Memorandum from the Institute for Policy
Research & Development (PVE 19)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
— The Government's understanding of extremism
inadequately analyses the core social factors behind violent radicalization,
seeing these factors as separate and contingent, rather than as
mutually interdependent dynamics of a single failed social system
that has (1) marginalized the majority of Muslims from British
civil society; and (2) thereby facilitated the capacity of Islamist
extremists to mobilize on British soil. This has meant that the
Government's capacity-building programmes have insufficiently
addressed key structural problems at the root of radicalization
processes.
— The Government's unwillingness to engage
with Muslim communities on terms other than related to counter-terrorism
has exacerbated widespread distrust and apathy toward Government,
and discouraged communities from supporting the "Prevent"
agenda, which is often viewed instead as a self-serving tool of
political control by the very communities that most require Government
support.
— The following factors by themselves each
constitute necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for
violent radicalization; their cumulative interaction creates a
mutually-reinforcing positive-feedback system, acting in
totality as a sufficient condition and causal basis
for a minority of British Muslims to experience violent radicalization:
— Social structural inequalities and institutional
discrimination have generated a groundswell of social alienation,
civic exclusion, and political impotence that fuels psychological
instability and vulnerability to identity crises in many Muslim
communities, including those which are more upwardly mobile.
— This is reinforced by Islamaphobic media
reporting, which in turn has fuelled social polarisation between
Muslim and non-Muslim communities in Britain, contributing to
Muslim vulnerability to separate self-identification through negative
reflected appraisal, and increasing the ability of extremists
to operate among both communities.
— Foreign policy grievances exacerbate
this condition and provide a focal point and critical catalyst
for a sense of generic victimization that potentially undermines
attachment to British national identity.
— While the preceding items highlight "push"
factors, the key "pull" factor comes in the form of
Islamist extremist ideology[50]
operating through organisations which exploit all these circumstances
of exclusion, which navigate the groundswell of potential discontent
to identify vulnerable individuals for recruitment into various
forms of ideological indoctrination as a means to resolve their
identity crises. Some such groups, particularly al-Muhajiroun,
provide a radicalizing social network opening material prospects
for individuals to participate in violent activities that potentially
threaten public safety, at home and abroad.
— The radicalizing activities of such groups
in turn serve to feedback into the previous processes of social
and civic exclusion, negative perceptions of Muslims, and so on,
processes which become further intensified in the aftermath of
terrorist attacks or plots by associated individuals.
— The Government's "Prevent"
programme has focused on trying to build the capacity of Muslim
communities to counter extremism without properly addressing these
social factors and their mutual reinforcement. Urgent interventions
are therefore required to holistically address all these fronts
to dampen, and eventually extinguish their positive-feedbacks
(see Recommendations).
INTRODUCTION
1. Dr Nafeez Ahmed is a political scientist
and counter-terrorism expert at the University of Sussex who has
published widely on international terrorism and al-Qaeda, including
The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth,
2006). He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy
Research & Development (www.iprd.org.uk), a London-based non-profit
research organization analyzing violent conflict in the context
of global ecological, economic and energy crises. He has testified
in US Congress about his research on security policy toward Islamist
extremist groups, which was also used by the 9/11 Commission.
2. Currently, the "Prevent" agenda
is in danger of criminalizing Muslim communities by labelling
them as "at-risk" from violent extremism. The scope
of risk-assessment is rendered potentially unlimited by the assumption,
recently espoused by the MI5 Behavioural Science Unit for
instance, that there is no "typical pathway to violent extremism"
for British Muslim terrorists who fit "no single demographic
profile"—all genders, classes, ages and localities
of British Muslims may therefore potentially be "at-risk".
Categorizations of being "at-risk" from violent extremism
could include anything from holding foreign policy grievances
or expressing disillusionment with the parliamentary system, to
holding religious beliefs assumed to contradict an as yet amorphous
and contested conception of shared values—"symptoms"
which have no proven relationship to a propensity for violence.
3. For example, surveys show that while
between 30 and 40% of British Muslims would support the introduction
of Shariah Law in some form by British authorities into some areas
of public life; the number of British Muslims who believe terrorist
attacks against civilians in the UK are justifiable is between
1 and 2%. There is therefore no causal correlation between
the adherence to certain beliefs suspected of undermining shared
values, and actual vulnerability to terrorist recruitment. Thus,
the promotion of shared values, while clearly critical for community
cohesion, should not be conflated with countering violent extremism.
