(Credit: Creative Commons)

Nadine Osman

An 11-year-old Muslim schoolboy was referred to the Government’s controversial counter-radicalisation Prevent programme after a teacher mistook the word ‘alms’ for ‘arms’ during a discussion. The teacher asked what pupils would do if they had a lot of money. According to a legal challenge against the school lodged by the boy’s parents, he said he would “give alms to the oppressed”. The teacher misheard this as “give arms to the oppressed” and made the Prevent referral.

When police received the referral, they said there was no substance to it, no sign of radicalisation, extremist views or any threat to national security and closed the case.

The boy’s parents are taking legal action against the school, accusing it of applying a stereotype about his racial and religious background. It calls for a written apology from the school, the payment of damages and the expunging of the Prevent referral from their son’s record.

The boy’s family lawyer called for the Prevent programme to be scrapped.
Attiq Malik of Liberty Law Solicitors told The Muslim News, “Yet again we see another example of a ‘fail’ by the Government’s Prevent Programme on vulnerable impressionable children, highlighting why the Programme is potentially harmful and needs to be scrapped as it simply does not work. In the current economic climate, teachers are barely equipped properly to carry out their teaching duties, let alone the additional policing duties imposed on them by Prevent.”

“Criminal legislation and safeguarding policies have always existed to protect the public and the vulnerable members of our society. There is no need for a policy that is nothing less than the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and thus unnecessary,” Malik added.

The case has similarities to others that have hit the headlines, including a nursery worker thinking a four-year-old Muslim child had drawn a picture of his father with a cooker bomb when he was referring to a cucumber and a 10-year-old Muslim boy who misspelt the word “terraced” as “terrorist” to describe the kind of house he lived in.

The boy’s father, an engineer, and his mother, a dentist, say they are distraught as a result of the Prevent referral. They are concerned that even though the case was swiftly closed by police, the referral will stay on their son’s file and will be passed on to the school the boy is due to attend in September.

“This has had a massive impact on us as a family. My wife hasn’t slept properly since this happened. We want answers, and we want justice. All pupils should be treated equally and with integrity,” the boy’s father said.

A spokesman for West Mercia Police confirmed to The Muslim News that “a Prevent referral was made by one of our partners. The referral was made in good faith at the time, but it has since been closed.” However, the police failed to confirm whether the child’s records will be retained.

The Home Office said it does not comment on individual cases. However, in a statement to The Muslim News, the Home Office said, ‘The purpose of Prevent is to safeguard vulnerable people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism by engaging with people who are vulnerable to radicalisation and protecting those who are being targeted by terrorist recruiters.

Being referred or supported by, Prevent is not any form of criminal sanction; Prevent provides safeguarding support and is not a programme to further an investigation. It will have no bearing on a person’s education or career prospects.’

He said it was particularly distressing that the school had not discussed the Prevent referral with the family before making it. The referral the school made, seen by the Guardian, states that the boy “lives with mum and dad – attends a local mosque”.
In response to whether consent was obtained before sharing the boy’s data, the teacher who referred the boy wrote: ‘have not contacted parents.”

According to Government guidance on Prevent, consent from the person involved should be obtained wherever possible before sharing information about them. It adds that the necessity and proportionality of a referral should be assessed, taking into account the risk to the individual and other members of the public. The school has described the child as “highly intelligent”.

His father says that he reads widely. The Prevent referral states that his comments are starting to stick out as “non-typical” for a boy his age due to his interest in medieval history, war, siege engines and soldiers.

The boy’s father says his son is involved with charity work, such as helping him pack food parcels at the local interfaith food bank. He added that he often stayed behind after school to help his teacher clear up the classroom.

Dr Layla Aitlhadj, Director of Prevent Watch, told The Muslim News the case was “not surprising” and that they have dealt with near 600 individuals with half of the cases involving children, some as young as 4-years-old.

“The parents were not informed of the Prevent referral prior to the teacher making it, and this is a common theme where public sector workers such as teachers assume the worst-case scenario, bulldoze a Prevent referral through and somehow view the parents as part of the problem and, therefore, do not inform them let alone ask for consent,” said Aitlhadj.

“We have nursery-aged children being referred to Prevent for innocent comments and university students feeling silenced by the mere fact that they know that Prevent has created a securitised environment in what should be a safe space,” added Aitlhadj.

“We are very much beyond the point of asking that the Government end Prevent. We We are at a point where we are demanding that the Government undo the harms of Prevent and admit to the damage that it has caused whilst failing to protect society and certainly in failing to ‘support vulnerable individuals’.

It is the main reason that we have organised a ‘People’s review of Prevent’ so that the people impacted can have a platform to produce their evidence of Prevent independent of the Government’s rubberstamping exercise led by William Shawcross.”

Students investigated by police and Prevent after Qur’anis desecrated p10