London conference calls for challenging organisations using Islam for their political goals

"The event heard from a number of country specific experts who examined the situation in relation to the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Denmark. These experts analysed the varying approaches taken by governments and identified areas for further cooperation and improvement.

Dr Lorenzo Vidino, EFD Senior Policy Advisor and Director of the Program on Extremism at the George Washington University's Center for Cyber & Homeland Security, provided a telling example from Italy where government is putting sufficient resources into counter-extremism but that these a focussed on a hard approach to punish suspects; less resource is going into prevention activities, which is ultimately more important. However, he warned that effective practices for countering extremism cannot be a single model, each country and society will have socially and culturally constructed differences that require more nuanced approaches."