Press Release
“Prevent” is a Lie and so is “Safe and Secure”

A new initiative, deceptively labeled “Safe and Secure” has been launched to address the perceived failures of the Prevent policy; which is already known to be a failed policy. At the same time Britain’s police chiefs have called upon the general public to become “counter terrorism citizens”.

The Prevent policy has made spying for the state a duty on all manner of citizens, effectively policing the thinking of the Muslim community. It is falsely marketed as a means to prevent violence, but in practice has been nothing more than a means to spread hysteria and irrational fear of Islam and Muslims, while attempting to intimidate the Muslim community into replacing Islam with a secularised liberal moderate version of Islam.

The new “Safe and Secure” initiative appears to have the same objectives, without ostensibly being enforced by law, with the naïve hope that it will be a more trusted policy. It is built upon the same failed idea that radical thinking leads to violence and crime and the false allegation that Muslims are not doing enough to support the government’s anti-terrorism agenda, just as we are allegedly not doing enough to prevent child abuse and gang membership etc.. The false logic is clear and consistent - that these are Muslim problems, and not those of wider society. We should be quite clear however, that these and other ills are exclusively the product of the secular liberal society and mentality, which is exactly what both “Prevent” and “Safe and Secure” aim to encourage. Actually preventing violence, child abuse and other crimes cannot be the objectives of these schemes, which focus entirely on the wrong alleged contributing factors; deliberately so, to divert attention from the real causes.

Typically the media coverage of the “Safe and Secure” launch ignored the highly questionable logic upon which the schemes are built. It also provided the usual manicured anecdotal quotes to appear that there is genuine thought support for them.

Muslims and British people who genuinely care about safety and security should reject this deceptive logic, and instead put under close scrutiny the actions of the secular capitalist elite, who control the domestic and foreign policies, and who truly pose great risk to ordinary people in Britain and rest of the world.

The Western colonial ambitions, which drive their foreign policies, including Britain, are the chief causes of political violence and terrorism in the world, as they have been for the past two centuries. The misuse by this established elite of the military and security services at home and overseas deserves more blame than is popularly acknowledged. Britain, for example, has a long history of supporting violent uprisings and separatist terrorist organisations throughout the world. Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan are recent examples where secular political ambitions and colonial policies have led to massive losses of life.

As Muslims are again the subject of this new collective blame initiative, we must be particularly vocal in our rejection of it and more importantly the false thought that it is built upon. We should not allow ourselves to be put on the defensive, rather we should be active in carrying our Deen to the society and exposing the damaging and corrupt ideology of secular capitalism.

We must openly reject the wedge that secularists try to drive between us, dividing us into moderates and extremists. Such a distinction does not exist in Islam, and we must declare that any reform of the Deen revealed to the last and final Messenger (saw) to mankind will never lead to success in this life or the next.

The real prevention of terrorist violence, whether state sponsored or perpetrated by individuals, and the real way to gain safety and security from the dangers of child abuse, gang violence and all kinds of exploitation, is for the people to understand and adopt the teachings of Islam, both as individuals and in the state and society. Therefore it is incumbent upon all Muslims to teach the true unreformed Islam as revealed to our master Muhammad (saw) neither fearing and nor accepting the blame of the blamers, however loud their voices.

All people who care for safety and security should open their minds to the Islamic way of thinking, be willing to understand its teachings, while not being afraid to reject the lies and deception of the secular elite establishments.

﴿يا أَيُّهَا الَّذينَ آمَنُوا اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ وَقولوا قَولًا سَديدًا * يُصلِح لَكُم أَعمالَكُم وَيَغفِر لَكُم ذُنوبَكُم وَمَن يُطِعِ اللَّهَ وَرَسولَهُ فَقَد فازَ فَوزًا عَظيمًا﴾

“O you who have believed, fear Allah and speak words of appropriate justice. He will [then] amend for you your deeds and forgive you your sins. And whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly attained a great attainment.” [Al-Ahzab: 70-71]

Yahya Nisbet
Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir in Britain