UK and U.S. Approaches in Countering Radicalization: Intelligence, Communities, and the Internet

Friday, April 1, 2011

This session was part of the symposium, UK and U.S. Approaches in Countering Radicalization: Intelligence, Communities, and the Internet, which was cosponsored with Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies and King’s College London’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. This event was made possible by Georgetown University's George T. Kalaris Intelligence Studies Fund and the generous support of longtime CFR member Rita E. Hauser. Additionally, this event was organized in cooperation with the CFR’s Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Initiative.

JIM LINDSAY: Good morning, everyone. I am Jim Lindsay, director of studies here at the Council on Foreign Relations. On behalf of Richard Haass, the president of CFR, and our partners in today's event, Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies and the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, I want to welcome you to our symposium here today: "United Kingdom and U.S. Approaches in Countering Radicalization."

In putting together a conference like the one we have today, we have a big debt of gratitude and thanks to give a number of people. And I'd like to single them out here. On behalf of Georgetown University, I would like to thank Thomas Kalaris for his unwavering support for today's symposium and the George T. Kalaris Fund for Intelligence Studies at Georgetown University. The fund is named in honor of Tom's father, an unsung hero of the U.S. intelligence services. And the fund invests in the future of intelligence professional and intelligence studies at Georgetown's Center for Peace and Security Studies.

CFR would also like to thank longtime member and supporter, Rita Hauser. Rita is an international lawyer who is deeply involved in intelligence work through her service on the president's Intelligence Advisory Board. Rita, thank you very much for all your support.

I would also like to thank Georgetown University's Bruce Hoffman and Ellen McHugh, Henry Sweetbaum and Peter Neumann of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. I also owe some thanks to my colleagues here at CFR, led by Ed Husain and Steve Simon. In addition, it takes a lot of people working in the background to make an event like today happen. And my colleague Nancy Bodurtha heads up a truly outstanding meetings team here. So I want to thank Nancy, Chris Tuttle, Emily Mcleod, Jeff Gullo, Allison Blou (sp) and Kate Collins for pulling today's conference together.

I have a couple of housekeeping details to go over. First, today's sessions are all on the record with two exceptions. The exceptions are session two on "Violent Radicalization -- Key Trends and Developments," and session six, "New Frontiers -- Countering Online Radicalization." I would also politely request that if you have a BlackBerry, PDA, any other electronic device that sends or receives signals, if you could please turn it off right now so that it will not interfere with our sound system and put out squealing, very painful sounds over the speakers. So I would appreciate that.

Why are we having today's symposium? The answer is fairly straightforward. The United States is experiencing a significant increase in violent Islamic extremism, both abroad and at home. Ongoing events in the Middle East are a cause for concern about the probable rise of Islamic radicalism, at least in the short term.

At home, we have more and more instances of Americans either plotting attacks against their fellow Americans or attempting to travel overseas to receive terrorist training. The Fort Hood shooting in November of 2009 and the near-successful car bombing in Times Square in May, 2010, are the most dramatic illustrations of this trend.

We are seeking in today's event to bring together leading officials and experts from the United Kingdom and the United States to take stock, to exchange best practices and to develop fresh ideas for tackling some of the most important issues in the current debate. And I owe a great debt of gratitude to our British colleagues who traveled a considerable distance to get here this morning. I only had to take a Metro subway ride. They had to fly a long way.

We are honored to begin today's conversation with a truly distinguished keynote speaker, Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, the United Kingdom's minister of state, responsible for security and counterterrorism. Minister Neville-Jones has had a distinguished 30-year career as a diplomat, serving in posts around the world, including the former Rhodesia, Singapore, Washington and Bonn. She was also seconded to the European Commission. Minister Neville Jones has held her current position since May of 2010.

And with that, I would invite Minister Neville-Jones to come to the podium.

MINISTER OF STATE FOR SECURITY AND COUNTERTERRORISM PAULINE NEVILLE-JONES: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for that kind introduction. As has just been noted, I've spent time in my -- in my past, in Washington. And I just want to say what a pleasure it is to come back. I think that anybody who has spent time here seldom goes away feeling that they will ever entirely shake off the lure of this town. And it is -- it is good to be here.

And as somebody who, you know, has had some experience in this subject -- and I understand that the administration is likely to be issuing a strategy in this -- in this -- in this policy area quite shortly -- I hope I can shed some light at any rate on the U.K. experience. And I shall be talking from the point of view, obviously of U.K. experience. Not everything that we've done or not everything that we've experienced is necessary -- necessarily relevant to the American context, but I do think there are some -- probably some problem -- some common both problems and solutions that we might be able to share and respectively benefit from. And it is with that spirit that I'm going to talk with you this morning.

And as was well said, I bear this rather portentous title of minister of security and counterterrorism, and as a result of that have focused quite considerably since the coalition came into office last May in our approach to radicalization and countering it because we do regard it as a key part of any successful strategy. And it's that that I will now focus on.

And I suppose it's worth starting, of course, amid -- you know, where does this story all begin? Well, one thing's very clear, that terrorism isn't just a threat which is external to Western countries. It's not simply a foreign menace that comes from overseas to strike our cities. It can and it does, as we now know, come from within our own countries and from inside our own populations. And I think it's fair to say that every single country in the West needs to wake up to what's happening within our own borders.

This means that we must strengthen the security aspect of our response, the capacity and capabilities of our intelligence agencies and of our law enforcement officers -- all part of the picture.

But it's only part of the solution, and we do have to get also to the root. And we must tackle the ideology that fuels and drives radicalization and the circumstances which give that ideology appeal. We need to act against the existence of a pervasive, perverse and pernicious political ideology which is Islamist extremism.

Now, let me stress emphatically that this does not mean tackling the religion of Islam, which is one of the great religions of the world. Those on the right-wing extremist fringe who argue that is exactly what we should do, but they have it wrong. Those who say that the West and Islam are eternally irreconcilable have more in common with the Islam extremists than they might like to think, for it's the very same argument of course advanced by al-Qaida. And they do have it wrong. We need to work with mainstream Islam.

Moreover, the events of last week in North Africa -- in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Libya -- have demonstrated that the populations of Muslim countries themselves see no incompatibility, and that they crave the freedoms that they see us in the West enjoying in our (land ?), and that's very important. In our foreign -- and in our -- and our domestic policies, it should be a cardinal tenet that domestic -- that democratic freedoms and Islam are companions, and not opponents.

Now, as the British prime minister made clear in a recent speech which he gave the Munich Security Conference, Islamist extremist ideology is the problem; Islam is not. So that brings us to the -- on to the question of what is it about Islamist extremist ideology which can lead ultimately to terrorism. Clearly, rejection of democratic values need not of itself lead to violence. By no means, all Islamists are terrorists. So how does the process of radicalization work?

Now, there's been a great deal of academic research in universities and think tanks on radicalization. And our and your intelligence agencies have also used their knowledge and covert information to try to come up with an answer. And what emerges is the unremarkable conclusion that there is no single cause.

Our work in Britain suggests that radicalization is driven by an ideology which claims that Muslims around the world are being oppressed and -- and this is the key bit of the argument -- which then legitimizes violence in their supposed defense. This legitimization of violence is often coupled with a political vision: the restoration of the caliphate, based on a purported reading of scriptures.

Now, this is a revolutionary message, and this revolutionary message is broadcast and amplified by a global network of influential propagandists who make extensive use of the Internet to penetrate societies across the globe. And it finds an audience among individuals with specific personal vulnerabilities which make that ideology seem both attractive and compelling. Where those vulnerable individuals are part of a community, be it an actual community or a virtual community, where extremist views are widely accepted, the legitimization of violence becomes easy, and the path to terrorism is thereby smoothed.

We know in the U.K. from our own citizenship surveys -- and I'll give you an example -- that in situations where people believe that ethnic and faith groups should not mix and where people are segregated from the rest of society, they are more likely to accept the extremist arguments. And this is then liable to become an enabling context in which the espousal of violence is made easy.

The well-crafted online jihadist messaging has contributed powerfully to the perception of a single global terrorist campaign, which in fact is quite often carried on by otherwise separate terrorist groups, not always with the same interests or identities. And we underestimate such a potent infrastructure and such a superficially powerful ideology at our peril. And as our prime minister put it, we must confront and we must undermine it. This will be a concerted effort from all governments, institutions and citizens -- all of us.

Now, in the U.K., we've had for some years a strategy to counter this radicalization, to stop people becoming terrorists. There are parallels with the countering violent extremism programs which are being run in this country and I would -- about which I think Jane Lute will be talking later in the day. Our strategy, which is called Prevent, is a key component of a broader strategy designed to counter all aspects of terrorism, which is called CONTEST.

And it's fair to say that these days, in many places, the police and the local Muslim communities are now more willing to talk to each other frankly and constructively than previously about the threat of terrorism, the dangers of radicalization and how we should try to reduce them. And the level of awareness of the dangers is much greater, and there is greater sense of shared purpose than was once the case. Our information and understanding is slowly getting better. The police have a mandate grounded in their community policing role to locate vulnerable individuals and to intervene to help them with -- and along with the cooperation of local government and voluntary community bodies. And community-based groups have been engaged to provide anti- and de-radicalization services. And we can report some successes in stopping people being radicalized or drawn into terrorism.

However -- there is a "however" -- we do think that the mistakes have blotted out a good deal of the progress. There have been accusations of stigmatization and of the police spying on Muslim communities, and a perception, which has been lent false color, by the legitimate role of the police in personal interventions. You can see how easy it is, actually, to mistake the one for the other, either willfully or unwittingly.

The government has also been accused of not -- of being only interested in British Muslims insofar as they represented a terrorist threat, and that their mainstream needs like health or education or housing were of no concern. The government, it was said, was securitizing its approach to Muslim communities.

The result of this is that Prevent has gradually lost the trust and good will of many in the very communities it was designed to help. More widely, it's being criticized also for trying to do too many things at once, for wasting money and also for spending it on the wrong projects. It was clear that compared with the other parts of our counterterrorism strategy -- when the incoming coalition came in -- that we had to do something about this, because Prevent wasn't working and could be vastly improved. And so that is what we have been focusing on.

Now, our first conclusion was that the segregation of communities was actually becoming more pronounced and that Prevent was in the wrong vehicle as it was designed to counter this. Indeed, unless set in a wider policy context, I think it's clear that special programs are liable to have the effect opposite from that intended. Far from uniting, they have a tendency to isolate, leading to accusations of stigmatization.

We reckon that we needed a unity strategy, a strategy of integration in its own right, of which Prevent would then be a component part rather than the other way around. And in his Munich speech in February, the British prime minister said, quote, we must build stronger societies with stronger identities at home.

He criticized past government policies of state multiculturalism, which encourage differentiation between communities, instead, as we see the task, of actively fostering a sense of what we share and what we value. Well, to give you an example of the kind of things we think we need to do, as part of the Big Society program, the government is introducing the National Citizen Service, in which 16-year-olds from all backgrounds and walks of life will spend two months living and working together.

We want to create a vision of a society to which all, including young Muslims, feel they want to belong and to participate in. And we believe there's something that we can learn here from America. You have created in your country a palpable sense of national identity, an American dream to which all can aspire and an acceptance of immigrant communities as Americans.

And it's a task that the British government seeks to create a similar sense of shared identity in our country. And we need this, anyway, and it stands independently of counterterrorism. It is, however, the framework within which we will challenge nonviolent and violent extremist views.

So if our values mean anything, they must be equal to taking on opposing opinions, however hostile, in open debate. And we won't discriminate. We will confront all forms of extremism, from far left to far right, from neo-fascist to militant separatist. The government will work actively in this task with those of all faiths and viewpoints who share our values. We will not rely on extremists to combat violence merely because they do not espouse violence themselves.

And at the same time, we will not -- not permit the advocacy of violence. We have laws against this, which we will enforce, and we will exclude from the U.K. those from abroad who have a track record of preaching or advocating violence.

Our revised Prevent strategy will be implemented within the broad -- this broad context. It will be more narrowly focused on violent extremism and the pathways that lead to the espousal of violence. And since what is at issue is people and networks that they work and live in, it will be more granular in its approach dealing with people. We need also to remember that the threat we face from terrorism is constantly evolving and that we need to be flexible in our response.

And at the core of the revised Prevent will be three "I"s -- ideology, institutions and individuals: the ideology that supports terrorism and those who promote it; the institutions where radicalization may occur, which will be crucial in -- and which will also be crucial in disrupting its impact; and the individuals who are vulnerable to radicalization.

And I want to say a little bit more about each of these and why they're important; first of all, ideology. Well, challenging extremism is part of the normal functioning of a democratic society and, as I have made clear, it finds an important place in our wider integration strategy. But when it comes to the advocacy of violence and its espousal, a concerted response is required, which must be more focused and specialized than can be the case in the normal cut and thrust of democratic debate. A sustained anti- and counterterrorist message is called for. Much can and should be done at the local level by communities themselves. And Prevent does focus on this, and it funds the projects.

As I mentioned at the outset, the exploitation of the Internet also needs to be at the center of our attention. This is a very serious issue. The Internet plays an ever more significant role in the sedulous promotion of terrorism. We know that in the U.K., groups gather to view the preaching of violent men located many thousands of miles away and that this does have a powerful effect on young minds.

We know that individuals have been radicalized to the point of being willing to kill -- and have tried to do this -- as the result of viewing websites carrying such material. A British MP suffered serious injury in this way from a woman who came to see him in his constituency office. And this is not just a stab at the man. It is a stab at the open -- at open democracy.

And we must take action to stem this flow of poison, which comes across borders, and it requires international action. Child pornography on the Internet stimulates evil activity in real life, and we go after it. And we believe that we should go after websites and other Internet activity which enables or fosters terrorism. We welcome the increasing awareness on the part of Internet providers of the dangers of such material, and we look forward to working with partners on effective action. And for example -- I'll give you an example -- Google has now added a referral flag on YouTube for content which promotes terrorism, and we applaud this.

