UK Programme, David Anderson QC, Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, community visits to Leicester, Bolton, Manchester and Dewsbury

Between the 17^th and 18^th of February 2016 Forward Thinking's Jordan Morgan facilitated roundtables in Leicester, Bolton, Manchester and Dewsbury bringing together influential individuals with constituency across diverse Muslim communities in order to discuss the impacts of counter-terrorism legislation and government policy with David Anderson QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation.This visit forms part of Forward Thinking’s decade of extensive work in facilitating dialogue between UK Muslim communities and grassroots organisations, and the ‘British Establishment’ (parliamentarians, policymakers and the national media) from whom they feel alienated. Over the last 12 years previous participants have included Ruth Kelly, the former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, John Reid, former British Home Secretary and several hundred civil servants.The impacts of legislation and policy were explored as participants expressed the challenges facing the Muslim community in Britain today, reflecting on the barriers to socio-economic and political integration and community cohesiveness. It was intimated that certain policies and legislation aimed at preventing a minority of so-called extremist elements in society were adversely affecting the majority of British Muslims. Rather then isolating and disempowering dissident figures, many Muslims across the visit, which included teachers, social workers, youth workers, heads of religious groups and students feel increasingly vulnerable, and disassociated within their own respective institutions, in which certain legislation has become a statutory duty, as well as from wider society.Current top down technical policy initiatives struggle to deal with attitudinal and cultural issues, felt better solved if solutions were rooted within the community, not enforced upon it, which were flexible and responsive to the complex entanglement of religious and ethnic diversity within the British Muslim community.