British media reporting on responses to the British government’s Counter-Extremism Strategy (original) (raw)

This presentation puts forward a critical assessment of reporting and media comment on responses to the UK government’s ‘Counter-Extremism Strategy’. Briefly tabulated are those questions journalists did and did not ask about the CES, which topics in the CES were covered or not and why. On the philosophical level several fundamental problems arise. Is the UK government attempting to define ‘true religion’, and should it? Representative responses from religious bodies are assessed critically. Going beyond conventional wisdom about the roots of the CES in the New Labour government’s Prevent Strategy, the academic origins of the concept of ‘extremism’, religious or not, in the social sciences, is shown here, and then its appearance in policy and legislation. The question is asked whether the CES is a new Clarendon Code for England and Wales, or whether it represents a new incarnation of an Enlightenment approach to relations between religion and the state. In conclusion the level of religious literacy in the British media on this subject is assessed, and the implications thereof for public understanding of religion/s, religious freedom and freedom of speech.