Government can also carry out activity directly, such as helping build the capacity of civil society organizations who are campaigning to build on the awareness of moderate organizations, encouraging the creation of websites that offer online topical advice for young Muslims, and engaging in online debate about extremist narrative and -- narratives and ideologies, get going at the local level. And we also hope that civil society and concerned individuals directly will also be active.

My second point, institutions: Now, our experience suggests that certain institutions -- such as prisons, universities and colleges, and, indeed, mosques -- may be especially vulnerable to the influence of charismatic radicalizers. Our universities and colleges are conscious of their dedication to unfettered academic research and to freedom of expression. And my goodness, the government respects this and will defend the rights of free speech, as we will defend the rights -- all citizens' rights to free speech.

But we do believe that alongside this there is a responsibility which universities carry to ensure that these freedoms are not exploited and perverted by speakers, on or off campus, and that the pastoral care of students is taken seriously, and that individuals needing help and guidance are spotted, and that assistance is available to them. And the training of English-speaking imams, as part of pastoral care, is absolutely fundamental to bonding the faith of young Muslims to the Western social context in which they find themselves.

The U.K. -- I just want to turn briefly to schools -- the U.K. has a thriving faith school sector, which offers some of the best education available, and that includes Muslim schools which receive public funding. And we're not going to stop that, but we will seek to maintain national standards of instruction in those schools, as in all others.

Now Muslims in Britain are disproportionately represented in our prisons. We need to ensure that prison does not become an incubator of violent extremism, the closed society. The U.K. is developing programs for prisoners, both inside and on release, to increase the likelihood of successful disruption of attempts at radicalization and recruitment, and of the chances of successful rehabilitation and reintegration into society. I wouldn't like to claim this is easy, but it is very important.

Though (missions ?) have often -- mosques have often been, I think, seen as part of the problem, and there have been and there still are instances of this, today I think the issue is less one of mosques harboring preachers being suspected of fostering violent extremism, let alone being guilty of it. It's more, in our view, one of a gap of confidence that still exists between the mosque and local authorities and the police. And this is a gap which it will be vital -- vital -- to close if we are to be successful in dealing with my third "I," which is individuals. You can see that the cooperation between local mosques and local communities and local authorities is very important.

Individuals. Those individuals who are on the path to radicalization don't exist in a vacuum. They live in neighborhoods, they meet friends and family, they use shops and businesses, and they come into contact with local community sector workers such as teachers, nurses or community police officers. And these are individuals who may be well placed, especially if trained -- and that's one of the things we do -- to notice changes in behavior. And it's when working with local community organizations or community groups who can provide personal deradicalization interventions that we get some of the best results. These -- this is an invaluable route, and it is crucial, obviously, to have the support of local Muslim leaders -- vital, frankly, to long-term success.

So we've already had quite a bit of experience of this sort of work, and as I say, we found it to be helpful and cost-effective. Hundreds of people have now been referred through our flagship Channel program. This type of multi-agency intervention, called Channel, is enormously more cost-effective than maintaining an MI5 investigation or dealing with the consequences of a successful attack. That's why Prevent is such an important pre-emptive part of the broader strategy.

Let me emphasize: Channel is emphatically not about criminalizing people who have not committed an offense. It is about helping them, and it's about drawing them back from the danger of radicalization and the espousal of violence.

But I think I ought to draw to a conclusion. What I would say is, you know, the agenda ahead of us is a full one. We will have to be determined and persevering and not expect, I think, lots of quick wins. What we want is to turn the propaganda tide, get from the back foot to the front foot. We have to create the values and institutions accepted by the whole of society, not just abroad, which is another task, but also, obviously, at home.

We believe it can be done and that in the U.K., within the broader program of strengthening our collective identity, Prevent has a key role to play in dissuading people from being drawn by the siren message of violent jihad.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

LINDSAY: Thank you, Minister, for a thoughtful set of remarks.

I'd like to begin with an issue you raised in your remarks about the role of integration and the importance of national identity. You quite nicely complimented Americans on a strong sense of national identity and the great pride that Americans have in incorporating immigrants in society. And I think because of that, for many years Americans thought that they were immune from the risk of homegrown radicalization.

But recently we've been forced to grapple with this problem. Why do you think it is that America's facing this challenge, given that it has this history of incorporating immigrants?

NEVILLE-JONES: Well, I think -- I think it's necessary but not sufficient is probably my first answer. And we don't have enough of it. And so as we think of it, actually, it is the framework within which you can then deal with a specific problem. That's why we have laid on that -- a lot of emphasis on that necessary framework.

I think it's not sufficient because -- I hope, as I tried to make clear, there is -- a healthy democracy will conduct a -- you know, a really strong cut and thrust, and you will argue through your values and you will -- and it's a very, very important part of living your -- living your beliefs.

But if you get to -- when it comes to people who are preaching to potentially rather closed communities and who have successfully drawn people away from listening to that democratic debate, participating in that democratic debate, being willing -- being willing components of society -- and we have some of that -- then it is very important actually to carry out, I think, you know, specific interventions designed actually to get at that kind of community.

And that is where I think we feel that we have to have a specific program. It works best when it is conducted by Muslims themselves. There isn't any doubt about that. And so one of the absolutely key things we have to do is to gain the confidence of the Muslim community in this country, such that they are willing themselves to lead these programs.

We've gone a bit down this road. We haven't -- I mean, in a sense we've pilot tested what we need to do. We know it works, but it's got to be much broader. And that is why I can't help feeling, in the end, if Muslims are going to be willing to do that, they must feel two things: one, that they are proud of the broader society and that actually they have rights as well as duties in the place and that they are regarded as equal Brits, and that what they're doing is valued.

So I think it's partly -- doesn't come to all of this, but it can give leadership. And I think it's the -- getting into that little corner that you've got to get into which I think is important. I don't know if that responds to American experience, but it's certainly, I think, where we feel that you have to underpin the values of democracy by doing actually a special program.

LINDSAY: But I take it from your remarks that there's a challenge in doing that and doing it well.

NEVILLE-JONES: There is. There is.

LINDSAY: Because you run into the issue -- you spoke of stigmatization in creating it. And I think obviously in the American context, as this issue has emerged there's a great deal of fear that what Americans are going to do or what the U.S. government will do will lead to stigmatization of Muslims and will actually make the problem worse rather than better.

NEVILLE-JONES: Absolutely.

LINDSAY: And I guess I'd draw you out a little bit about sort of your thoughts --

NEVILLE-JONES: This is not easy stuff.

LINDSAY: No. Just from your perspective of -- from the British perspective, you know, what are the lessons you learned; how do you avoid committing the error you know you shouldn't commit?

NEVILLE-JONES: Well, I mean, we didn't entirely avoid it. I mean, we have actually had this problem. And I'll give you one example of where different parts of a strategy actually do damage to each other. As you know, we've had -- I mean we have to have, given the nature of the kind of plots that we've had to deal with, of course, we've had a very vigorous (pursue ?) strategy alongside that, which deals with -- directly with counterterrorism. Now, it's not too difficult to find those things entangled. So that's one danger.

Second danger is -- and, of course, exploited, wittingly -- and there have been mistakes, as well. I'll give you one example. The police force in one area in the country put put a whole lot of CCTV cameras. They didn't explain what they were doing.

LINDSAY: These are closed caption television cameras?

NEVILLE-JONES: Yes, that's right, some sort of. And it gave rise -- it gave rise to the accusation that this is "big brother." So you do have to be transparent about what you're doing. You do -- I mean, the government does have constantly to explain what's happening. It's also why in the end of the day you can only do it locally. I mean, it's really on the ground where the local community is operating, where there's confidence.

The key, key component in all of this is trust and confidence. And we have to rebuilt a bit of that because there has been -- you know, there has been an erosion. I think we believe that people start again; you can't just accept that having made a mistake, you abandon the objective. But you can see we have tried to reshape the framework within which it stands and put what we believe to be the dominant thing, which is getting the country together, as the overall framework. And then there is Prevent within it. And we've changed the way the money's spent. We have put the integration strategy into the hands of a different government department so that it's quite clear that, you know, this is a different activity.

But I come back in the end to saying that we have to gain confidence, and we have to work very carefully at the whole business of personal and individual intervention. I do believe at the end of the day this is a very granular thing. You're dealing with people. You're dealing with individuals. And the best people to deal with individuals are those who are close to them, those who they think have some regard for them; you know, the so-called role model. And so it's there that we have to go. This is -- we have to build a strategy.

LINDSAY: When you talk about reaching out to individuals, that's, as I understand it, the purpose of your channel program, to sort of --

NEVILLE-JONES: That's right. That's right.

LINDSAY: -- engage friends, families, the community. Can I just draw you out a little bit more about how that works in practice?

NEVILLE-JONES: Well, it works -- it literally works, you know, in long sessions with individuals. The basing issues. Arguing. Going over the territory. Coming back to the issue. And it's hearts-and-minds stuff, but particularly mind stuff. What is this world about? I mean, it goes to absolute fundamentals about what people think they're there for.

Now, if you start getting somewhere with someone, what you then want to ensure is that they've got a job, that actually they feel their family has a future. So there are a whole series of other things that need to accompany that. So you start not just change the mindset, but also reintegrate. So multiagency working can be very important in this.

LINDSAY: Okay.

At this point, Minister, I'd like to bring the audience into our conversation here. I would ask you to please wait for the microphone, and when you get a microphone, to please speak into it. Please stand, state your name and affiliation. And I would ask people keep their questions concise and short and that there be a question so we can do as many of these as possible.

Yes, sir. I promised the minister I will keep her on schedule.

QUESTIONER: Madam Minister, Arnaud de Borchgrave, CSIS. What can you tell us about the 400,000 Pakistanis who go back and forth between the U.K. and FATA or other parts of Pakistan? And how does one persuade those people vis-a-vis those who live in England permanently and never go back to Pakistan?

NEVILLE-JONES: Quite right, the single largest Muslim community in the U.K. is subcontinental. And there is a lot of modern communication and modern travel, means there's a lot of coming and going. We should be quite clear that it is a tiny, tiny fraction of those people who travel backwards and forwards who are up to no good. And if you ask the average Pakistani-origin Brit, what do you think about that, they will give you the answer, this isn't -- we don't want to have anything to do with this. That's absolutely clear.

What we have to establish, however, is the willingness of individuals actually to come and say there is a problem here, we think we've got a -- we've got a problem in our local community. And that's the gap that we have to bridge. And it does happen. It does happen. Some of the most important pieces of information that the authorities have ever received in the U.K. have come from individuals in the Pakistan community. And that's precisely what we want to encourage.

So I think it is. It's a feeling that I can be (onside ?). I don't need to be -- I'm not -- I'm neither going to be neutral nor am I going to be with these guys. I'm going to be (onside ?) with the rest of society. That's the bit that we've got to try and accomplish.

I think -- I have to say that I do think we've got a real opportunity at the moment. I mean, if you look at what's going on in the Middle East, there's a huge tide there that we ought to be able to do something about. It's preaching to -- the kind of -- it's -- of messages that we want to get across, that Islam, Western values, can ride together.

So I think that part of -- you know, part of our -- the way we go about this also, of course, is the way we interpret the world to our own -- to our own societies and how they see how they fit in.

So I think foreign policy -- and I'm -- you know, there's too much -- we don't have enough time to go into all of these issues, but foreign policy and how government both explains and defends its foreign policy, I mean, is quite an important part of overall mindset, and it particularly applies when it comes to an issue like Pakistan.

The British government is very, very clear that we have a strategic relationship with the Pakistan government in a cooperative enterprise against terrorism. So we don't set them as -- you know, as our opponents. We set them as our partners, and they are indeed. It's a difficult task between us, as we know.

So I think that we -- I think we got our messaging right on that. We just have to get that little bit more link-up where people say: Right, I think there's something wrong here; I'm going to go and talk to the -- going to go and talk to the -- I'm going to go and talk to the imam, and the imam I know will go and do what's necessary.

LINDSAY: OK. Sir.

QUESTIONER: Hello. My name's Timothy Reuter (sp).

And I've heard you say just now two things that sound to me a little bit like they might be in tension with each other. One is, you talked about the narrative that al-Qaida and other organizations put forward --

NEVILLE-JONES: Yes.

QUESTIONER: -- that, first, Muslims are embattled and under attack around the world and, second, that the proper response is a violent one. And now you just talked about the fact that Britain has a strategic relationship with the Pakistani government. So how do you take apart the narrative that you talked about for those who believe that the Pakistani government is part of what's oppressing Muslims in that part of the world? And now we've said that you have an explicit policy of backing them on at least a number of issues, so how do you sort that out and explain it? Thank you very much.

NEVILLE-JONES: Well, having a strategic relationship with a government doesn't mean that you necessarily, you know, endorse or back every single thing that happens under the roof of that country. I think on the other hand, though, I would defend very vigorously the Pakistani government in its attempts to deal with terrorism on its own soil. I think it faces a very, very difficult problem, and their difficulties are not going to be dealt with with -- you know, with -- at all easily. And it's part of our -- you know, part of our policy to try and help.

The situation in Pakistan is very -- is very -- obviously very complex. Because it's very complex, though, and because it's difficult, it is precisely why on the whole you need to try and help. And we help in all sorts of ways, including of course helping the underlying structures of Pakistan society. We put a lot of money into education, we put a lot of money into trying actually to make the underpinning of Pakistan such that, you know, both education and economic activity are available to more people. I mean, these are absolute fundamentals for getting -- you know, for getting a stable society in that part of the world. And it's an important part of our policy. And I don't think we see any contradiction between, you know, that kind of long-term -- like I said in my speech, there are no quick wins in this -- that kind of long-term support and a -- and working together, you know, against violence.

LINDSAY: I think we have time for one more question. Now, before I take the question, I want to remind everybody that this session is on the record.

And in fairness, I'm going to go to the back of the room, since the first two questions came to the front, and the young lady all the way at the end, last row.

QUESTIONER: Thank you. Cambria Hamburg, with the Department of State.

