UK lobby group ties anti-terrorist policies to Islamophobia

British lobby group Spinwatch has seized on growing concerns over Islamophobic activity and hate speech to campaign against counter-extremism efforts.

In a meeting in the House of Commons attended by Labour home affairs spokeswoman Diane Abbott, a report was presented containing allegations that Europe’s main initiatives designed to counter ISIS and other terrorist groups were targeted exclusively against Muslims.

The report attributed part of its research to the assistance of Mend, a British group that has faced accusations of extremist links.

It is a close ally of Cage, where former Guantanamo prisoner Moazzam Begg works.

Spinwatch is a transparency group that has not published a donor list since 2016.

Its most recent donors include Muslim Brotherhood backers such as the Cordoba Foundation run by Anas Al Tikriti, president of the Muslim Association of Britain.

In the Spinwatch report, researchers drew a link between counter-extremism and Christchurch attacker Brenton Tarrant.

The link was a concept described as the “counterjihad movement”.

“Reflecting a broader shift on the far-right away from ‘old’ anti-Semitism and towards Islamophobia, the counter-jihad movement can be seen as a ‘new’ form of racism,” the report said.

“We consider how this inversion may have been facilitated by the onset of historical ‘counter-extremism’ frameworks that tend to equate far-left and far-right.”

Mend and Cage have also produced recent reports making similar arguments against counter-extremism methods.

Mend has been active in parliament’s hearings on Islamophobia.

The Tony Blair Institute last year named Mend and Cage among five groups in Britain that promoted “problematic or extreme views”.

“These groups aim to shape the dominant narrative about the UK’s growing Muslim population and how Muslims perceive their relationship to broader British society,” Mr Blair said.

“If left untackled, such narratives are likely to have an alienating effect on the communities in question and perpetuate a siege mentality, negatively affecting the future of social cohesion in Britain.”

The Spinwatch report claims US groups are flooding Europe with resources as part of a “counter-extremism” conspiracy to boost the far-right.

“We argue that the French case, and to a lesser extent Germany, illustrate how the far-right thrives in a climate of officially sanctioned suspicion,” it said.