Tarek Younis

The Israeli government has publicly expressed genocidal intent and conducted systematic attacks on civilians of Gaza and wider Palestine, following decades of illegal occupation and apartheid. Tens of thousands of Palestinian women, men and children have been killed; over 2-million people forcefully displaced and starved. The humanitarian catastrophe has been compounded by systematic destruction of healthcare facilities, schools, and places of worship. An online survey was conducted between 10th November and 5 December 2023 to assess UK healthcare professionals (HCPs) and students' experiences of censorship, Islamophobia and their well-being following the attacks on Palestinian civilians. Of the 651 respondants, >90% felt it was very important for them to be able to express their legitimate concerns regarding the genocide in Gaza; 93% felt censored. Overall, 69% experienced Islamophobia, a 37% increase between October and December 2023 (including verbal and physical abuse). Well-being was adversely impacted in 97%; only 12% felt their institution had offered culturally sensitive support. The wholesale assault on Gaza and wider occupied Palestine has had a significant adverse impact on the well-being of HCPs and students. Censorship and Islamophobia are widespread and rising. Urgent collective action is needed to tackle these intersecting issues and prevent further catastrophic consequences.

In 2015, the UK government made its counter‐radicalisation policy a statutory duty for all National Health Service (NHS) staff. Staff are now tasked to identify and report individuals they suspect may be vulnerable to radicalisation. Prevent training employs a combination of psychological and ideological frames to convey the meaning of radicalisation to healthcare staff, but studies have shown that the threat of terrorism is racialised as well. The guiding question of our ethnography is: how is counter‐radicalisation training understood and practiced by healthcare professionals? A frame analysis draws upon 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork, which includes participant observation in Prevent training and NHS staff interviews. This article demonstrates how Prevent engages in performative colour‐blindness – the active recognition and dismissal of the race frame which associates racialised Muslims with the threat of terrorism. It concludes with a discussion of institutional racism in the NHS – how racialised policies like Prevent impact the minutia of clinical interactions; how the pretence of a ‘post‐racial’ society obscures institutional racism; how psychologisation is integral to the performance of colour‐blindness; and why it is difficult to address the racism associated with colourblind policies which purport to address the threat of the Far‐Right.

The PREVENT policy introduced a duty for British health professionals to identify and report patients they suspect may be vulnerable towards radicalisation. Research on PREVENT’s impact in healthcare is scant, especially on the lived experiences of staff. This study examined individual interviews with 16 critical National Health Service (NHS) professionals who participated in mandatory PREVENT counter-radicalisation training, half of whom are Muslims. Results reveal two themes underlying the self-censorship healthcare staff. The first theme is fear, which critical NHS staff experienced as a result of the political and moral subscript underlying PREVENT training: the ‘good’ position is to accept the PREVENT duty, and the ‘bad’ position is to reject it. This fear is experienced more acutely by British Muslim healthcare staff. The second theme relates to the structures which extend beyond PREVENT but nonetheless contribute to self-censorship: distrustful settings in which the gaze of unknown colleagues stifles personal expression; reluctant trainers who admit PREVENT may be unethical but nonetheless relinquish responsibility from the act of training; and socio-political conditions affecting the NHS which overwhelm staff with other concerns. This paper argues that counter-terrorism within healthcare settings may reveal racist structures which disproportionality impact British Muslims, and raises questions regarding freedom of conscience.

This article explores the process by which Western Muslim young adults develop the need to experience an ‘objective’ religious identity. We interviewed 20 Western Muslim young adults born in Montreal, Berlin, and Copenhagen within the age range of 18–25, exploring their religious identity development. The interviews were semi-structured and open-ended. Thematic content analysis was used to explore patterns in their narratives. The participants disliked the perceived ethnocentric Muslim identity of their parents, which they sought to ‘purify’ for themselves from ‘cultural contamination’. There were two important elements underlying the process of religious identity objectification: experience of anti-Muslim political discourse and exposure to religious diversity in the aftermath of deterritorialisation.