What is the U.K. government's approach to engaging with allies, moderate voices in the Muslim community -- or maybe some not so moderate voices, but nevertheless leaders who, you know, espouse a nonviolent approach but maybe do support a Salafi ideology? Thank you.

NEVILLE-JONES: I didn't entirely hear it, but I think it's a question about the attitudes of nonviolent Islamism; is that right?

QUESTIONER: (Off mic.)

NEVILLE-JONES: Yes, well, I think -- I think --

LINDSAY: Microphone.

NEVILLE-JONES: Clearly, what we are -- what we are concerned with is the transition to violence. And it's there that we will focus prevent money. I did make clear, however, that one of the things -- and this is, I think, the difference between ourselves and our predecessors -- is that we do not believe it right to try and work through the agency of those who are themselves on the separatist tendency or extremist in their views and use them as agents simply because they're not violent. I think we do believe that you can only do this effectively with people who share your values. And we want, obviously, for that -- and we do believe that -- resources available, that Muslims who share our values will help us and that we will be together in this.

But we're not, I think, partisans of the notion that somehow you can easily get the right result by trying to work through the agency of those who themselves don't share your value systems. And it goes, obviously, to your analysis partly of how you think the relationship between extremism and extreme values and values that aren't ours and actual -- the actual espousal of violence works. And we don't trust the notion that somehow you can -- you can effectively deal with preventing and discouraging people from violence working through those who are not of the -- of your own value system.

LINDSAY: Minister, I know you have a very busy schedule today. I want to say on behalf of all of the sponsors of today's event thank you very much for giving (up such strong thoughts ?). (Applause.)

NEVILLE-JONES: Thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. (Applause.)

I'm very pleased -- very pleased to have had the opportunity to come. Thank you.

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THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT.

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BRUCE HOFFMAN: Welcome to the afternoon session of the conference and to the second keynote of the day. Before I introduce Deputy Secretary Jane Lute, let me again remind you to please turn off all BlackBerrys, cell phones, pagers -- not just put them to vibrate but turn them completely off, because otherwise they interfere with the sound system.

Let me also remind you that this particular session is on the record, but when you ask questions, please do not refer to the session earlier in the day that was off the record. That would be greatly appreciated.

The title of this session is "Community Partnerships to Counter Violent Extremism." And I'd be hard pressed to think of someone better to make that presentation than the deputy secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security, Jane Lute. I have to say that Deputy Secretary Lute has had the type of distinguished career that I know our students at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown aspire to and indeed that many of their professors dream of.

She served in the United States Army with distinction, including in Operation Desert Storm. She subsequently went on to serve twice with the National Security Council under the first President Bush and also under President Clinton. She was the executive director of the Carnegie Commission's -- the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. She subsequently went on to be an assistant secretary at the United Nations and is now in the -- in her current position as deputy secretary of Homeland Security.

Deputy Secretary Lute, welcome and thank you very much. (Applause.)

DEPUTY SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY JANE HOLL LUTE: Well, thanks very much. It's great to be back at the council, and it's extraordinary to see the new surroundings. And it tells you how long it's been since I've been with the council in Washington that I didn't even know you were here. But it's really beautiful. It's great to see Jim and to share a stage with Bruce. I don't think any of us know anything about terrorism or about countering terrorism that we haven't learned from Bruce. And so on behalf of all of us, thanks for what you've done throughout your career.

It's particularly interesting and exciting and not a very usual opportunity for me these past couple of years to have a chance to sit down and talk with scholars and practitioners, with policymakers and journalists and operators all in the same room. And that for me is the most exciting opportunity for conversation, for discussion and for learning.

I have had the privilege in my life to work with some of the most extraordinary scholars, practitioners, operators, journalists that this country, in fact the world, has to offer. My (doctoral) father when I was at Stanford was Alexander George, a giant not only in the field of political science but as a human being. He, along with David Hamburg, Cy Vance, so many others taught me a long about what it means to do well in this business and also taught me maybe the most fundamental lesson is that it's possible to do this work and be kind -- (soft laughter) -- something you don't learn from everybody you interact with every day, let me tell you.

But part of the reason I like it so much is because they -- scholars and practitioners -- scholars and operators ask each other a different set of questions, but the questions merge in really interesting ways.

Scholars always want to know why. Why do people take up violence to advance their cause? Why can some people or why do some people position themselves at the very center of their faith, yet espouse what are clearly marginal or even the ragged edge of the faith and a mis- or maladaptation of that faith, yet occupy the center and claim for themselves the very custodians of the doctrinal core? Why can they do that? Why do they do that? Why do they justify killing in the name of their faith?

Operators, on the other hand -- and I consider myself an operator -- ask themselves what. What are -- what is it about their circumstances that we don't understand? What is it about the journey that these individuals take that we have not yet successfully been able to map? What is the problem? What can be done about it?

You might even ask, I suppose -- and many people do -- you know, given life's complexity and the pressures of everyday life not only in the United States but around the world, why don't we see more of this; why don't we see more people pursuing violence? Yet we don't see it. Why not? What is working in our society that allows so many of us to manage conflict, differences, stresses and pressures in relative peace?

Some of you know me. It's great to see your faces here. I've learned so much in my career. Things that I've been able to achieve are largely due to the influence that you've had on me. Mistakes I've made -- it's probably because I haven't been paying as close attention as I should have throughout my career.

But these have been the kinds of questions that have interested me my whole life long. I started out my career as a soldier, as Bruce mentioned. That was a long time ago. 1976, I went to basic training. I'm married to a soldier, just recently retired. I believe deeply in the calling of a soldier. I love being a soldier.

I love my country, but it's not even a hundred years ago that my grandparents came to this country. Yet you wouldn't mistake me for anything except an American straight out of central casting. (Chuckles.) Just ask my staff.

But it's true that these questions are so deeply interesting, motivating for me not only as a -- as a former soldier and one who believes deeply in the values of this country but also someone who has spent a fair amount of time thinking and writing about war: how wars end, why they end when they do, why they don't end sooner, why factors seem to combine to prevent wars from ending, and how you prevent the emergence and spread and resumption of violence once a peace has been achieved. I will be committed throughout my life to the prevention of deadly conflict, to peacekeeping and peace building. How do you restore societies in the aftermath of violence, and how do you prevent that violence from returning?

Over the course of my career, I've learned there are a lot of mythologies about conflict and war. And for those of you who've studied it, you know that there are these mythologies. For example, we call a conflict religious or ethnic, thinking somehow that that tells us why people are violent. It doesn't tell us anything about why people are violent. It tells us why they're different, tells us why they might not get along very much, but it doesn't tell us nearly anything about why they've decided to kill each other over their differences.

Poverty -- cause of violence? Rich people will kill each other, too. Poverty is one of the mythologies about conflict. I'll talk a little bit about it later.

The role of government -- mythology: government's the most important actor in conflict. Mythology: government is irrelevant to conflict and violence. A lot of theories in general about why there is violence in the world and a lot of theories about violent extremism; far fewer theories to my taste about how we can prevent this kind of violence, how we can prevent the emergence of violent extremism.

How does this matter to the homeland and to homeland security? We're not immune in the United States to the kind of violence and violent extremism that you have been talking about over the course of this conference. Dozens have been arrested over the past two years. Indeed, we know there are people who are present in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, elsewhere around Europe, North America, who align themselves with the ideology and the operations of al-Qaida and other violent extremists.

Through constant vigilance, effective law enforcement, information sharing, community partnerships, we've uncovered a number of plots, and we continue to do that. And we know this will be well known to you, some of them. Najibullah Zazi intended to bomb the New York subway. Daniel Patrick Boyd intended to murder soldiers in North Carolina. There are others -- some we have not caught in time: David Headley, associated with the attacks -- more than associated, a planner and instrumental agent in the attacks on Mumbai; Faisal Shahzad, the man who would have tried to blow up Times Square, who did try.

We know al-Qaida is actively recruiting. They've got hip language. They're plugged into social media. They are persistent. We have to be equally persistent and alert, because unlike plots overseas, plots originating closer to home will likely have shorter tails, few obvious signs and little or no warning.

So what are our tools? What are our strategies? How do we address this potential for violent extremism? We have expertise and we have experience. And those of you who know me know that I think that there's a big difference between expertise and experience, and we need to bring the two of them together.

Our theory, our strategy in dealing with terrorism has been to find them and fix them abroad -- to find terrorists and fix them in the military sense, find them and fix them abroad. This has been our existing approach. The danger originates abroad. The threat evolves over time. Our familiar tools for doing this -- robust intelligence, active military operations and our partnerships with international partners in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, elsewhere -- these are the tools we use to combat terrorism and fight it, find them, fix them far away from us.

But as I have learned, over the course of the past two years, after having spent the previous 30 years deeply embedded in the national security community of this country and, in fact, in the international security community, homeland security is really very different. It is certainly a part of national security, but it is very different. And it has been exceedingly interesting to me to see the differences.

How do we combat violent extremism in the homeland? Are these tools -- intelligence, military operations, international partnerships -- the tools that we must use in the homeland? We have different tools here. I'll talk a little bit about them.

We have border tools. We have law enforcement tools. We have information, information sharing, intelligence certainly. And we have the American public, including those parts of the public who serve in public service every day, nearly 800,000 men and women of law enforcement at the state and local level. We want to use their experience -- we want to use all of our experience -- to recognize behavior and preparation that indicate trouble, and we want to use our knowledge and expertise to craft the kinds of effective interventions that prevent this trouble, prevent the emergence of violence.

Well, who is we? As I mentioned, it's all of us. Certainly in Homeland Security, we think we have a special responsibility here, and it's not a responsibility that is new to us. Indeed, the department is now eight years old. The work that we've been doing, over the past two years, is built on the work that has gone on before, and built, in fact, on work that's gone on before the events of 9/11 and the founding of the Department of Homeland Security.

What are we trying to do in DHS? What do we think our vision is -- our mission is?

Well, we say the following. What we're trying to do is build the safe, secure and resilient place where the American way of life can thrive -- safe, secure, resilient place where the American way of life can thrive.

How do we do that? We think we have five core missions.

The first and foremost, of course, is to prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11, prevent terrorist attacks of any kind. We need to secure our borders, enforce our immigration laws, ensure our cybersecurity. We think this is key and essential to a safe and secure and resilient homeland. And we need to build national resilience.

But we know, in DHS, that we can't do all that needs doing by ourselves, certainly. There's an important role for the leaders, for the officials, for law enforcement and for citizens who are closest to the communities -- because they know best, who they are, what their strengths, values, capabilities are and equally what their -- what their vulnerabilities and shortcoming are. And they know first when trouble is about to start or is unfolding.

To support them in the area of preventing violent extremism, we're going to pursue in our department a two-part strategy. In fact, it's already begun. On the one hand, we want to break down barriers that isolate and marginalize communities, and on the other hand we want to strengthen law enforcement to identify and prevent violent acts before they occur.

How do we break down barriers? Well, first and foremost, we might stop by miniaturizing people, by reducing people to a single version of their identity that we think is important or that we think is defining. In fact, one of the things -- one of the great things about being an American is that you can be multiple things. You can have your ethnic identity, your religious affiliation and your social set of engagements all at the same time, and they can coexist, and they are each at least as defining as any single one of them would be. And I think, at a minimum, as the president began in his Cairo speech, and certainly has said before that and since, the cultural diversity of this country is a richness and a strength, and one that we cannot only build on, it's one we can also rely on.

We want to pursue breaking down barriers that isolate communities by engaging with local leaders, with state and local law enforcement, policy leaders, social leaders, religious leaders as well. We're going to do this with partnerships, again, because the Department of Homeland Security can't do all that needs doing -- partnership with other federal agencies, partnerships with the private sector, partnerships with NGOs and, again, at all levels of life in the United States.

We're advancing programs for new immigrants so that they can broadly embrace their new society and so -- and equally importantly so that their new society can broadly embrace them. Both have to happen.

On the other hand, we want to strengthen state and local law enforcement to allow them to do both of their jobs, which is to uphold the rule of law and to serve the people. We're going to do this through advocacy, through convening, sharing of best practice and sharing of knowledge, information, intelligence, where it's appropriate, through the fusion centers that we've been working on and establishing, jointly with the FBI and other federal agencies, through the Joint Terrorism Task Forces. But this is really about reaching down to communities, giving them the kind of training that they need to recognize and connect them to what we have learned about the habits of violent extremists, these groups, al-Qaida and others, and what this might mean for activities closer to them.

You know that Secretary Napolitano has, over the course of the past year, been speaking around the country and talking about the importance of a program that we know from New York City, "See Something, Say Something," which is designed to involve people in the circumstances that are around them. If something is odd and wrong, it's probably odd and wrong. Bring it to the attention of folks who can do something about it. We've built out the suspicious activity reporting database together with the FBI, and we are learning where there are patterns emerging that are troubling and indicate that early action is required.

We want to support and sustain these efforts through grant-making and through our continual engagement with state and local law enforcement officials. In other words, we want to expand our engagement and support for information-driven community-oriented policing, including -- and importantly, based on strategies that have been successful at preventing violent crime in the past.

A lot of people, over the course of my career, have been looking at violent conflict, have been looking at violent extremism, and they often, when they are looking at this phenomenon, examine the discontent of the unfortunate -- the desperately poor, the chronically oppressed. But many of the young who are attracted to the ideology and the message of extremism are by any measure fortunate. So what is at the heart of the discontent of the fortunate? Is it a lack of opportunity, voice, freedom? A lack of respect? A lack of dignity, value and meaning?

This is not the agenda of the terrorist. This is not what the terrorists want. They don't want these things. When it comes to violent extremism, they want our youth. So we must be vigilant and alive to our responsibilities to prevent their success.

Certainly we have to -- and will -- enforce our laws and support efforts to prevent the development of and growth of violent extremists. And we have to break down barriers. We must break down barriers that isolate and marginalize community, and work to create a homeland where all of us -- and that means each of us -- can pursue the American way of life and thrive.

