This is a cross-post by a brother from East London
It is now a well known fact that some of the people responsible for delivering the government’s Prevent programme are actually opposed to its core objectives. These people can be best described as ‘anti-Prevent Prevent leads’.
One such individual is Shaban Siddik. He was recently appointed by OSCT (Home Office) as the Prevent Manager for Ealing Council. He previously worked at Harrow Council as a Prevent Coordinator. Here are the highlights of his Prevent career so far:
- Supporting, promoting and working closely with Harrow Mosque. This institutions website promotes: Islamic Forum of Europe (an Islamist organisation that wants to replace UK Democracy with Shariah law), YMO (an IFE youth group), MCB, Islam Channel and Islam Expo.
- Setting up a ‘Muslim Youth Skills’ group and inviting Yvonne Ridley (Talibanette and Press TV broadcaster) to speak at its opening ceremony.
- Using Prevent resources to deliver training sessions with Tafazal Mohammad; a Trustee of the jihadist bookshop ‘Al Iqra’ which the 7/7 bombers used to visit.
Shaban is also the Chair of the Muslim Students Academy. In this capacity, last year he posted the following message on MPACUK’s Facebook page:
“I want to see a muslim superpower emerge…heck I want to lead it”
From the above one can only deduce that Shaban is either an Islamist sympathiser or extremely stupid.
Another individual who has dubious links has been appointed the Prevent Lead for Barking and Dagenham Council. Assan Ali previously worked at the Government Office for London (GOL) before it was disbanded in 2010. During his time at GOL he was responsible for funding various IFE initiatives. In 2008, he won an award for promoting the Radical Middle Way; a useless organisation that has given platforms to speakers with extremist links.
The question that needs to be asked is why does the Home Office continue funding and wasting taxpayers’ money on such individuals? Wasn’t the revised 2011 Prevent programme supposed to put an end to all this? One would have expected them to have got this right by now.
We will, of course, be raising this issue at a higher level but the least the Home Office can do – now that they have the evidence – is to stop funding these individuals with immediate effect.