developed via consideration of the social psychological concept of resilience.