

Being Muslim Being British is a primary prevention initiative that raises participants' levels of integrative complexity (IC) as a means of preventing violent extremism and promoting social cohesion. The approach is based on changing ‘us-vs.-them’ perceptions of social reality by improving the quality of people's information processesing – achieving high Integrative Complexity (Suedfeld 2003), particularly in the domain of values, and is reputedly one of the first prevention programmes with empirically measurable outcomes benchmarked against extremist violence. Assessment research based on seven pilot courses around the UK (each course comprising eight modules) shows that IC rises significantly by the end of the course, in comparison with IC levels before the course, and that high IC significantly correlates with participants' choosing of pro-social activism rather than violent mobilisation. This chapter discusses the theoretical background for the intervention, and describes how the eight module course works, with illustrations from participant's verbalisations. Finally, the chapter positions this intervention with other forms of prevention in use around the world and details next steps in this work.