Embedding infrastructures of surveillance in Muslim communities through Prevent

The Prevent policy is part of a wider surveillance strategy of containing and managing Muslim agency in the UK. This journal article, published in February 2018, was one of the first to explore counter-extremism and the broader war on terror approach to Muslims in the UK as emerging from the European colonial era management of ‘others’.

Author Fahad Qurashi argues that as ethnic minorities have slowly entered institutional spaces, a new politics of containment has emerged, in which surveillance strategies are used.

The article shows how the framing of the terror threat in the ‘war on terror’, as an ‘Islamic threat’, has afforded a surveillance infrastructure, embedded into Muslim communities, which has securitised relations with local authorities, the outcome of which is to contain and direct Muslim political agency.

The analysis also uncovers the Islamophobia at the heart of the Prevent strategy.

The full journal article is available HERE.