David Cameron accused of Islamophobia

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Campaigners have accused former UK Prime Minister David Cameron of Islamophobia after he singled out Muslim critics of the contentious Prevent strategy, saying they were "enabling terrorism" in the UK by criticizing the program.

Cameron stated in a new study issued by the right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange that the UK government's failure to rebut Prevent allegations will "jeopardize" Britain's battle against extremism.

According to the research, Prevent is facing a deliberate push to undermine the program by apparently fringing Muslim organizations such as the Muslim Council of Britain.

John Jenkins, who Cameron commissioned to conduct an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK in 2014, is one of the report's major writers.

Cameron defended his government's decision to enact the 2015 Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, which required public organizations, including hospitals and schools, to notify and refer anybody who displayed indicators of terrorism.

Cameron's intervention comes after UK Home Secretary Priti Patel stated her desire to alter the Prevent scheme in the aftermath of the assassination of Conservative MP David Amess.

For years, activists had urged the government to conduct an impartial assessment of the Prevent plan, and the administration was chastised when it chose William Shawcross to lead the investigation.

Shawcross, who led the Charity Commission from 2012 to 2018, has been chastised for prior statements about Islam and has been accused of Islamophobia. His evaluation will be released later this year.

CAGE, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, and the Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) organization are among the Muslim organizations accused of undermining the Prevent plan.

The Policy Exchange Report also contains a number of opinion articles from the Middle East Eye that are critical of the Prevent Strategy.

MEND reacted angrily to Cameron's remarks, calling them a "blatant Islamophobic attack on Muslim critics of the Prevent strategy and the Shawcross review in the strategy."

"For Policy Exchange to claim that legitimate and well-founded critique of Prevent is an 'Islamist' and 'extremist' nonsense, and a thinly disguised and blatant attempt to shut down criticism from various Muslim groups and to delegitimize them," stated MEND.  

Muhammad Rabbani, managing director of CAGE UK, said Policy Exchange aims to promote "a false reality of unopposed activists critiquing Prevent in order to explain away communities' wholesale rejection of Prevent."

A representative for the Muslim Council of Britain stated "Policy Exchange has consistently led efforts to discourage cooperation between the authorities and the MCB."

"It is therefore laughable that the Policy Exchange should now claim that we are the ones discouraging cooperation because we are exercising our democratic responsibility to scrutinize bad policy."