Thanks very much. (Applause.)

HOFFMAN: Thank you very much, Deputy Secretary.

Let me begin by referring actually to the title of this conference, which is of course "U.K. and U.S. Approaches to Countering Radicalization." And we've heard often this morning, in the on-the-record sessions, how the U.K. does it differently. For some years they've had a defined strategy, CONTEST. They've had an arm of that strategy that specifically is oriented towards counter-radicalization, which is Prevent. They have a specific agency that has the lead, the Home Office, and even a specific office within that, Charles Farr's Office of Security and Counterterrorism.

Now I know we've done it differently, and we've done it by learning some of the lessons from the U.K. that apply to the United States. I wonder if you could discuss how DHS has taken that on board and applied some of these lessons.

LUTE: So we've had a very robust dialogue with the Brits over the course not only of the past two years but certainly beyond that.

I would say a couple of things. One, which is obvious, is there -- no one size fits all. They are working with and adapting programs for their communities, their population, in all of its richness and history.

We've taken a different approach, not least because we're -- we are so extraordinarily different, notwithstanding the fact that we share very fundamentally norms and values and even some of that history.

One of the most interesting things to me over the past couple of years is the degree to which the Department of Homeland Security and Home Offices, not only in the U.K. but around the world, have kind of discovered each other and have opened up a dialogue about how they are doing business, the challenges that they are facing, as ministries of interior, Home Offices, Department of Homeland Security. And this dialogue is extraordinarily rich and extraordinarily exciting.

It's also extraordinarily operational. The Department of Homeland Security is a deeply operational department. Nearly 400,000 people come to work every day. Five thousand of them are at headquarters and the rest are deployed in the operating agencies. And similarly around the world, including with the Home Office, there are things that they do every day.

So in the question of violent extremism and the program of Prevent which the U.K. is evolving now and taking a different approach, we continue to share best practices and really look -- share information and look at the best way for each of us, governments at the national level, to engage with state and locals and with communities, in order to achieve the same effect.

HOFFMAN: Well, following on from that, in terms of the sharing of information, I think something we heard this morning as well is the importance of sharing information between federal, state and local authorities. How can DHS be the glue, in essence, that holds this process together, especially when there are multiple federal agencies in the United States involved in counterterrorism but especially in counter-radicalization?

LUTE: So this is -- there's also another very interesting thing for me, as somebody who's spent their whole career in national security. I mentioned that homeland security is very different. I mean, national security is about all of us. Homeland security is about each of us. National security is strategic, centralized, top-driven. Homeland security is decentralized, operational and driven from the grass roots up.

And so -- we recognize this in DHS, and while we -- you used the phrase "glue," I think, in a way, what we're trying to do is empower state and locals and underscore and support community-based policing, the engagement of community leaders. We have fusion centers. We also have partnerships with the FBI, Department of Justice, Health and Human Services, other departments, so that we can create a responsive federal structure that helps build capable communities and through -- both at that vertical and horizontal engagement, I think, provide some of that glue, but we don't think by any means we're the whole story.

HOFFMAN: Let me ask one more question before we open it up to the floor.

I was very taken with the beginning of your presentation, when you sort of fell back on your role at the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict and were talking about the diversity of the roots of violent extremism and indeed of violence, the reasons why someone is driven or motivated to pick up a gun or to throw a bomb.

Given that we understand that this is highly -- you know, very much of an individual phenomena in many respects, but of course is being propagated and the motivation is coming from organizations with a particular agenda -- but given the diversity, can we have any metrics? I mean, is countering violent extremism amenable to any kind of meaningful metrics that we can actually determine progress? Or is this something that rather we just have to do as a good and because it's one of the only things we know that we can do to stop this?

LUTE: This is a -- this is a fascinating discussion, and one -- why in part it's so important to have scholars and practitioners come together. Practitioners or operators are dealing with the immediate every single day, and it's a -- it's a luxury to have a long-term view. It's a necessity to have short-term view, to be able to see -- discern trends within the immediate or -- among the immediate things that you're observing.

And so first and foremost, we probably have to understand what it is. Are we looking at a match, a flicker or a flare? Or are we looking at a flame?

There are some expressions of violence where people act out their frustrations or their evil intentions, as an individual act of anger and evil. There are other acts that -- that's a flicker or a flame. Does it have wider implications for us as a society? Are there larger lessons to draw? We should make those judgments as we look at these incidents.

There are some incidences that are more like flares. They have a wider effect. They're more visible to others. They're seen and interpreted to be bigger and more important than a -- than a flash expression of anger or hatred.

And then there are flames. There are flames that are both fueling and fueled by causes larger than the individual act, and their aim is to reject the system, to reject the established order, to reject the rule of law. And we need, I think -- and we need the help of scholars here, certainly informed by the practice of the operators, people who are dealing with law enforcement, dealing at our borders every single day, to know what it is we're looking at.

HOFFMAN: Thank you.

Well, let me open up the floor to questions. Let me remind you again this session is on the record. Please don't refer to previous sessions that were not. And may I ask you also to stand and state your name and affiliation. The floor is open.

Yes, sir.

QUESTIONER: (Inaudible) -- Georgetown University and DHS.

You spoke about the partnership with the private sector. What do you see as the role of the private sector at the community level and in social networking, especially among the telecommunication companies?

LUTE: I -- rather than assign responsibilities, what we're doing in DHS is opening a dialogue. Our -- it's not immediately germane, but you mentioned telecommunications companies. We have a very robust dialogue and partnership with the telecommunications companies in cyber, for example. They -- companies have over the course of the past decade or more begun to develop a set of -- a sense of social responsibility engagement with the local communities. What we simply want to know is, we want companies themselves to equip themselves with the knowledge for national resilience, be able to contribute to the See Something, Say Something campaign, and also to be pillars of support for the broader development of the societies within which they live and work, and draw employees and contribute in return.

And so this is -- you know, I -- (you stole my kids ?). You know, life doesn't happen in the passive voice -- unless it does. There is no more opportunity for passive-voice engagement in life today. We all need to play a part.

HOFFMAN: Yes, Arnaud. Microphone's coming.

QUESTIONER: Arnaud de Borchgrave, CSIS.

You mentioned that you were kind of puzzled about violence. But if one pictured a Pakistan, which is probably the most dangerous country in the world today, you have between 100(,000) and 500,000 youngsters that graduate from the madrassas where they've been taught to hate America. You have highly educated people in Pakistan who are convinced that the CIA and Mossad did 9/11 -- these are people who come out of universities in the Western world. So when you listen to all of this -- and I spent a lot of time in and out of Pakistan -- one understands immediately where violence springs from.

LUTE: I -- I'm tempted to say "wrong lute." (Laughter.)

I certainly understand, and I understand what you're saying. I have -- I don't think there's any doubt about the intention of many of the violent extremists. There is no -- there is no doubt. We need to know more about what works. We need to know more about the signs of trouble as it's brewing, to prevent that trouble from becoming violent. And the scholars need to continue to tell us more about the kinds of remedies that eliminate the attractiveness of these extremist ideologies.

We think we know something about that, in terms of promulgating our own norms, our values; living them every day; enfranchising people in the opportunities and promise of freedom, of representative governance, of market economic activity available to all, of the power and strength of the rule of law that is renewed through the voices of all of us, not just a few of us. I mean, we know that. But I think there is still a lot we don't know.

HOFFMAN: Burton.

QUESTIONER: Burton Gerber, of Georgetown University.

Thank you for coming today. We've heard a lot today about what we should be doing, what we want to do and so forth. Can you give us -- share with us some things that you -- not you, deputy secretary, but your organization -- in the past several years has done and has shown marked improvement in protecting the United States, and a couple of things that you'd like to do but you just don't see how you're ever going to achieve it?

LUTE: So what -- again, we've built on the experience of the previous years of the department in its standup and formative years. More concretely with respect to this particular problem of preventing violent extremism has been our building out and working with state and local authorities on the fusion centers, engaging with training, with the big-city chiefs and with other state and local law enforcement officials, to really strengthen their hand in recognizing some of the signs and some of the patterns and precursive steps or preparatory steps to violent conflict, and bring that expertise that we've developed with what might be called, perhaps not altogether accurately, a traditional approach to counterterrorism through intelligence, military operations and our international partnerships, and bring that -- lessons learned, knowledge, expertise -- and put that in the hands, appropriately, of state and local fusion centers, state and local law enforcement, policy leaders, community leaders as well. That has been a big effort of ours to engage with the department.

One of the striking things about homeland security is that it is very -- it's very much a unity of effort, not a unity of command, model. It's a unity of effort model that will take all of us in various parts of the community, and all leaders.

There have been other things. Again, through our grantmaking program, we want to sustain fusion centers and really establish them as information platforms and sources of decision-making available to the states and the major municipalities, to be able to respond to all contingencies when they arise. That's one example.

The to-do list in homeland security is pretty long, so -- (chuckles) -- so I don't know that -- I'll think about one of the things that -- nothing's impossible. And you don't get -- anybody who's lived through the events of 1989 doesn't get to say anything's impossible. If you've lived through 9/11, you don't get to say anything's impossible. So I don't ever say that. But there are sure some things that are harder than others.

HOFFMAN: Could I actually jump in and follow up on that? One of the -- I think one of the big differences is -- certainly 10 years after 9/11, is we have the Department of Homeland Security. We've undertaken massive intelligence reform as well. We have the fusion centers, as you describe. But what about in terms of the American public and our resilience? Do you think that the American public now is more resilient; in Lee Hamilton's words, that we can take a punch better now than we could have 10 years ago? And what has DHS been doing in that respect in reaching out to communities not necessarily with radicalization, extremism, but preparing the American public to have a more realistic appreciation of the threat and of the risks?

LUTE: I think this country is stronger. I think we are fundamentally secure in the basic knowledge that we can defend ourselves. This country can defend itself, and we continue to have a lot worth defending. We have strengthened our faith in each other, moreover, and that's been an extraordinary thing to see over the past 10 years.

The "See Something, Say Something" campaign is a small illustration of that. It hasn't taken people off the deep edge. It has caused the important raising of concerns about behavior that is -- that is anomalous and strange, and given law enforcement the opportunity to look at incidents. It has resulted in the effective prevention of potentially dangerous and violent acts. And so it's -- that's just, again, one illustration. But I think there's no question that this country is stronger and safer for the efforts that have been undertaken -- again, not just by the department but by all of us.

HOFFMAN: Yes. Over there.

QUESTIONER: Kevin Sheehan, ORIX Ventures. Good to see you, Deputy Secretary.

LUTE: We were children together. (Laughs, laughter.)

QUESTIONER: While engagement with the Muslim community particularly is certainly key, that at best is going to allow us to perhaps to -- perhaps delay and certainly identify radicals who identify themselves to those communities. So, for example, young men who are playing basketball in one quarter and are wearing Islamic garb and quoting Said Qutub in the next would -- you would hope that the community would identify those individuals.

But what happens if Islamic terrorist organizations begin to develop a stronger sense of operational security and act more like KSM did prior to 9/11 and train their -- train their recruits to stay away from those communities and not give up obvious signs of radicalization? Have we thought about that? Anything we can do to deal with that particular threat?

LUTE: You know, it's great to see you, Kevin. We really were children together. (Chuckles.) We started our Army careers together a long time ago.

You know, we -- what we know is we have a persistent, adaptive adversary, and they are not spending all their money taking out billboards and advertising their next moves. We have a -- we have in some cases a strategy that depends on their -- our knowing who they are. And what if we don't? What if they use individuals who are previously unknown? What are the signs? What are the behaviors? What are the preparations? What are the elements of preparation?

An old friend of mine used to say, you know, every hurricane has a warning; not all warnings yield hurricanes. But we live in an age when we may have hurricanes without warnings, in the sense of violent extremism. But someone knows. And what we want to do is when people who are closest who know, who have concerns can raise their hand and bring these concerns to the attention of folks who will take -- who will take the appropriate steps.

We don't want vigilantism. We don't want the kinds of worst excesses that we could imagine when people see strange garb or engage -- or don't understand behaviors that they might be observing. That's why it's so essential that we take the knowledge, experience and expertise that we have learned from fighting terrorism abroad, bring it here, engage in a consistent and open channel of dialogue with state and local authorities also to learn what they know.

If something is wrong to a local law enforcement officer, it's probably wrong, but they may not in all cases know just how wrong it is, because the anomalous behavior or the worrying signs that they see may not fit in their particular circumstance but would fit an understanding of a terrorist pattern of action. And we want to put those pieces of the puzzle together to prevent and use what law enforcement knows every day about preventing violent crime so that we can succeed here, too.

HOFFMAN: Mitzi. Over here.

QUESTIONER: Deputy Secretary, I'm Mitzi Wertheim with the Naval Postgraduate School. I'm a social anthropologist by training, so I find myself thrilled to hear you talk about individuals and how individuals are an important piece, because in my defense world, it's all about large numbers. What -- has the whole department recognized it's about how people think, feel and behave? Is this a revolution in understanding that's occurring?

LUTE: I don't know how to answer that. I think what I would say, that people certainly matter. They always have. You know, when you're a -- you know, when you're a soldier and you give part of yourself as an individual to the larger organization, you give it to the -- your country; you give it to the ideals that your people stand for. But what you know is that when it comes down to it, people die one at a time, but people make a difference one at a time as well. And that's -- we can never lose sight of the importance and the power and the -- and the beauty in the contributions of each of us. And so I say, you know, national security really at some level is about all of us. Homeland Security is absolutely about each of us, and each of us have to do our part.

HOFFMAN: All the way in the back?

QUESTIONER: Dean Godson, Policy Exchange think tank in London. Just viewed -- some of us viewed with interest in London the recent report of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the -- or the report by Senators Lieberman and Collins on the Fort Hood episode. I've made some critical remarks about the culture, particularly of the Department of Defense and the FBI in respect of spotting telltale signals of Major -- that's major's radicalization who perpetrated, obviously, that killing.

