Author: Andrew Gillian
Source: The Telegraph, August 24, 2014

Original Title: Hadliners being paid thousands to advise young, at-risk Muslims (Archive.Today)

The British Home Office’s deradicalisation scheme, Channel, has recently been under fire for having financed and used some Muslim fundamentalist ideologues to meet and talk with young radical Muslims in order to dissuade them from radicalisation and violence.

Workers employed by the public program have included Tassadaq Hussain, a spokesman for a radical mosque whose preacher, Abu Usamah, had been exposed a couple years ago for his deeply fundamentalist religious orientation, which included explicit support for the instauration of a “total Islamic state” that “would do away with man-made laws”. Abu Usamah had been described as a “staunch critic of extremism” by Tassadaq Hussain.

Even if the British government has back in 2011 explicitly rejected the practice of funding interventions providers promoting extremist ideas or beliefs, the idea that non-violent extremists are uniquely placed to divert young Muslims from violent extremism is still thriving in some political and law enforcement circles.