Two years ago this week, suicide bombs on three tube trains and a bus killed 52 people in London. And only last week further carnage was avoided when bombers narrowly failed to detonate cars bombs in central London and at Glasgow Airport. Few details have emerged about the perpetrators of last week's attacks, but it is believed that like the 7/7 London bombers, they were inspired by a warped view of Islam.
The Government has admitted that police investigations can only deal with the symptoms of the problem. So last autumn it set up the Preventing Violent Extremism Team at the Home Office, which has since been moved to Communities and Local Government.
In April this year, the first work from the unit was published in its flagship report Preventing violent extremism - Winning hearts and minds, which set out the challenge society faces, and suggested key responses to the threat of home-grown terrorism.
Action plan
The report made clear that its focus was Britain's Muslim community, although it tried to avoid stigmatising people of that faith: "This is not about a clash of civilisations or a struggle between Islam and 'the West' ... Indeed, Government is committed to working in partnership with the vast majority of Muslims who reject violence and who share core British values in doing this."
In practical terms, the action plan pledged work with madrassahs - mosque schools attended by 100,000 children aged between five and 14 years old - to develop citizenship education. Communities and Local Government would also work more closely with Muslim organisations that firmly rejected violence and promoted shared values.
Steps would be taken to improve the governance and leadership of mosques by encouraging more faith-based organisations to register with the Charity Commission and by devising an accredited continuous professional development programme for faith leaders. A 6m Pathfinder fund was also launched to support projects in 70 priority local authority areas.
But some in the youth sector have severe misgivings about the line that Whitehall is taking. A senior figure from one of the most prominent Pathfinders criticised the Government for focusing on Muslims, which he argues threatens to further alienate young Asians fed up with being branded as untrustworthy.
So what do those people living in areas with high ethnic minority populations think? Sameer, 19, is a peer mentor at a Bradford youth project called New Neighbours (see box). He says that since the terrorist attacks on London, life has become more difficult but there are also positive signs: "Now I have a beard people look at me differently. There is more hostility but at the same time people smile and show respect, and there is more interest being shown in the community."
For Sameer the big challenge is breaking down the "ghettoes" in places like Bradford and he believes that youth work has a vital role in forging bonds between different ethnic communities.
A dozen miles away in Leeds, discussing the 7/7 bombings is difficult. Two of the four bombers spent their formative years in the deprived suburb of Beeston, including the leader Mohammad Sidique Khan. Khan was even employed by Leeds Youth Service for three years and one of the young people he worked with and befriended was Shehzad Tanweer, who blew up the train at Aldgate underground station. It is painfully ironic that the project Khan was working on was called Space, whose middle letters stood for Positive Alternatives to Crime.
Hidden terror
What makes the whole subject so difficult is that Khan was by all accounts a popular youth worker who managed to build a strong rapport with young people. If the youth service was unable to identify potential terrorists in its own ranks, how can it hope to identify disillusioned young people who are attracted to Islamic extremism?
John Paxton, principal youth worker at Leeds City Council, says that when it comes to individuals with a secret life, there is little they can do: "People were completely shocked by Khan's role in the bombings. But there was no real way of finding out his true beliefs. Khan showed no sign of this when he worked for us."
At the same time, youth workers are angry about the way extremism is perceived to be a Muslim issue. Eren Weekes, youth manager for the area, says that this is unfair: "Why are we just looking at the extremist views of some Muslims? The British National Party (BNP) is operating in the community so why aren't we tackling it as well?"
She believes the media onslaught is to blame and it risks alienating young Muslims: "They're going down the street being shouted at as 'Beeston bombers'. They feel discriminated against by the media and sense they are being backed into a corner and so they've got to defend themselves."
The media should be more responsible, she argues: "If you offer a young person 200 they're going to tell you what you want to hear, not what is necessarily true. As youth workers, we're trying to build that community up again but the media are tarnishing everything."
Others take a different view. Even before the Pathfinder fund had been set up, Birmingham City Council appointed Yousiff Meah, formerly the head of its youth service, to lead the city's approach to tackling extremism.
Meah says that while youth work has been good at tackling socio-political issues like racism and the influence of the BNP, it has never really felt comfortable addressing religion and spirituality: "Youth work at its best is about empowering young people to take control of their lives. But perhaps in the past youth services have shied away from the spiritual." Unlike Weekes, he believes the challenge is of a different order to that posed by the BNP: "The question is why British people are able to be inspired to blow up their fellow citizens. But the focus shouldn't be on Muslims per se, but on the errant use of Islam."
Sources at Communities and Local Government told Young People Now that because Britain faces an "unprecedented threat" from Islamic extremism the Government has no choice but to focus on the Muslim community. The message coming out of the department is that violent extremism is not linked to deprivation but to identity. Evidence collated by the department suggests that as young people, British Muslim extremists are not in trouble with the law or excluded from school. Rather, their teenage years are marked by a crisis of identity and growing alienation - they can neither empathise with their parents' Asian values or the British identity of their white peers. So youth work, which is often about stopping young people from "falling out of the system", has to engage on a wider level and challenge disaffection, officials argue.
The Pathfinder programme is the Government's attempt to address this, supporting projects and forums where young people are able to feel part of something. But some young Muslims feel these projects are just a red herring, and the sense of alienation will only continue to grow, especially if the police "harass" their community. "Are we living in a police state?" asks one Muslim youth worker in east London. "I've been stopped so many times but I'm used to it. Younger people might actually get pushed into an extreme belief by these tactics."
NEW NEIGHBOURS
The New Neighbours project in Bradford aims to break down barriers by bringing young people from different backgrounds together. The name was chosen by the young people when they were asked to come up with a project to build community cohesion. New Neighbours uses outdoor education to inspire young people from a range of faiths to work together and bond by overcoming challenges. The project, which began in January this year and is funded by Bradford Youth Service, the city's Outward Bound Association and the participants themselves, has already run two residentials with a group from Glasgow. The young people hit it off immediately, and found similarities between sectarian divisions in Scotland and ethnic tensions in West Yorkshire, says Mike Burtoft, outdoor education development worker at Bradford Youth Service.
ENCOURAGE COHESION
Next month young people at New Neighbours will attempt to climb Yorkshire's three peaks to raise money to pay for the Glasgow group to come down to Bradford. "Outdoor education is fantastic for bringing young people together," believes Burtoft. "It places them in a shared experience with shared vulnerabilities. It may be that they are frightened of water or open spaces but they have to work together, start relying on and trusting one another. It's proven very successful here." The residential aspect also helps them to learn about other faiths in an informal way. "It prompts discussions that might be awkward in a classroom environment," says Burtoft. Sameer, a youth mentor on the project, says that New Neighbours has given him some of the best experiences of his life: "We need different communities in Bradford to mix more and this is one of the best ways of making it happen."
