Smart Engagement

London’s Metropolitan Police made a mistake. Two weeks ago, 250 officers raided a house in East London, convinced that they were about to take out a chemical bomb factory. The intelligence, though, was wrong. No trace of explosives, never mind a chemical device, was found anywhere. The two suspects – one of whom had been shot during the raid – were released without charge. The story featured prominently in the British media for almost two weeks. For the first few days, most of the coverage dealt with the alleged plot and the threat from home-grown terrorism. At some point, though, the raid itself became the story, with prominent British Muslims complaining that ‘their’ community had been targeted unfairly. What are we to make of this? Of course, it would be totally irresponsible to argue that, for fear of stigmatising the Muslim community, the police should no longer act on information indicating a terrorist attack. It is also worth recalling that intelligence can never be totally accurate. No matter how sophisticated the processes through which it is acquired and assessed, there will be a margin of error, and mistakes will inevitably be made. That doesn’t mean, however, that all is well. On the contrary, if anything, the episode exposes the terrible dilemma with which we are now confronted. And it demonstrates how urgent it is for police forces across Europe to step up their efforts to engage with Muslim minorities. Needless to say, the vast majority of European Muslim communities neither support nor approve of terrorism. Yet it is also true that many of the homegrown jihadists are part of these communities – albeit at their fringes. This puts ordinary Muslims in an awkward position, having to protect their communities against alien and extremist elements from the inside as well as attempts at stigmatisation from the outside. From the police’s perspective, Muslim communities will, for the foreseeable future, be subject to more attention by law enforcement and intelligence than most non-Muslim segments of society. Put simply, to catch jihadists, it makes no sense to raid the Women’s Institute in Cheshire – however desirable that may be. What’s needed, therefore, are new, innovative forms of local engagement. Ironically, perhaps, London’s Met has done good work in this area. Take, for example, the Muslim Contact Units through which the police is liaising with Muslim community leaders in certain parts of the capital, protecting them against Islamophobic hate crimes but also working to prevent extremists from gaining a foothold. The ultimate prize, of course, is to get more Muslims to join the force. Having ‘one of their own’ to turn to will negate the idea of the police as an alien force eager to strike against anyone who belongs to the wider Muslim community. This, however, will also require Muslim leaders to play an active role in countering the emerging sense of Muslim victimisation, which ties in so well with the notion that the West is fighting a war against Islam. Unfortunately, all these efforts will take much time to bear fruit. There are no quick fixes. The East London raid will not have been the police’s last mistake. Nor will the problem be solved by preventing the police from doing their job. Time for some smart engagement.