I'm just wondering how many of those recommendations, in light of the fact that (there have/they have ?), of course, been the official DOD report, are now going to be integrated more broadly into sort of federal analyses of the kind of signals that should be spotted sooner and sort of having a sort of proper culture of appreciation of those sort of threatening notes that are being sounded early on in the development of someone's radicalization.

LUTE: Well, we work very closely, obviously, with our colleagues in Defense and with the bureau, the Department of Justice but equally with the other federal departments. And what you're hearing from me today is that for Homeland Security, a huge part of our reality is what's happening at the state and local level, what's happening at the grassroots of this country, what we're learning about and what we know, frankly, about how law enforcement officials, policy officials, governance officials, community leaders at every level in this country engage with their communities and with their -- the broader context within which they live.

There's a -- there's a lot to be learned, and there's a potential for wrong lessons to be learned, and equally we want to be sure that the right lessons are learned. So in terms of the signs, that's what I said earlier. Someone knows -- someone knows that this is trouble. What we need to do is be able to connect the person who knows that trouble is brewing with a responsible and responsive structure to take appropriate action.

QUESTIONER: (Off mic.)

LUTE: We can -- we can -- you know, why don't we chat about that afterward.

HOFFMAN: Yes, up there.

QUESTIONER: Mischa Thompson with the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. I'm struck that Senator Durbin's hearing this week, protecting the civil rights of Muslims, was described as a counter to Representative King's radicalization hearings and its potential to be used as a recruitment tool by extremists. And I was wondering if you could talk more about whether support of international human rights commitments, including anti-discrimination and religious freedom commitments, and civil rights and inclusive democracies at home, are part of your multi-pronged strategy.

If so, I was hoping you might be able to list specific examples; and then also how you can promote a strategy when you have high-profile figures in the United States and also abroad pretty much saying that Muslims are unwelcome in Western society.

Thank you.

LUTE: Well, you certainly won't hear anyone in Homeland Security saying that Muslims are unwelcome in American society. The president himself has set the tone and has been quite specific with respect to the message that this administration is sending on this question.

For us in Homeland Security, as we -- when we say we want to build a safe, secure, resilient place where the American way of life can thrive, that way of life is founded on a set of values, on a fundamental belief in freedom, in the value of individual worth. And that extends to all of our citizens.

When I mentioned that we want to break down the barriers that isolate and marginalize communities, I mean it. And we want to reach out to our new immigrants and, as I said, encourage them and give them ways and means to broadly embrace their new society, but equally, to have their society broadly embrace them.

And so this is an ongoing -- there are no 1.6's, there are no single-shot solutions. This is an ongoing effort. It's part of our culture, it's part of who we are to be a welcoming society, but one -- equally it's part of our culture to be a society based on the rule of law and on the order of that law.

QUESTIONER: Charles King, Georgetown University. Are there lessons learned or items that we might take from the experience in dealing with non-Islamic forms of radicalization in the United States? One thinks of the very important work of the Southern Poverty Law Center in dealing with white supremacist groups in the U.S. And if so, what have we learned? If not, what is particular about that adjective, "Islamic," when it comes to radicalization in the U.S.?

LUTE: You know, I'll leave it -- I'll leave it to the academics among you to sort out the lexicon. I'm an operator. And certainly those groups -- again, you know, are there flickers, flashes? You know, are there flames? Are there groups committed to the pursuit of violence? Yes. Are they the concern of local law enforcement? Yes. Are we working with them and understand them -- to understand these groups and prevent their intentions from manifesting themselves violently? Yes.

QUESTIONER: It's interesting to note that both --

HOFFMAN: Please introduce yourself.

QUESTIONER: I'm sorry. (Name inaudible) -- George Mason University. It's interesting to note that both President Bush and President Obama both noted the same threat to the United States. They both stated that the most significant threat to the United States would be the acquisition of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist group. So given that, and given that you're part of Department of Homeland Security, how do you deal with that threat, given the radicalization topic?

LUTE: So it certainly is a threat. I mean, if one can imagine it, that is significant. We deal with the -- or we have the responsibility -- immediately we have the office of -- the Domestic Nuclear Detection office, which is really designed to prevent such an event like that from occurring.

What would be the strategy and approach to preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons? First and foremost, as the president has said, having some certainty about the nuclear arsenals and materials that are around the world and that might be vulnerable to hostile exploitation and to prevent that from happening, and certainly to take all measures necessary to prevent terrorists from acquiring them or transiting them to the United States or to the West or to any -- frankly, in ways that might imperil any population.

And so it's something that we think about and we have responsibilities for, which we obviously accept.

QUESTIONER: Alan Schlaifer, Wharton School Club. Given the huge upsurge in digital devices -- our cell phones, our smartphones, iPads and other computers, in the face of the WikiLeaks situation, where a relatively low-level employee exposed massive amounts of documents, where do we stand in meeting your goal of cybersecurity?

LUTE: I spend a lot of time on the question of cybersecurity. There are really only two challenges -- securing our identities and securing our information. The rest, as they say, is commentary. (Laughter.)

But again, we can't -- we can't do this alone. We are working together in -- I mean, there are things I could talk to you about about the fielding of cybersecurity equipment in the dot-gov space. There are things I could talk to you about in working with the critical infrastructure in the lead agencies in this country, working with the Department of Defense, obviously, very closely, Department of Justice, to ensure that we can make progress in securing our identities and our information.

What's our basic theory of the case? Our basic theory of the case is that there is no single-point solution; that this is going to require a broadly distributed system of self-help, where machines and users can activate defenses, supported by smart networks who can recognize, identify and (cabin off ?) hostile signatures, alert the rest of us that trouble is afoot and act at network speed.

All of what I just said in the sentence will probably take two or three years, and so both the problems that we will have and the technology that we'll have to deal with those problems in two or three years haven't been invented yet. But this is something that Homeland Security is very much at the leading edge of government on.

HOFFMAN: Scott.

QUESTIONER: Scott Helfstein, West Point's Combating Terrorism Center.

LUTE: Hello.

QUESTIONER: Thank you for your remarks today, ma'am.

I'm curious. We talked quite a bit about identifying negative trends as they occurred -- the "See Something, Say Something" -- before we get to a critical level. I'm curious what the department's role is in preventing that from even getting to bad things seem to be afoot. So what is the role in sort of the Prevent strategy, whether we call it a counter-narrative or a counter-radicalization? Is there a role for the department to play in that regard?

LUTE: Well, when I was -- when I was working on the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, I spent a lot of time thinking about this problem. You know, I began my career as a soldier. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on how wars end. I spent a lot of time thinking about how you might prevent the emergence of mass violence, and I spent a lot of time as a peacekeeper. I'm thinking about peace-building -- so have walked this circle of violent conflict.

And a lot of people a lot smarter than me, including the guy I'm sharing the stage with right now, have much smarter answers to your question. People used to say: How do you prevent deadly conflict? What do you need to do? What's the sentence? You want the sentence? The sentence is: Educate young women, employ young men. That's the sentence.

Is that the answer? I don't think so. It's not entirely the answer. Or if it is, there's a lot that goes into educating young women and employing young men. There's a lot we know about the high-payoff interventions with adolescent girls, for example. It is the high-payoff intervention for us as a -- as a global society. There's a lot we know about getting to young men. What's the right age? It's between 7 and 9, they say, when you really want to influence the choices that they're going to make later in life. It's really about then when you begin to shape their world view, their understanding; create their sense of opportunities, entitlement and hope.

How do we prevent the potential terrorist? There's -- for every individual one, there's an individual story, but there is a counter-narrative. What al-Qaida and other terrorist groups are trying to do is create a sense of community, a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose and meaning. It's the wrong purpose, it's the wrong community, it's the wrong belonging and meaning. And counter-narrative -- living the American way of life, making this a safe, secure, resilient place where all of us can pursue it -- is going to be key to what this department does every day in preventing the emergence of violent extremism.

HOFFMAN: Yes.

QUESTIONER: Hi. My name is Andy Polk, with Congresswoman Sue Myrick's office.

Thanks so much for coming today, and thank you for your work, because we all understand it's very difficult work. The question is, we've been talking a lot today about Muslim communities and law enforcement communities. We haven't really talked much about local thought leaders, be it, you know, journalists or school teachers or local mayors.

If you look at the Dutch system, what they did was when they set up their national counter-radicalization strategy it was pushed from the bottom up. So local mayors went to the Dutch national government and said: We need help with this issue. I feel like today in America we're kind of seeing a top-down approach, to where we're pushing it down. And I'm wondering what kind of resistance you're getting on this, what kind of response you're getting, especially with tight budgets and priorities on other issues.

LUTE: So that's what I mean when I say homeland security is a bottom-up phenomenon. We are all about the states, the municipalities, the communities. And our role is to help create a responsible and responsive federal piece of the puzzle. But we by no means think we have all the answers. We believe in community-based policing, we believe in the power of community leaders of all -- in all sectors of life. And we have and we are building robust dialogues with all of them on all of these questions.

Our Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Office, for example, is out there every single day, meeting with them, taking with them, understanding not only the grievances that they have, but the frustrations and opportunities -- not because the solutions lie within the Department of Homeland Security; they usually don't. But to provide a forum for convening advocacy along the lines that the president and the secretary certainly have spoken about publicly numerous times. And that's the aim that we're trying to pursue: precisely that joining of local knowledge and local sense of responsibility with additional knowledge, best practice, training and opportunities to sustain that over the long term.

HOFFMAN: Yes, the woman in the back.

QUESTIONER: Nancy Bearg, from Project on National Security Reform in George Washington University.

LUTE: Nancy, hi.

QUESTIONER: Hi, Jane. I was glad to hear you use the term "unity of effort," and talking about horizontal and vertical efforts. And you've addressed this to some extent, but I wanted to ask what do you need in this regard? How is that going, in terms of the U.S. -- the federal government and the efforts with the states? Are there particularly good practices that you're instituting, such as intergovernmental teams or special teams or whatever? But are there things you need that would help you enhance this further?

LUTE: So we meet at a federal level, at the interagency level, all the time, and share what each of us happen to be doing with the constituencies with which we normally interact on a day-to-day level. And here it's important to realize that this is not just the security agencies coming together. You know, I've mentioned Health and Human Services. For example, the Department of Education; they have liaisons and relationships, and bringing their understanding. You know, what is it that we can bring into the schools, for example, to equip people with the knowledge, information and awareness that they need, to be alert for signs? Again, our focus is on the community level, both to break down the barriers and to strengthen the hand of local law enforcement, capitalizing on their extraordinary ability to prevent violent crime.

New ideas are coming in every day, and so there are many portals and opportunities to bring that into the mix. We've met with mayors, and we're going to continue to do that, both to understand the problem as they understand it and to see the needs that they have at the local level. It's very much coming back to this question about, you know, bottom-driven or driven from the ground up -- very much a feature of how we're approaching this.

HOFFMAN: Time for one last question. I'm going to break, then -- probably dangerously -- with CFR protocol, and ask it -- (laughter) -- because I've been dying to ask someone in authority this question.

We've just recently had the fifth issue of Inspire magazine, and in your opinion, is this something that really is a revolution in terrorist communications, or are we getting needlessly spun up because it's in the English language and we can understand it?

LUTE: So I'd -- you know, any time we see this level and kind of appeal, with this kind of a message -- any time? Is this the first time? Is this the first time more of us are paying attention? There's no question it's slick, it's hip, it's connecting at a level with the kind of granularity and information that can lead and encourage people to pursue those means. It's -- is it dangerous? Yes. But we've confronted dangerous literature before in this country, and not panicked.

I have a great deal of faith in the American people. It's an -- we are extraordinary. I've spent the 15 years sort of before I came back into government virtually on the outside, looking in. We are an extraordinary society and an extraordinary nation. And I am betting on us. I always will.

HOFFMAN: Thank you deputy secretary. I had -- in introducing you, I had left out deliberately the most important element in your very impressive vitae, and that's you're a graduate of Georgetown University -- sadly, not the School of Foreign Service, but the Law Center. (Laughter.)

LUTE: (Laughs.)

HOFFMAN: And you've acquitted yourself extremely well and brought great honor to the alma mater. Thank you very much.

LUTE: Thank you. Thank you. (Applause.)

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THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT.

CRAIG WHITLOCK: Am I on? Could everyone please take their seats. Everyone, please take your seats, and we'll get started. Thank you very much.

My name is Craig Whitlock. I'm a reporter for The Washington Post. Welcome to the fifth session of today's symposium, entitled Reaching Out: Promoting Community Engagement.

I've been asked to remind you to please turn off your BlackBerrys completely, phones and so forth so it doesn't interfere with the sound system.

I've also been asked to give you a Miranda warning of sorts that this session is on the record, so anything you say may and possibly will be used in all sorts of forms of media and recording.

It's also a reminder that there was an earlier session today that was not for attribution, and we're not supposed to make obvious reference to that during today's discussion. But again, this is on the record. That's also to encourage everyone to have a nice, vigorous, provocative discussion up here.

We're very fortunate to have four panelists, three of whom are original residents of the U.K., one who is from here in the U.S. And we will hopefully be treading some of the same ground that has been raised in earlier sessions, but hopefully from a different perspective.

And I'll start by introductions. I'll let you all read their more extensive bios in the packets.

But to my right here is Abdal Ullah. He's a councilor with the Tower Hamlets and a former member of the London Metropolitan Police Authority.

Next we Have Munira Mirza, who is arts and culture adviser to the mayor of London.

And to her right is Suhail Khan, who was a member of the Public Liaison Office in the Bush administration, and also at other capacities in the first Bush administration.

And to his right is Ed Husain, who is a senior fellow here at the Council on Foreign Relations, but also a well-known figure on the subjects in the U.K.

So welcome all.

And to get started, I'd like to continue the thread that Bruce Hoffman brought up at the end of the last discussion about Inspire magazine. Maybe this is a bit of a reach, but Suhail, I'll throw this at you.

