British Muslim Police Association Wants Term “Islamist” Banned

British media is report­ing that the British Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Mus­lim Police (NAMP), a rep­re­sen­ta­tive body for Mus­lims work­ing with­in polic­ing, wants the term “Islamist” dropped from counter-ter­ror­ism polic­ing over con­cerns it unfair­ly stig­ma­tizes Islam. Accord­ing to an arti­cle by BirminghamLive:

Novem­ber 14, 2022 The group says it has pre­vi­ous­ly raised con­cerns over the use of ‘Islamist’ and ‘Islamism’ with police chiefs and politi­cians, includ­ing recent­ly with for­mer Home Sec­re­tary Pri­ti Patel. But it has now gone pub­lic after no agree­ment to drop the words.

Read the rest here.

Alex Gent, Chair­man of the NAMP, said that his orga­ni­za­tion want­ed the term to be replaced with “anti-west­ern extrem­ism” or some­thing sim­i­lar, adding that Islam­o­pho­bia remained an issue in wider UK polic­ing. Gent also said that the need for “accu­rate and fair” descrip­tions of ter­ror­ist inci­dents was key and that counter-ter­ror­ism polic­ing need­ed to be mind­ful of the impact this has on the com­mu­ni­ty. One for­mer British Mus­lim offi­cer told UK media:

The use of the world Islamist to describe rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion or ter­ror­ism is feed­ing into the wrong agen­da and is very offen­sive and insensitive.

The group cit­ed cas­es where Mus­lim offi­cers had been wrong­ly referred to the British government’s anti-extrem­ism scheme Pre­vent by their own col­leagues after reli­gious pil­grim­ages or fol­low­ing con­ver­sions to the reli­gion. Pre­vent is part of the broad­er counter-ter­ror­ism strat­e­gy Con­test. It is fund­ed by the UK Home Office and designed to address all forms of ter­ror­ism equal­ly, pri­or­i­tiz­ing them accord­ing to the threat they pose to British nation­al security.

Coun­ter­ing gov­ern­ment action against Islamist rad­i­cal­iza­tion and counter-ter­ror­ism poli­cies has long been a pil­lar of Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) activ­i­ty in the UK. In August 2021, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that a Scot­tish par­lia­men­tary Cross-Par­ty Group close­ly tied to the GMB had pub­lished an inquiry into Islam­o­pho­bia that rec­om­mend­ed the scrap­ping of Pre­vent. In August 2022, the GIOR report­ed that three British extrem­ism experts had pub­lished a paper high­light­ing the role that UK GMB groups have played in dele­git­imiz­ing the Pre­vent scheme.

The NAMP web­site says the orga­ni­za­tion “active­ly pro­motes equal­i­ty, diver­si­ty, and inclu­sion and leads on sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to facil­i­tate bet­ter work­place envi­ron­ments for Mus­lims.” The NAMP also deliv­ers var­i­ous train­ing pack­ages relat­ing to Islam­ic aware­ness and address­es issues con­nect­ed to Islam­o­pho­bia with­in the Police ser­vice. It was found­ed in June 2007 at the British Trans­port Police HQ in Lon­don in the pres­ence of MCB Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Muham­mad Abdul Bari, who has also served as a trustee of the Islam­ic Forum of Europe, the Euro­pean wing of the Jamaat-e-Isla­mi, a South­east Asian Islamist polit­i­cal par­ty close to the GMB.