The attack on Glasgow Airport and the attempted car bombings in London’s Haymarket this June, not only served to remind a newly formed government of the constantly shifting nature of the Islamic extremist threat, they also re-energised the debate around the causes of, and cures for, home-grown extremism.
During the last six months a steady trickle of personal testimony from former radicals and evidence gleaned from the investigation of individuals involved in terrorist plots, has begun to challenge the left’s main position on this issue: that Britain’s terror threat is both created and fuelled by an underlying anger at Britain’s actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In short, this new body of analysis argues that it is a naïve fallacy to suggest that young Muslims are so enraged by what they see on their TV screens, they wake up one day and decide to strap a bomb to themselves.
This is not to say that anger at British foreign policy doesn’t play any role at all. Rather, in the way that immigration policy is used to stoke up support for the BNP and Combat 18, former recruiters for radical Islamic groups tell us that within Islamic extremist culture the issue of foreign policy is used to reinforce an already prejudiced and violent worldview. So what are the factors driving the radicalisation of young British Muslims? It would appear that the very first steps to radicalisation often lie in an individual’s search for identity, a rebellion against traditional values as espoused by their parents and community and a subsequent disconnection with their family and reorientation of their social support network.
Take the story of lead July 7 bomber, Mohammad Siddique Khan, who was born and brought up in Beeston, Leeds. For over half a decade Khan battled against his community’s tribal attitudes towards employment, education, marriage and drugs. During this period Khan received little support from society’s mainstream institutions and instead relied upon more fundamentalist and radical versions of Islam to justify his liberation from his parents’ ‘backward’ attitudes.
In other words, while his parents were, as he saw it, remaining loyal to their customs, he was remaining loyal to his religion.
One tangible result of this transition of identity was that Khan no longer felt that it was right for his parents to force him to marry his cousin. However, while Khan’s new religious reading of Islam justified his anti-tribalism, it also demanded that he train for Jihad and proclaim war against non-Muslims. (For a much longer description of Khan’s story see ‘My Brother the Bomber’ in Prospect Magazine, June 2007.)
So what can policy makers take from this and other similar case studies? First, if radicalism is, in part, driven by a rebellion against the trenchant traditionalism that exists within many migrant communities in Britain today, then it would be apposite for governments to neutralise this push factor by tackling these issues themselves.
In the last few months the government has, to its credit, introduced forced marriage legislation. This will, if enforced, demonstrate to the children of first generation migrants that mainstream society will support them in their struggle for individual rights. But there is still a long way to go; especially to establish women’s rights in such communities.
Second, the ideology of Islamic extremism, which permits and encourages such acts of terrorism, needs to be tackled head-on rather than sidestepped. In many ways, because of the theological roots that underpin such an ideology, this struggle will largely take place within Muslim communities. However, both government and civil society can help to enable those involved in that fight by, for example: developing social support for those who leave extremist groups, financially supporting those institutions that are attempting to develop better theological tools to tackle the issue of Islamic identity in the west and de-legitimising extremist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Lastly, the government also needs to look at the issue of ghettoisation because divided communities create mindsets which become easy prey for extremist recruiters. However, policy makers must be aware that it is not only hostility from a host community that causes ghettoisation. Some of the inertia which prevents measures to tackle segregation will be internal to that community: driven by tribal attitudes to social structuring, and some of it will have been encouraged by the divisions inherent within multicultural policies.
These policy outlines, though very brief, are based on what it means to win hearts and minds. Policy makers must have the courage to support what is good at the same time as tackling what is wrong within ethnic minority communities because, after all, ethnic minorities don’t have another government to turn to.