After September 11th, there were significant efforts by the Bush administration to reach out to the Muslim community. In fact, I recall it's more recently been revealed that the Pentagon had invited a number of who they thought were moderate Muslim clerics and leaders over for lunch. It later turned out that one of these moderate Muslim leaders turned out to be Anwar al-Awlaki, who, of course, is now known for different things in Yemen, for Inspire magazine.

And Suhail, in retrospect, this may look like a ham-handed attempt to try and reach out to the Muslim community in the aftermath of 9/11, but I want to ask you, was it? You know, was this something that should have happened? It was well-intentioned. You know, clearly didn't go the way people wanted. But was that such a bad idea?

SUHAIL KHAN: Well, first, thank you for having me this afternoon. I really appreciate being included in this panel, and especially with the guests that are here as my co-panelists.

To answer your question, really, first, just a minor correction. It wasn't that the Bush administration began their outreach to American Muslims post-9/11. If you remember, the 2000 elections were really a seminal year in the American-Muslim political history in that both candidates at the time during the elections, then-Governor George W. Bush and then sitting-Vice President Al Gore, were both actively seeking American-Muslim support.

And George W. Bush had, as governor in Austin, had reached out early on and met with Muslim-American leaders. If you recall, in the second debate with Al Gore, he brought up the issue of racial profiling of Muslim Americans, the use of secret evidence in trials and in detention of Muslims in the country.

And so he had gotten out front in reaching out to American Muslims to get support. And as a consequence in 2000, a large percentage of the American-Muslim community -- estimates vary between 72 and 76 percent of the American-Muslim community -- supported George W. Bush as a candidate; 42,000 votes in Florida alone.

So when 9/11 occurred, it wasn't that the Bush administration was now scrambling to reach out to American Muslims.

By the same token, at the time that the Bush administration was reaching out to Muslim Americans post-9/11, if you remember, the president visited a mosque right here in Washington, D.C. to remind Americans that ours is not a war on Islam, but rather a war on extremists, and not to engage in a backlash or to really go the way that we have in the past, including in World War II against Japanese Americans.

There were different people at the time were trying to get into the White House. This is Washington, D.C. This is a very political town. And so there were people, like al-Awlaki, who were also were trying to get attention.

So I would state first that it wasn't something that was done last minute. This was a sustained effort. And anything, including in government, nothing is perfect. People come in. And later on what happens with people also can be something that is out of the control of government.

But I think that engagement is important and needs to be underscored.

And I was listening to the last panel. I think what's so important for government, whether they're political leaders or folks in law enforcement, is not only that there be a very organic and systemic partnership, but also that, when there are voices, extreme voices out there, both from the extremist side and from the anti-Muslim side, that government come alongside to promote national security and to help very much condemn voices that are going to be unhelpful towards enhancing our national security.

WHITLOCK: And to follow up, at that time was -- let's focus on post-9/11. And as you pointed out, of course, the Bush administration was looking for political support up to the election, but after 9/11, things, of course, there is a different purpose. You know, they weren't trolling for votes at that point so much as, you know, trying to engage the Muslim community.

You know, at that time in the months after 9/11 and in the subsequent years, was it -- was there much thought given to reaching out to prevent radicalization in the Muslim community? Or was this really to show that this was not a war on Islam, that this was trying to promote good faith efforts in terms of community relations?

KHAN: It was a little bit of both, quite frankly, it was a little bit of both. And what you have to realize is that there was a change over the course of the last nine years since 9/11.

Initially, when the attack occurred on September 11th, Muslim-American community's response was shock, just as much as their fellow Americans, also something, I would say, of denial.

A couple of reasons. First, the hijackers were not American Muslims. These were not people that were going to mosques or part of communities. These were not people that were known. These were people that were living below the radar and had launched an attack against our country.

So to a certain degree, the American-Muslim community said, we're in this fight with our fellow Americans against foreign terrorists who have come to attack us.

Since then, the narrative have changed with people like al-Awlaki specifically recruiting American Muslims to engage in violence. And so now the community's posture has changed, one from kind of facing an outward enemy. And to a certain degree, the government's response was a little bit one of a miss in that the common narrative was there are these imams out there in the country, who are preaching hate and are trying to radicalize their flocks. And that was, of course, not the case.

There weren't these imams out there. Maybe there were in Europe, but not so much in the United States. And so for a long time, government was spinning its wheels.

In the meantime, people like al-Awlaki and bin Laden and others were getting online and recruiting English-speaking, American-born Muslims to try and engage in terrorism in response to the very rigorous steps that were taken by government to stop foreign terrorism. And that's where the Muslim community had to undergo a transformation to say, hey, we might have a problem. Junior down in the basement is spending a lot of time on the Internet, might be talking to the wrong people.

And that's why you saw several years of transformation where the Muslim community finally came to realize, we need to police our own, and that our kids could be susceptible to hateful messages. And when we see behavior that is not right, we need to report that to law enforcement.

And for the most part, that is happening. If you look at the kids that were arrested right here in northern Virginia, if you look at the arrest of the Times Square bomber, even the Christmas Day bomber, these were people that were turned in with help from Muslim-American community. So that partnership is there. It may not get all the headlines, and perhaps Chairman King needs to get that message. But that partnership is there. It can always be improved and enhanced.

WHITLOCK: Suhail, I think that brings up a good segue to our U.K. friends here.

As you rightly point out, I think, initially after 9/11 here, there wasn't as much concern about imams preaching hate and influencing people. But of course, that's been a much longer-standing problem in the U.K. where there have been English-speaking imams who have been preaching hate for a long time.

I'd like to, in particular, talk about the PREVENT program that has been referenced earlier, the preventing violent extremism in the U.K., which, to put it fairly, has probably had mixed reviews.

Like to ask Munira and Abdal for their thoughts on this in terms of, if the government in the U.K. had a chance to do this over again, how would that be done differently.

Munira.

MUNIRA MIRZA: I think it's fair to say that there is a greater understanding of the diversity of views in the Muslim community, and a recognition that we should treat the claims of more extremist voices, the claim that they represent the Muslim community, we should treat that with more skepticism than perhaps had been the case in the past.

And even the concept of a Muslim community, homogeneous community that feels the same way about political issues is really actually an invention over the last 20 years, 20 to 30 years in Britain. Prior to the 1980s, people in Britain didn't identify so much as Muslims in the public space as Asians or Bangladeshis or Pakistanis. The concept of being a Muslim in the public sphere came out of a set of cultural, social and political trends, partly exacerbated actually by government policy, both at the local and the national level.

And what you have, I think, is, today, a greater understanding of the fact that Muslim lobby groups and Muslim community leaders actually very rarely represent the Muslim population, despite all their claims, because the Muslim population is so diverse. And on many, many different issues, we'll have quite divergent views.

And I think part of the reason that I'm here is because I did quite a lot of research in a previous role, looking at Muslim attitudes, and could see that the Muslim opinion about Sharia law, about free speech, about even foreign policy, was actually very diverse. And that this idea of engaging with our Muslim community can be counterproductive, because what it does is it exacerbates a politicized identity along lines of religiosity rather than an engagement with people, our citizens. It enforces this idea that they belong to a community and a group.

WHITLOCK: Well, in fact, from your research and expertise, just the fact that there was a government program designed to reach out to the Muslim community, was that seen as offensive, was that seen as misguided, just the fact that they were looking at a broad Muslim community rather than individuals or individual groups, and trying distinctions? How did that go over, just that by itself?

MIRZA: I mean, there are two issues with PREVENT. I mean, this is, you know, my personal take on it. One was that there was a concern that funding and status was being conferred on more extremist organizations and individuals, and that these people were being invited in because they were seen to have some kind of connection with the Muslim community.

I think that that was not the case, and there's an appreciation of that now.

More generally, the concept of community engagement, which has developed really since the '70s and '80s in Britain, has been -- has arisen out of a change in the way in which politics is done at the local and national level.

So rather than engaging with people as universal citizens who might have shared concerns, shared aspirations, there is a division going on or a differentiation going on where people are grouped into categories -- you're a Muslim, you're an Asian, you're a Jew, you know, et cetera.

And that has, I think, fueled a sense of difference that hadn't been there previously, or not to the same extent. So on that level, I think that the kind of government response to dealing with Muslims has been, rather than the solution, it has exacerbated the problem.

WHITLOCK: Abdal, what do you think?

ABDAL ULLAH: Good afternoon. Personally speaking, having been to D.C. post-7/7, I was asked by the foreign office, sort of home office, to chair the task group looking at Muslim youth and radicalization in Britain. Having coming to D.C. post-7/7, I realized there was not much for us to learn from USA in terms of sort of looking at the local level.

We then went about setting about agenda how to sort of got better engage, understand the Muslim community.

Now, post-2006, I left my role as a Police Authority member in London to sort of seek public office. And subsequently been elected in the constituency with the largest Muslim population in the United Kingdom. Now, I wasn't a Muslim representative. I was an elected official for the whole constituency, of which happens to be a high proportion of Muslim.

I personally accepted the PREVENT money, in fact the largest amount of PREVENT money in the country. And I went about, because of my personal experience with the Police Authority and the home office, engaging with the community.

I think the conversation earlier was about bottom-up. I invited community groups to say, you know, I want to sort of address the issues, I want to talk about the issues and not shy away from it. There is sort of a stigma, and I totally accept that.

And I think I shared with you yesterday and I want to share with the audience about how we went about doing this. It was a big taboo, you know, PREVENT money coming to an area with a high proportion of Muslims, and in fact one of the largest youth population in the country, if not Western Europe.

It was seen like, is it because this young Muslim was going to be trouble? Well, predominantly South Asian Muslims, of which are 80 percent are Bangladeshis, and the Bangladeshi community has not been spectacularly in terms at the forefront of the national terror.

However, we want to engage with those people. Now, I couldn't just go out there and say, send -- I think there are a couple of Met people here -- send officers, middle-aged, white officers into a Muslim youth center or a Muslim community and say, let's talk about terror and so forth, because that would not be the right thing. This is about winning confidence and winning trust.

Now, I was alerted to a project, and I sort of took on that project. It was a small voluntary sector organization working with the deaf Muslims, who are excluded in all forms of mainstream society. Now, they go to the mosque on a Friday, and they've never participated or understood the sermon.

So one of the things I did was to give a small amount of money to that project from the PREVENT to bring about sign language of the sermon on a Friday prayer. And that was spectacularly received in the community as, wow, this has never happened. And it brought tears to not just my eye, but many people, 5,000 people that go to that particular mosque when a man who's been going to the mosque for 27 years says this is the first time that he felt part of the congregation because he was able to understand.

And when that reached the community, it was great. But then I was able to say, this is part of the PREVENT. It's about extending the communication, making our community feel safe. Given the fact that the 7/7 bombing happened literally a two-minute walk from that mosque -- (inaudible) -- and that sort of made people understand the PREVENT agenda is not about the Muslim community is seen as the troublesome, but the Muslim community has a solution to prevent mostly young people from being radicalized.

So the PREVENT agenda and the money allowed us to work exclusively with the Muslim community, but not all completely. We had interfaith project. That was a trip to Bosnia by a group of multi-faith representatives from our area, to understand the post-Bosnia situation. It gave opportunity to understand the community better, even though we lived amongst each other on a daily basis, having the same problem, whether it be school, policing problem or bus and transport.

But it kind of gave us an opportunity to understand and deliver service to better equip the community to deal with the problem that the authorities were seeking to get information, and also make the community and the borough and the area safer.

WHITLOCK: Well, that's all -- those sound like very worthwhile programs in terms of community engagement. You mentioned helping deaf Muslims have access in terms of better understanding what the Friday prayers are.

But you know, how does that help prevent violent extremism? And how do you make that connection between -- this is, after all, what the -- I mean, it sounds like a noble purpose, what the government is trying to do in terms of helping out with these projects. But what's the payoff on that front?

ULLAH: What the payoff is, is it's been four years. Once we started the project, which was well received, we then told the community, this is part of the PREVENT program. We then have gone about setting new projects, working with the more hard-to-reach young people.

I prefer to call them the pamphlet preacher. This is taking one verse from the Quran, particularly in -- we call them chicken shops, you know, sort of not McDonald's, but in a similar kind of thing, where they preach hate to young vulnerable people.

Now, what we do then is bring a -- (inaudible) -- platform debate. We had ministers coming into youth centers, you know, and literally one-to-one on this sort of platform, talking to them. And trying to give an example where PREVENT has allowed or created a platform for people to air their frustration, but in a positive way. And then through bona fide projects, get young people to have the confidence to approach a youth worker, who will then speak to our designed Met officers.

And I think in one of the earlier sessions, they talked about the three things around community. Well, the three institutions, which I was very much involved with -- university, as a government, as a Muslim and a member of the Council of Mosques, which is an umbrella organization of 40 mosques. As I said, it's the largest population of Muslims. Forty mosques from some as small as this room, to a big one with 5,000, who are part of an umbrella organization that could actually talk to the authorities. And then on an individual level as individual citizens, that we had a multi-layer of relationship in that area because we were able to build trust with the authorities and the public.

The vast majority of the Muslim community did not feel threatened by Met officers going into a community center, working with women. And I think the -- I consider him to be a hero -- the commissioner or the police of Los Angeles, because I've sort of been involved with the police authority, seen what is done -- the drug problem is a big issue in the Muslim community.

And we sort of parallel the drug problem with the terror problem, which is sweeping it under the carpet, as in happened in my family, no, no, no. We've got to address the issue, so we spoke to the mothers around, I think, your example of what is Ali doing in the basement in the Google and so forth.

We, you know, we need to educate them around certain trends. We know for a lot of young Muslims who are involved disproportionately in prison, youth institutions. When they come out, their appearance changes. The beard is longer than the father, and they pray more, and timing, and sort of different mood swings.

We want to address that to the mothers, because they're the best people to understand. So we've run workshops with police, with community figures, to sort of address some of those problems.

