The U.K.’s understanding of Islamist extremism has “significant gaps” as research disproportionately focuses on the far-Right, an official counter-extremism watchdog report has warned. The Telegraph has the story.
The study, for the Commission for Countering Extremism, revealed that Islamist extremists are using legal threats to help deter researchers from writing about them.
It said research projects funded by millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money appeared to be “skewed towards studies of extremism in general, as well as towards studies of the far-Right”, warning that the Islamist movement in the U.K. had been “systematically under-researched”.
Among the reasons it gave for an apparent skewing of research towards Right-wing extremism was a “litigative onslaught” researchers suggested they faced if they wrote about specific individuals and groups, “particularly in the Islamist sphere”.
The document, published on the gov.uk website, stated: “As a result of systemic problems both in studying extremism and in communicating the findings of such study, there are likely to be substantial gaps in the knowledge base around extremism in the U.K.
“The skew towards studies of Right-wing extremism, and away from studies of Islamism (especially in a contemporary U.K. context), could… perhaps be seen as problematic, given that Islamist extremism proportionally represents a far greater terror threat in the U.K.”
The report will add to concern about the extent to which the U.K. is equipped to deal with rising levels of extremism stemming from the Israel-Hamas conflict.
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