Fight the power: how CAGE resists from within a “suspect community”

Against the backdrop of the War on Terror, the British government has introduced a strict counter-terrorism regime that has disproportionately targeted Muslim communities through on-going practices of racialization and surveillance. This paper examines the ways in which grassroots organizations have developed responses and strategies to resist counter-terrorism policy and state Islamophobia in the context of the United Kingdom and the United States. The paper uses a practitioner’s perspective to locate real-life experiences of working within such an organization, as a means to understand the complex processes by which structural power is exercised to suppress legitimate voices of colour seeking to critique policy and practice. It examines the consequences of such silencing and the wider risks this poses for dissent and debate in democratic societies.