Islamophobia in the National Health Service: an ethnography of institutional racism in PREVENT's counter‐radicalisation policy

Abstract

In 2015, the UK government made its counter‐radicalisation policy a statutory duty for all National Health Service (NHS) staff. Staff are now tasked to identify and report individuals they suspect may be vulnerable to radicalisation. Prevent training employs a combination of psychological and ideological frames to convey the meaning of radicalisation to healthcare staff, but studies have shown that the threat of terrorism is racialised as well. The guiding question of our ethnography is: how is counter‐radicalisation training understood and practiced by healthcare professionals? A frame analysis draws upon 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork, which includes participant observation in Prevent training and NHS staff interviews. This article demonstrates how Prevent engages in performative colour‐blindness – the active recognition and dismissal of the race frame which associates racialised Muslims with the threat of terrorism. It concludes with a discussion of institutional racism in the NHS – how racialised policies like Prevent impact the minutia of clinical interactions; how the pretence of a ‘post‐racial’ society obscures institutional racism; how psychologisation is integral to the performance of colour‐blindness; and why it is difficult to address the racism associated with colourblind policies which purport to address the threat of the Far‐Right.

A moral education? British Values, colour-blindness, and preventing terrorism

“…Colour-blindness and white denial are evidenced through the naturalisation of racial tensions, for example, in the case of 'boys will 20 20 be boys'. Our study is significant for recording the same performative colour-blindness operating in school that Younis & Jadhav (2019b) identified in health settings, where equivalence between Islamic and Far-Right extremism reinforces prejudicial stereotypes. Also apparent in the data is the securitisation of the classroom as a site for counterradicalisation safeguarding referrals.…”

“…Similarly, Trainer C, having met someone from the 'Building a Stronger Britain Together' Home Office initiative recounted: 'and this guy said, you know, we've been probably too focused on Muslim extremism'. The Home Office drive for increased focus on Far-Right extremism alongside Muslim extremism risks treating the former as a 'new' and individualised issue; overlooks the powerful influence of the Far-Right in UK centrist politics, including in the formation of counter-extremism policy (Fekete, 2018, p. 20); and enables the Government to claim colour-blindness to deny evidence of the racist design of Prevent (Younis & Jadhav, 2019b).…”

“…In the interview it emerged that this teacher had actually been referred to Prevent by another teacher for teaching lessons about 'peace and conflict in Islam'. In their ethnographic research into Prevent in UK healthcare, Younis and Jadhav's (2019b) racialised Muslim participants recount similar experiences of Prevent training to the teacher above. Attempting to shift prejudicial Islamophobic stereotypes by emphasizing Far-Right extremism is an example of performative colour-blindness -used 'to draw attention to and immediately dismiss terrorism's hegemonic association with Muslims', assuming a pedagogical position that individuals can be trained away from racial prejudice, overlooking how 'social structures…legitimise everyday racial prejudice' (Younis & Jadhav, 2019b, p. 616-617).…”

“…We unfold the links between race, religion and counter-radicalisation by focusing on counterradicalisation enactment in two co-educational multicultural secondary schools in England. We Complementing various studies of Prevent's racialised implementation in the public sector (Coppock & McGovern, 2014;Fernandez, 2018;Younis & Jadhav, 2019a, 2019b, we paid special attention to the presentation of BVs as 'universal' colour-blind values, and the discussion of Prevent referrals as neutral, safeguarding measuressituating both in contemporary literature on colour-blindness. This paper draws upon the seminal work of Tarek Sushrut Jadhav (2019a, 2019b), using their insights on colour-blindness and the Prevent Duty in healthcare to better understand similar mechanisms at work in the BV curriculum and Prevent in English schools.…”

Rehabilitating the Prevent Strategy

“…On the face of it then, Shawcross appears to be a poor choice to lead an independent inquiry on a strategy that is based on Islamophobic notions about the nature of Muslims and Islam, that has institutionalised a discursive association between Muslims, Islam, extremism, and terrorism in local authorities, in higher education, schools, and the National Health Service with dire consequences for Muslims, and in doing so, has further entrenched the institutionalisation of Islamophobia (Younis and Jadhav, 2019;Qurashi, 2017;Sian, 2013;and Kundnani, 2009). This view, however, can only be sustained if one actually considers the review to be an independent process with a wide ranging remit to look at all of the evidence on the delivery and impact of the strategy.…”