This was the warning that 7\/7 gave Britain. Islamist terrorism was not just a headline from the Middle East<\/a> but a domestic threat, formed in British towns and cities and preached in English accents.<\/p>\n The British state responded. CONTEST, the government\u2019s counter-terrorism strategy, had been developed before 7\/7 and consisted of four strands: Prevent, Pursue, Protect, and Prepare.<\/p>\n After the bombings, it was used as the public framework for Britain\u2019s response. Former prime minister Tony Blair promised that \u201cthe rules of the game\u201d were changing.<\/p>\n He imposed harsher deportation rules, new terrorist offenses, controls on extremist preaching, and stronger border measures.<\/p>\n The Terrorism Act 2006 created offenses around encouragement of terrorism, dissemination of terrorist publications, preparation of terrorist acts, and terrorist training.<\/p>\n In 2007, the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism was created inside the Home Office. Intelligence coordination improved, and public places became better protected.<\/p>\n And operationally, at least, there has been progress. The 2023 CONTEST strategy said 39 late-stage terrorist attacks had been disrupted since March 2017.<\/p>\n But ideologically and sociologically, CONTEST has been nothing short of a failure, with the country in a far worse position with regard to Islamism.<\/p>\n The aim of \u2018Prevent\u2019 was clear: stop people becoming terrorists. There was an understanding that radicalization had to be tackled at the source before it was planned. A good idea in theory.<\/p>\n But Prevent became weak as a result of political fear of Islamophobia. This was, and continues to be, sometimes very justified.<\/p>\n The fear of anti-Muslim hatred is real. Tell MAMA recorded 6,313 anti-Muslim incidents in 2024, its highest annual total since it began monitoring.<\/p>\n The existence of anti-Muslim hatred cannot paralyze the state in the face of the threat of Islamist extremism. This is what happened: Prevent lost sight of the threat or was not given the political backing to really identify it.<\/p>\n The 2023 Shawcross Review, a UK government-commissioned independent review of Prevent, exposed this.<\/p>\n At the time, 80% of the Counter Terrorism Policing network\u2019s live investigations were Islamist, while only 22% of Prevent referrals in 2020\/21 concerned Islamism.<\/p>\n Sir William Shawcross described \u201ctimidity\u201d around Islamist extremism and warned that Islamist ideology was being misunderstood or overlooked.<\/p>\n Prevent referrals increase<\/p>\n THIS SHOULD have caused action. And it did, to a degree. Official statistics for the year ending March 2025 revealed a record 8,778 referrals to Prevent, a 27% increase from the previous year.<\/p>\n But despite high referrals, only 17% were actually adopted into the channel intervention program. In 2024, Shawcross accused the government of disregarding key recommendations from his review, warning that the public had been left \u201cat risk.\u201d<\/p>\n Even more worryingly, these statistics come as the 2023 CONTEST strategy described Islamist terrorism as the largest terrorist threat to Britain by volume and severity.<\/p>\n Since 2018, it has accounted for 67% of attacks and roughly three-quarters of MI5\u2019s counter-terrorism caseload.<\/p>\n Extreme right-wing terrorism is dangerous and must be policed seriously, particularly with the rise of the far Right, but it only accounted for about 22% of attacks over the same period. There is a clear hierarchy of danger here.<\/p>\n Islamism does not begin when the bomb is built, or when the terrorist goes into a synagogue, as on Yom Kippur. It works through individuals turning a foreign issue into intimidation of Jewish people.<\/p>\n It normalizes antisemitism under the guise of anti-Zionism<\/a>. It works because politicians are too scared to call it what it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Illustration](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/672837.jpeg\"\/)
Illustration of ISIS terrorists. (credit: Corbis\/Medyan Dairieh, Wikipedia)<\/p>\n