Terrorism: Terminology

Lord Singh of Wimbledon Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of whether action to combat the threat of terrorism could be helped by a clearer use of language, for example by explaining the actual meaning of words such as “extremism”, “radicalisation” and “fundamentalism”.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport and Home Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, since 2011, we have introduced the Prevent duty and trained more than 450,000 people, including front-line workers, to spot the signs of radicalisation. We also published the counterextremism strategy last year, which explains how we are working with communities to build an understanding of the threat of extremism and the challenges that it poses.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)]

I thank the Minister for the reply explaining the Government’s position. However, for years we have had a Prevent programme, as he mentioned, without clearly defining what we are trying to prevent. Words such as “radical”, “deradicalise”, “fundamentalist” and “extremist” are totally devoid of meaning, while the terms “political Islam” and “Islamist” are considered by many Muslims to be derogatory to Islam. Does the Minister agree that what we are really trying to prevent is the out-of-context use of religious texts that advocate the killing or ill-treatment of people of other faiths? Furthermore, does the Minister agree that to suggest that such behaviour is sanctioned by the one God of us all is the ultimate blasphemy? Finally, will the Government help Muslim leaders to present Islam in the context of today’s society?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

Picking up on a couple of the noble Lord’s points, I am sure that I speak for everyone across the House when I totally agree that no true religion in any sense sanctions the kind of extremist, and indeed terrorist, activity that we see, and Islam is no exception. Indeed, we have seen Muslim leaders of every denomination condemn unequivocally such heinous actions. In his final point, the noble Lord talked about the understanding of Islam. It is very much for the Muslim community and the leaders within it to have a discourse about Islam. Islam is a religion that is practised not just in this country but by almost 1 billion people around the world, and is practised peacefully.