So it's about going to the grassroots and making the community feel that they're empowered to challenges, because otherwise, it's a them-and-us situation. Met officers, whether they be in plain clothes or uniform, turning up, it just creates tension. And in an urban setting in a minority community, there is a distrust of authority. We just didn't want to add to that. We wanted to build trust. That's how we do it.

WHITLOCK: Ed Husain, I'd like to come to you a little bit here. Given your personal history, you've spoken and written widely about your experiences with the Muslim Brotherhood, but also with HuT. Tell us a little bit more about that. Is there anything the government could have done to reach out to you? Or is this something that should be done by other actors?

ED HUSAIN: Well, I think most young people at a certain age in life ask the question, what's life all about? Who am I? What are my surroundings all about?

And at that stage in my life and, you know, a whole generation of people throughout the 1990s in Europe, I think, troubled by the events in Bosnia, turned to people who were on our doorsteps, who were giving us very black-and-white solutions to the world's problems.

So if Muslims were getting killed in Bosnia in the thousands that they were, and they were blond, blue-eyed, white Muslims that were being killed, despite being in Bosnia for 400-plus years, what's the answer to that problem?

Now, on my college campus and elsewhere, there was a lot of mobilization around the Bosnia conflict in the early 1990s. And the answers to those conflicts weren't forthcoming on my campus from, say, the Liberal Democrats or from the Labour Party or from the Tory Party or from anyone else.

The answers were forthcoming from the kind of groups that you spoke about -- the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir and others. And their answers were very black-and-white, very direct, very blunt. But you know, to the mind of a 16-year old at the time, very effective.

And I think what could have been done differently then, and I think it's being done increasingly now, is the emergence of political parties in the U.K., whether they're sort of center-right, center-left or further along the left-wing spectrum, but actually engage with young Muslims on questions of global politics, on questions of identity, and then have alternative outlets that then take those grievances through the mainstream, pluralist political system. And we're beginning to see that now emerge in the U.K. more than was the case, say, in the 1990s.

WHITLOCK: Suhail, I'll come pick at you again about this. As you know, this country was founded more than 200 years ago by political and religious radicals, many of whom had escaped from the U.K. to come here, to believe what they wished in freedom.

Should the government of either the U.K. or the United States be trying to reach out, engage in a way that could be construed as interfering in religion, no matter how extreme?

KHAN: Yes, and it would not be in the role of interfering. We are a country founded on principles of religious freedom that are enshrined in our First Amendment. And I think the answers lie right there in the First Amendment. And that is, what I use as kind of a bumper sticker slogan, seminary is security. We should continue to promote religious freedom, religious discussion, religious dialogue.

And in doing so, the religious communities, in this case, the Muslim community, whether it's here in the United States or in Europe or other places in the world, will self-police if there is full religious freedom.

When there are attempts to silence religious discussion or to marginalize religious voices, that's when you drive religious voices underground, and then they don't have the sunlight, the power of sunlight to really have that vigorous discussion out in the open.

And so extremist voices can then, again, recruit people, whether it's on closed places like the Internet, or in quiet discussions and whispers in back rooms, rather than having those discussions out in the open.

So going back to our Founding Fathers, we need to have full and rigorous religious freedom for all groups, and that includes vigorous discussions. And that includes with government.

And the other thing I'll say, and that brings alongside what Ed brought about, and that is, the answer does lie in faith. When you have extremists who are motivated, in part, by narratives that are drawn out in a faith narrative, even though they are taken from verses from the Quran or misinterpretations by some extremists of their faith, whether they're Muslim or even of other faiths, the answer lies in religion.

You cannot use a secular narrative to counter a religiously based narrative. Because there, again, to use one more bumper sticker, we need to have the best of faith to defeat the worst of religion.

In other words, religious actors, religious voices who are authentic leaders in the Muslim-American community, in the Muslim-European community, need to be brought forward to really punch holes in the narratives of the al-Awlakis and Osama bin Ladens or the HuT voices, et cetera.

Because what we find is, their voices and their religious narrative is paper thin, they take a very angry political narrative, and they wrap it in the cloak of a religious argument that is paper thin.

And when they are confronted by authentic and authentically educated Muslim leaders, those arguments fall away. But that argument needs to be had, and that can only be had if there's a rigorous debate, out in the open.

WHITLOCK: Well, that brings up a really good point about self-policing. Any of you three from the U.K. care to talk about examples where self-policing has worked, and how that can be encouraged further?

MIRZA: Can I just pick up on the point about the role of bringing in religious leaders? And I can understand the argument that it's important that there's a debate within the Muslim community between the extremist voices and the more moderate voices. And I think that that's started to happen increasingly in Britain.

And actually, I think William and Ed's work has been incredibly important in Britain, because it exploded the myth that all those Muslims were represented by one particular group. It exposed the fact that there was a debate that needed to happen.

But I think that it's important to think about the bigger picture and why it is that a particular form of religious politicized identity has emerged in Britain, and why it hasn't, to the same extent, in America.

And I think part of the explanation for that is, the multicultural approach that has happened in Britain, where local politicians have sought to engage with religious leaders, partly as a -- and you know, I think this is fair to say. There's a cynical strategy to getting votes, and we know that that's happened historically in Britain, and have created an almost Faustian pact with particular leaders. You deliver us votes, we will confer status upon you.

At the same time, religious groups, community groups are very vulnerable to being hijacked by more extreme voices. You know, I always say, you know, people who set up community groups and community organizations don't tend to be the ones that have nothing to complain about.

There's something inherent in the notion of engaging with a community group, which invites the culture of grievance and complaints because, you know, that's their raison d'etre, that's their justification. They have to think of reasons to complain as well.

And therefore, I think we need to be cautious about the idea that by engaging with religious leaders or community leaders, we deal with that problem, we've softened extremism. Because I think what you end up doing is you create a greater consciousness amongst Muslims that they are Muslims first and foremost, rather than citizens, and for young Muslims, in particular.

And this happened after September the 11th and after the July bombings in London 2005, where it wasn't so much the terrorist act that was the radicalizing influence; I think it was the reaction to the terrorist act from government, from particular leaders by talking about Muslims as a group and by scrutinizing them as a group. And in doing so, encouraging Muslims to make a choice by saying, you are a Muslim, and the way that you identify, the way that you experience this situation and you relate to it is primarily as a Muslim, rather than as a citizen of Britain.

So I think that, you know, the road to hell has been paved with good intentions in this. You know, no other area of British policy is characterized by so much naivete, in a sense. And you know, we've learned a huge amount, I would say, over the last five years about how delicate the identity formation has been for young Muslims and the way in which particular government interventions have, in some cases, exacerbated that problem.

WHITLOCK: Well, Abdal, she brings up -- she talks about how easy it can be for radical elements to hijack mainstream groups. In your community, have you seen any attempts at this? And if so, what's the most effective way to deal with that?

ULLAH: Well, out of all the panel, I'm sort of the one who has sort of gotten elected by the public out there. And I don't think I've used the religious-bloc vote for my advantage.

I think the key practical issue is, there are those more in Britain, a small, a very small group, who are going to go about advocating that voting is forbidden, it's, you know, man-made law and so forth. And I actually have confronted that many times, going back to then my local MP, Una King (ph), who was a mixed Jewish, and her father was American, and confronting HuT, who were giving out leaflet, was I was giving out on behalf of her leaflet, outside the large mosque.

And then when I stood for public office, I was then an automatic target, because, you know, from my student days, from youth parliament days, I've been forefront of youth citizenship, you know, leading the youth political movement.

So it was like, how do they go about stopping me, because I was sort of the voice and so forth?

And I have to say, it was the elders in the community who supported me, because this is somebody they saw as their kid of, you know, who has done this and been involved with youth activities and trying to bring positive.

So they came about supporting me, and that also inspired the youngsters who rejected their sort of belief of a democracy isn't for us. And so we actually -- and I went about encouraging others to be involved in political debate and political position. And at some time, even so, you know, those who I encouraged stood in different platforms, and sometimes against me, which is not a good thing to do, but I did it.

And that sort of shunned the voice of the very minorities who were saying that voting is haraam and you shouldn't take part in democracy, and that the party that I stood for went to war with Mr. Bush. And so it was really interesting.

And I think what you're saying, self-policing, that was evident, was that the community decided to come out in numbers, four or five individuals would stand for political parties, of whom was a Muslim as their background. So that kind of gave a clear message that what they were selling about not participating in democracy and elections, was not, you know, what they believed in. And that has helped us.

But in terms of -- in relationship about the Muslim core vote, I don't think it's about politicians, whether they be locally or regionally, exploiting them. They are there to be spoken to. If they choose to vote for you in a way because they feel comfortable, that is obviously a good way to go about getting the votes. But it's not about manipulating those particular bloc votes.

WHITLOCK: Ed, you have the history with the Muslim Brotherhood and HuT. Is there a danger? Does the government, both here and in the U.K., tend to lump these groups together, to some extent? And how can it say who's, you know, how does it draw the line on which groups should be encouraged or considered legitimate and which ones should not be? That's a tricky line, isn't it?

HUSAIN: In terms of engagement?

WHITLOCK: Yes.

HUSAIN: That's an excellent question. And I think many of the previous panelists on some of the panels early in the morning were referring to not knowing enough. And this is a real challenge, especially here in the U.S. context.

And I've been here just over four months now, and watching some of the turbulence in the Middle East appearing on some of the news channels here, seeing educated liberal, well-to-do, often well-thought-out people on every other subject, suddenly lump the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda together, and say, is Egypt about to be controlled by al Qaeda, and extending the metaphor to other countries.

And I think that's deeply worrying. It sort of fails to understand the deep nuances within those organizations and without those organizations. So that's a real problem, more so I think here in the U.S. in the state of public debate, than it is in the U.K.

And that's a real risk. It's a real risk for foreign policy; it's a real risk for domestic policy.

But one of the things I want to say in the U.S. domestic context -- and again, as someone who's been observing as a semi-outsider -- is that I think, again, too much of the commentary -- and forgive me for naming names -- puts major organizations such as ISNA, NPAC, CAIR, MASS and all those organizations together as Muslim Brotherhood organizations or Muslim Brotherhood legacy organizations.

Now, without doubt, there are ties historically to the Muslim Brotherhood. But to suggest that ISNA -- and I speak after having met ISNA that has excellent ties with synagogues here in the U.S., that condemns Hamas, unreservedly, that -- I mean, every test you can give them, they more or less pass those tests -- is somehow the same as other organizations that foster the victimhood mind-set that Muslims are essentially, you know, a victim community, that it's a resistance community.

Somehow, this all-one-in-the-same, I think, again, leads to then bad policy being crafted. So there is this real issue.

And the last point I'd make is this. And again, as someone who's, you know, been up close and personal in the U.K. with some of the more negative aspects of Muslim activism and also the negative attitudes of the U.K. government previously in dealing with empowering, even literally ennobling, you know, people become sir this, sir that, on the back of the U.K. government's engagement with some of those characters in the U.K. -- having met those people and sort of, you know, been involved with them in the U.K. and then coming over here to the U.S. and then seeing the huge strength that you have as Americans with your American-Muslim community, I mean, it's a huge asset that you have, that you're not starting from scratch.

In other words, there's a strong national identity in place already among most American Muslims. There's a strong feeling of commitment to the Constitution, an understanding of American history, a dedication to what it means to be American. Those are key, you know, deep-rooted principles and assets that you have against the fight and the narrative of al Qaeda, because al Qaeda undermines all of that and claims fundamentally that Islam and the West are somehow at loggerheads.

But you have nearly 8 million, 9 million Muslims in your midst that daily undermine that narrative. And yet, I often find that huge asset, your first line of defense, almost being, you know, sort of sidelined repeatedly.

So you know, I'm an optimist for American Muslims, and I think American Islamists, American Muslims are, in many ways, in comparison to European Muslims, are pioneers for some of the key debates happening within Islam.

WHITLOCK: Good. Let's open things up to questions. And we'll bring the microphone around. If you could please stand up, again, state your name and affiliation clearly for the record.

Yes, sir.

QUESTIONER: Thank you. Dan Sreebny from the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications at the Department of State. I want to thank all the panelists for this very interesting session.

Ed Husain talked a little bit about some of the shows that he's appeared on and the naivete or ignorance of some of the journalists.

One of the factors that impacts on communities and perceptions of communities is how they are communicated about, not just in mainstream news, but in the tabloids, in the talk shows, the cable stations and, of course, on the Internet. So I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you try, as part of community partnerships, both to strengthen communities' capabilities to communicate effectively on their own behalf, and also how to work with professional communicators and others to improve their ability to communicate on these issues of interest. Thank you.

WHITLOCK: Anyone care to take a crack at that?

ULLAH: It's a two-way street. I remember after 7/7, then the commissioner or the assistant commissioner going on record, and I happened to be -- when 7/7 happened, I was actually in Singapore for the London Olympic. And watching, glued to a telly. And the first press conference, you know, the assistant commissioner saying, Muslim, you know, something around what you're sort of saying, this is a terrorist act in our city, it has nothing to do with Muslim.

And I remember another senior officer actually, not necessarily out of (context ?), but saying it was a Muslim terrorist. So it was a conflicting message.

And I remember it, and returning back from Singapore, and the first Police Authority meeting asking, categorically saying, look, I am a member of the authority, but I'm also a Muslim, and I live amongst the community. This is the clear message, that you've got to get the message right on the media, because you are officially the spokesperson of security for this capital. Get the message right.

And also, speaking to a few friendly journalists in the BBC and other local channels, saying, please do not go to the loudmouth. We have various media-hungry Muslims, I'm sure you've got them in America as well, who love the attention of the media. And they will talk.

(Inaudible) -- was one of them. Abu Hamza (ph), the one-handed "Captain Hook" it was named on the tabloid, they love talking rubbish. And do not go to them.

But then the question was, who is -- you know, who do we go to? So I mean, I couldn't say, come to x, y and z. But I said, look, do not go to the obvious. It was a two-way thing.

