New paper from the Commission for Countering Extremism associates left-wing views with ‘violent extremism’
The document released by the UK Commission for Countering Extremism, titled “Violent extremist tactics and the ideology of the sectarian left” reads more like a textbook of sectarianism than an analysis of its ideas and methods. It is deeply alarming.
Earlier this year, I noted that despite all the legal advice and failed attempts to bring in counter-extremism laws that would target legitimate civil society groups, Muslim activists would still end up facing a definition that would further marginalise them.
Such groups as the Islamic Human Rights Commission, CAGE, Hizb ut-Tahrir and MEND are being targeted, with the result that civil society space is shrinking further.
Now, these same anti-Muslim tropes have been regurgitated in secular form and applied without irony to the left.
Ideas under attack
Academic Narzanin Massoumi called the paper an “outrage”, noting that it associates left-wing and anti-imperialist views with “violent extremism” and calls for the careful “monitoring” of developments on this front.
These same anti-Muslim tropes have been regurgitated in secular form and applied without irony to the left
“We can all use our imagination to know what they are suggesting by ‘monitoring’ here,” Massoumi said.
Our imaginations don’t need to do much work. Muslims have experienced this for decades. Our thoughts and work, our words and ideas, old and new, or revered as revelation, are used in evidence against us. We are maligned because of what we read as much as what we say or do.
The document’s methodology notes that researchers focused on articles from three platforms “associated with the sectarian far left”, including the Socialist Worker, the Weekly Worker and Counterfire.
The authors outline their understanding of the ideas and modus operandi of the groups under analysis, including anti-imperialist or anti-fascist ideologies – demonstrating how everybody espousing a view deemed to be “leftist” falls into this catch-all, deserving to be, as Muslims have been hitherto, surveilled and policed both literally and in thoughts…
*This article was first published on Middle Easy Eye. Read the full article here.
