Britain could deradicalise Shamima Begum – with compassion | Dawn Foster

Many are calling for the Isis recruit to be shown no mercy, but treating at-risk young people as individuals has to be the better path

The CCTV images of the three teenage girls Shamima Begum, Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase passing through Gatwick airport four years ago en route to join the Islamic State “caliphate” were shocking for much of the British public. That Isis was radicalising people online was no surprise, but the fact these three girls were as young as 15 and from the same academy school in Bethnal Green, east London, cast the risks of radicalisation closer to home.

The discredited counter-radicalisation strategy, Prevent, was meant to stem the recruitment of “homegrown” terrorists, including those recruited into the far right, but has disproportionately focused on Islamist extremism without yielding any significant concrete results. Last year, for example, an essay by the late Marxist political theorist Norman Geras on the political uses of violence was deemed so dangerous under the Prevent programme that Reading University students were warned not to leave it lying around where it could be seen “by those who are not prepared to view it”. The university flagged the text as an extremist piece of work that should only be read in a secure setting.

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2tuXk2o