I think the media needs to be a bit more responsible, because whatever you put out on the TV has an effect, an immediate effect on the community, but also the community itself needs to self-police itself and put responsible, good people in the media to kind of portray and give an accurate interpretation of the Muslim community, whether it be in Britain or in the United States.

KHAN: I'd like to add to that, and that is, there has been a change for the worse, particularly in the American discourse, when it comes to issues related to Islam and Muslims, unfortunately on my side of the aisle, amongst conservative groups, particularly.

The questions I used to get 10 years ago, or even a year after 9/11 about Islam and Muslims are very different from the questions I get now. And that is because of several factors, including the fact that there have been several homegrown terrorist attempts on our country. No doubt about it.

But also that there is an industry out there with a very distinct business model that stirs up hate and distrust against Muslims and Islam, in general. And you know, you can name names. I mean, the guys are out there, whether they're Pam Geller or Frank Gaffney or other folks like that Robert Spencer who really drum up a narrative.

And in many ways, it's very much a mirror of what al Qaeda is promoting, and that is that Islam and the West are inherently at conflict, that there's no way that a Muslim could be loyal in a democracy, there's no way that a Muslim could ever follow a Constitution where there's human rights and freedom; and therefore, there's an inherent conflict.

And whether that's coming from somebody like al-Awlaki, bin Laden or from somebody like Frank Gaffney, that is very much not only an issue that misinforms the public and causes mistrust and can just -- not just want to be politically correct or hurting somebody's feelings -- but it really does jeopardize our national security in that it reinforces a very hostile narrative, that when you have some young youth who are susceptible, whether they're unemployed or having trouble getting married or getting a job, or whatever the issue might be, they might turn to this narrative.

You see the bomber, the Times Square bomber, he was upset about drone attacks in Pakistan, goes on the net. Al-Awlaki is right there, ready to begin dialoguing with him, grooming him, much like you have in a child predator. And then grooms him, and then one step leads to the other, and he's parking a car full of explosives in Times Square.

Those are step-by-step processes. And when you have an outside narrative in the country, that we are at war with Islam, that Islam is a threat, from people who are otherwise responsible political actors and voices out there -- we saw these voices coming to a very shrill pitch around the controversy around the mosque at ground zero -- that unfortunately drives home that message that you are the other, you'll never be considered an American. And therefore, why don't you go into the arms of the extremists?

So I think -- and where government comes into play is standing up against those voices, standing up against those voices, including if they are political voices.

I think when General Petraeus came out and said to the pastor in Florida that burning the Quran is not only an issue of just hate or of anger towards a religion, but a national security threat, because you will jeopardize our troops in the field, that's where government really can come alongside and make a very powerful statement.

WHITLOCK: Good. Let's -- another question. Yes, sir.

Could you stand up.

QUESTIONER: My name is Douglas Smith. One of the purposes of this event today, I think, is to alert people in the United States about certain trends which may be coming your way from the U.K. or in parallel with things that have happened in the U.K. And to that end, I've got a question I want to ask Ed, which is about the rise of an organization called the English Defense League, which is, in many ways, a mirror image of many of the radical Muslim groups that we have seen.

And the English Defense League is a street army, a far-right street army, that has mobilized in towns and cities across the U.K., has got itself involved in many pretty violent confrontations with younger Muslims, who themselves feel that they are coming out to defend their communities.

There was a case back in, I think, the 1960s, some of my American friends will be able to give me the exact reference, where the American Nazi party marched through a heavily Jewish area close to Chicago.

WHITLOCK: Skokie, Illinois.

QUESTIONER: Skokie? Was it Skokie? And what the English Defense League has been doing in the U.K. as a result of the anti-Muslim feeling that has been stirred up by radical Islamist preachers and loudmouths, as you correctly called them, people like -- (inaudible) -- are ready to go on television at the drop of a hat and feed this perception of Muslims as wild-eyed radicals spewing hatred.

What the English Defense League has been able to do is mobilize large numbers of young, disaffected, white, working-class youth to cause really quite serious disturbances which have the potential to cause huge community tensions.

And so my question for you, Ed, is, what is it we can do in practical terms to try and prevent this polarization between those people on either side of the divide who would like to drive people apart?

HUSAIN: I thought Pauline Neville-Jones hit the nail on the head this morning when she -- Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones -- when she spoke about those on the extreme right wing that make the argument that Islam itself is to blame, that it's scripture, it's Muslim history that gives rise to terrorism and not a contemporary reading of it that's perverted and modernist.

So there is that on the far right of mainstream political discourse increasingly in Britain and increasingly here in the U.S.

I think there is a U.S. equivalent of the English Defense League called Stop the Shariaization of America, or something on those lines. So the trend is already coming this way.

And on the Muslim far right, you have the -- (inaudible) -- and others who make that exact argument that the English Defense League make, but couched in their misreading of scripture.

And to my mind, that's a symbiotic relationship; they both depend on one another. Without the Anjem Choudarys -- and for my sins, I turned up at the event that took place just outside the White House about three weeks ago, where an organization was claiming that Sharia was a stealth jihad, and Sharia was creeping into America, and it was a responsibility of all Americans to stop this stealth jihad and increased Sharia law being introduced in states here in the U.S.

And there, people were repeatedly -- there were people from the English Defense League, but there were also people from the U.S. equivalent. And repeatedly, the great imam that they were quoting and citing from was Anjem Choudary. Anjem is no imam. He doesn't speak English. And yet he was repeatedly referred to in such terms by, you know, his symbiotic partners on the other extreme.

And I think the most coherent response, Doug, can be, and forgive me for sort of saying this, but, you know, can be the political center-right and the center-left come out clearly against both extremes. And there is a tendency, I think, among people on the center-left, at times, not to speak out against Islamist extremism for fear of being seen to be either racist or Islamophobic and what have you.

That then leads to the center-right talking about it for causes that are almost nationalist or religion-based or an understanding of religiosity that leads to this agenda becoming a right-wing agenda.

And I think one of the things that a previous speaker spoke about this morning was, taking the politics out of this, that this is something that's important for center-right and to the center-left; and thereby, we marginalize the far right and the far left, but particularly the far-right among the Muslims and among mainstream politics.

So I think the answer is to build mainstream political consensus in the public space that says, you know, clearly the kind of names that you mentioned, Suhail, are on the far right of the Republican Party, and the kind of names that you spoke about the English Defense League, have nothing to do, absolutely nothing to do with mainstream, center-right, conservative thinking in the U.K.

And often, I think people try and muddle the two, and they ought not to. And the answer is to consolidate the political center.

WHITLOCK: Yes, sir.

QUESTIONER: Good afternoon. I'm Arif Alikhan. I'm on the faculty of National Defense University. My question is, what I've learned about the PREVENT program in the U.K. in comparing it to the United States is a very different approach and strategy in terms of funding and supporting religious groups.

So in the U.K., money can go directly to groups that are religious, to provide them an opportunity to be a moderate voice and to challenge the al Qaeda narrative, especially interpretations of the Quran.

The United States, we don't do that. And for many reasons, that's because of our long tradition of not doing that.

Aside of the difference, though, my question is, is do you think, for those in the U.K., that is an effective way to do it, that government support of certain groups to engage in a religious discussion actually is an effective way? And if not, what are the downsides?

And I should, in the interest of full disclosure, Suhail and I did grow up together. We never had this discussion when we were kids. (Laughter.)

MIRZA: Can I answer that?

WHITLOCK: Please.

MIRZA: I mean, the situation in Britain is that the expectation of the public to be engaged via their religion or their ethnicity is much greater than it is in America for obvious reasons. And there's a greater sense of the common citizen or the national identity, I would argue, in America.

And as I've said, I think that the multicultural approach in Britain has created in the minds of Muslims this idea that there are groups that represent them, even when it's very clear that they don't.

So in the research that I did in 2006, 2007, the team that I led, we asked the 1,000 Muslims to name an organization that represented them. And at the time, only 6 percent named the Muslim Council of Britain, which was, at the time, regarded by the government as the official body representing Muslim opinions. It was only 6 percent, so I think it shows that this notion of representation and community leaders is a flawed one.

So I think the PREVENT strategy and the general strategy of community engagement, I think, needs to be taken apart a little bit. But obviously in Britain, we are where we are. And the expectation is there.

And you know, you asked earlier, what is it that government can do? And I think that actually to ask the question the other way around, what government can stop doing and politicians can stop doing is engaging with more extremist voices and assuming that they are representative. I think that's something that has been learned in recent years. And trying much harder to recognize Muslims' aspirations and concerns as being ones that are shared by other groups.

And what extremists tend to be very good at is, take the structure of community engagement and hijack it and use it for their own ends to push a particular agenda in the public space, which has been fairly effective.

And foreign policy is one way in which they've been able to galvanize support. The other is Islamophobia. And in Britain, there's a lot of concern that there's Islamophobia in the media, in political discourse.

Actually, I would argue that that's a fear that has been played upon, that's been used to exploit young Muslims and to make them feel that they need defense, they need protection.

So I think that even though the strategy could be modified and can be improved, and there are things that can be done to make PREVENT better than it was, I think it's important to take a step back and look at the actual strategy more generally and ask if community engagement in the context of America, there might be lessons to be learned by not going down that road and not trying too hard to elevate community leaders or religiosity as a form of engagement, but rather perhaps to, as Ed's already said, to recognize the incredible asset of a shared national identity, and that political engagement at the local level with groups across ethnicity, across religious identities, is a very powerful thing.

WHITLOCK: This gentleman here, he could ask the next one.

QUESTIONER: Thank you. Jonathan Brown, Georgetown University. Not to imbue to you some intention in the statements, but Ms. Mirza, you said that sort of identifying as Muslim first and foremost was sort of this unintended byproduct of government engagement.

Mr. Abdal, you said that -- you suggested that sort of if someone starts doing their prayers on time, this might be indication of a problem.

I mean, I don't think, you know, performing all your prayers on time or identifying as a Muslim before anything else is necessarily extremism. Certainly, we wouldn't say that for a Christian who did all his prayers or her prayers and identified as a Christian above all other things.

And where do you draw the line -- this is anybody on the panel -- where do you draw the line between the good, acceptable Muslim and the radical, extremist Muslim? I know that's a big question.

MIRZA: I don't think that being religious or being devout is the same as being an extremist. And I think that confusion has been made in the British media, and it's a real problem. And that's where the concern about the simplicity that the media has in Britain is justified.

But I think that clearly there is a cultural problem in Britain where -- and I would say that it's a problem in that a younger generation of Muslims are increasingly disconnected or disillusioned with the other kinds of collective identity that may have existed in the past, political identities, national identity. You know, your connection to a political union or a political party, organized religion, all those things have tended to fragment over the last 20 to 30 years.

And what's occurring now is a more politicized form of religious identity that younger Muslims are adopting, and which is something that their parents don't recognize either. Their parents are quite concerned about it.

And that doesn't necessarily mean that the people who are more concerned about identifying politically as a Muslim are even more religious. They may not be. So in the research that we did, we would ask young Muslims how they felt about foreign policy or what you would regard as their sympathy for al Qaeda or more extreme groups. And the people who would respond with sympathy for al Qaeda weren't necessarily the ones that prayed five times a day. They might have been the ones who were actually the least religious, but they felt an identification with Islam, which was really born from their sense of the victimization of Muslims.

And that was a very powerful and compelling narrative for them, which is something that I think is exacerbated, encouraged by a wider political culture in Britain, which is of grievance, more generally.

So I think it's possible to make a distinction between highly religious people or people who have a strong sense of being a Muslim, from those who are identifying with a politicized identity and who have a very strong sense of the grievance and the victimization of Muslims, who might then, a small minority of those, might then go on and become more sympathetic to al Qaeda, and then perhaps themselves go on and commit or try and commit terrorist acts.

ULLAH: Can I just sort of -- I'd also give you another sort of similar in terms of the identity. If you look at the South Asian -- and I can speak very (clearly ?) about it, because it's my, sort of, family background. In the '60s, late '50s and '60s, our father's generation came as migrants to sort of lead a better life, to earn and to send money for home.

My generation and the generation after are now classified as British Muslims, British Bangladeshis. They see this as their homeland. And a lot of them are looking for new identities. And I think, you know, the political identity is one of them, but also in terms of their own grouping.

And I think, you know, we talked yesterday night about grouping in terms of people who, you know, coming out of prisons, they seem to be devout Muslims because they found a spiritual life in that sort of way. But this new group of young British Muslims are also finding an identity, whether it be the clothing -- I mean, when we were at college, the hijab was not a common sign, but now has become the common sign on the streets of London.

In fact, one statistic says one in 10 of the population in London is of Muslim background. However, young people are wanting to see whether it be Asia, North Africa, Somalia, and what unites them when they're standing in the bus stop is that they are Muslim. Whether it be they go to the college and so forth, it doesn't mean they're devout or praying on time, it's this is an automatic thing that connects them.

And I think for some certain commentators, they find it sort of a bit discomforting because all of a sudden there's a grouping, whereas before in the '80s it was a political grouping. If you were an ethnic minority in a country where your politics was (black ?), but no, these people wanted to now identify themselves as Muslim.

We've just done the census on the 27th of March -- I did it later. But this will show a category. I mean, population of Britain, about 2 million, maybe more, of people who identify themselves as Muslim. That's going to be a powerful voice for political parties, political groupings to either exploit or to service and meet the needs.

So I think it is an interesting time. And I think in America, and from what I read, I'm seeing similar kind of thing, people who are converting to Islam, whether in prison or just generally, are seeing there's a common thing, you know, well-to-do American Muslims whose children are now re-examining their belief or re-kind-of grouping their identity, because they see themselves as Muslim first.

And I think that's just going to be an interesting debate. And commentators might find it uncomfortable, but it's how you engage with that. And I think that's the big thing about engaging and nurturing that energy and talent.

WHITLOCK: Actually, I've been given the hi sign that we have to cut things off.

But I don't mean to deprive you of that, but maybe we can pick it up afterward.

But thank you audience for some terrific questions. And thank you for the panelists for a riveting discussion. Thanks very much.