Maajid Nawaz's Four-Point Plan To Defeat Islamist Terrorists
4 June 2017, 12:30 | Updated: 18 December 2017, 13:47
This is Maajid Nawaz's own four-point plan to defeat the terrorists - and his reaction to Theresa May's.
In reaction to last night's London Bridge terror attack, anti-extremism activist Maajid Nawaz delivered his four-point plan to defeat Islamist terrorists.
London Bridge Attack: What You Need To Know
He said: "My four points are as follows: First off we need to be very clear here to name and shame the Islamist ideology.
"Without us being being able to do so, we will be unable to isolate extremists from mainstream Muslim communities.We'll also be depriving reforming liberal Muslims from a lexicon that they require to isolate themselves from these extremists.
"Islamist extremism is very different to Islamic. Islamic is a value judgement. It means something is endorsed by Islam, whereas Islamism is a political ideology that seeks to impose any version of Islam over society.
"Islamism, in other words, is theocracy. It's violent manifestation is jihadism. If we cannot talk about a problem with an accurate and correct lexicon, then we are simply nowhere near even beginning to address the ideological challenge that lies ahead of us.
"Point two.We must protect the government's counter extremism strategy known as Prevent.Any politician in this climate calling to scrap Prevent, I'll tell you straight up, as somebody who for his entire life has be dealing with this agenda, I can tell you very clearly they do not understand extremism.
"Any politician who calls for the scrapping of Prevent in this climate does not understand the risk that this country faces, nor do they understand national security and nor do they understand the nature of this ideological threat that I'm calling Islamist extremism.
"Third.To implement the Prevent strategy properly, what we need is a counter-extremism coordinator to coordinate between all government departments.
"Currently, and it's been too long, it's been over a decade since the 7/7 attacks and the government, the Conservatives, have simply not appointed a counter-extremism coordinator.
"So the Ministry of Justice could be singing from one hymn sheet, the Department for Education could be singing from another and Communities and Local Government from a third.
"That's actually what's been happening under this government and so it's high time we appointed a centralised counter-extremism coordinator with teeth to coordinate our counter-extremism policy across all government departments, accountable and answerable only to the Prime Minister. And that's for whoever wins in the upcoming General Election
"And fourth and finally, these Jihadists are attacking us because they despise our freedom, our democracy, our human rights, our secularism, our pluralism, our respect for difference.
"They despise everything we stand for, so why would you, if you know that that's why they are attacking us, also endorse an attack on those very same values?
"If the terrorists are attacking us because they hate our freedom and our human rights and our democracy and our secularism and our pluralism, then why would you do their job for them by undermining those very values in your response or reaction to these attacks?
"That means we must jealously guard and preserve our way of life, what we stand for, our values that we cherish, because that is the best way to fight these terrorists.
"Democracy and secularism is our best revenge.Freedom and democracy and pluralism and tolerance is the way in which we fight back, because that's the very thing they want to undermine.
"And that's my fourth point, that the counter-extremism coordinator must be bound by the liberal values that bind this country and hold us all together."
Maajid then gave his take on Theresa May's plan. Watch below.
