Working with communities to counter radicalisation

This chapter critically considers how policy efforts to counter radicalisation have viewed, approached, and interacted with communities and what we know about how and where these relationships can be effective in preventing radicalisation. Internationally, and particularly within Western ‘whole of society’ P/CVE models, communities are identified as crucial partners in prevention efforts, as a first line of national defence, and as best placed to identify radicalisation and share information about it.

Yet these same strategies have also led to persistent accusations about the securitisation of community-state relationships, including surveillance of and within communities. This is particularly the case in relation to Muslim minority communities in different national settings, many of whom claim that they are seen as ‘suspect communities’, whereby entire Muslim communities are seen by national states as potential supporters of terrorism and monitored and policed as such. Similarly, many Muslim communities have felt ‘responsibilised’ by state policies for terrorism prevention and fostering resilience against radicalisation within their own communities.

The chapter analyses these issues and considers the roles and experiences of communities and community-based civil society organisations asked to contribute to countering radicalisation. It also considers how the P/CVE landscape may be shifting in relation to emergent concerns with far-right extremism and digitally influenced social structures and what implications this holds for the status of community-based P/CVE as both a concept and a practical strategy.