These are overlapping, but nevertheless distinct, areas of work.
4. Over the last decade, the Government
has consistently expanded the powers of police and security agencies,
and broadened the scope and definition of what constitutes terrorist
activity. This trend of "widening the net" has meant
that huge amounts of public funds are being expended on apprehending
and pursuing greater numbers of normal citizens to discern evidence
of violent extremism. This is an approach that focuses on surveillance
to deal with symptoms, and is therefore bound to fail by way of
largely ignoring the key "push" and "pull"
factors, and their relation to root structural causes.
SOCIAL STRUCTURAL
FACTORS BEHIND
VIOLENT EXTREMISM
5. Rather than a diverse "range of
causes" being responsible for violent radicalization, as
the Government argues, violent radicalization is the culmination
of a hierarchy of interdependent causes operating as a
mutually-reinforcing positive-feedback system, which needs to
be addressed holistically, necessitating not just a targeted
and focused counterterrorism strategy, but intensified Government
efforts to revitalise the social contract with British Muslim
citizens on its own terms.
6. Social exclusion and institutional discrimination
by themselves do not explain the phenomenon of violent extremism
in the UK, but they are primarily responsible for a weakening
of a sense of British national identity and citizenship, particularly
amongst some ethnic Muslim communities in Britain that are most
marginalised.
7. The majority of Muslims in the UK are
socially excluded. Studies show that 69% of British Muslims of
Pakistani or Bangladeshi ethnic origin live in poverty, compared
to 20% of white people. Unemployment rates for Muslims are higher
than those for people from any other religion, for both men and
women. Muslims aged 16 to 24 years have the highest
unemployment rates, and are over twice as likely as Christians
of the same age to be unemployed. Two-thirds of ethnically-South
Asian Muslim children in Britain are impoverished. In families
with at least one breadwinner, 60% of ethnic Bangladeshis and
40% of ethnic Pakistanis are in income poverty, compared to just
over 10-15% of white people.
8. Social exclusion is linked to institutional
discrimination. Another survey found that 80% of British Muslims
had experienced discrimination, up from 45% in the late 1990s.
These findings are corroborated by a Minority Rights Group International
study documenting deteriorating conditions in British Muslim "access
to education, employment and housing" along with a "worrying
rise in open hostility" from non-Muslim communities.
9. The social exclusion of the majority
of British Muslims is a disturbing phenomenon preceding the phenomenon
of Islamist terrorism, and worsening in its aftermath, representing
the systemic discriminatory violation of the inalienable social,
civil and human rights of one of the United Kingdom's largest
religious minority groups.
10. The combination of social exclusion
and institutional discrimination contributes to a general collective
sense of marginalisation, disenfranchisement, and disenchantment;
a sense of being excluded from civil society, which thus exacerbates
the experience of a separate or segregated identity to mainstream
Britain. This sense of civic exclusion is reinforced primarily
by a perception of blocked social mobility and discrimination,
rather than individual socio-economic status, which erodes confidence
in the British socio-political system, and consequently negatively
affects the sense of belonging to Britain. Thus, extremist groups
like al-Muhajiroun are able to recruit largely from upwardly mobile
groups, such as university students, who retain a consciousness
of Muslim socio-economic disenfranchisement in Britain which is
buttressed by perceptions and experiences of a discriminatory
system which they feel prevents the realization of their full
potential.
11. Only a minority of British Muslims are
likely to respond by negating their sense of British identity
and citizenship, becoming vulnerable to a powerful sense of civic
exclusion. While only half the general British population identifies
strongly as British, 77% of Muslims in the UK identify very strongly
as British, with 82% affirming themselves as loyal to Britain.
Although employment levels for British Muslims are at only 38%,
British Muslims have a higher confidence in the judiciary than
the general public, and 67% of them want to live in a neighbourhood
that has a mix of ethnic and religious people, compared to 58%
of the general British public.
12. Trends are less heartening regarding
non-Muslim perspectives of Muslims in Britain, which are increasingly
negative. A YouGov survey found that the number of non-Muslim
Britons who believe that "a large proportion of British Muslims
feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone
or even carry out acts of terrorism" had nearly doubled from
10% after 7/7 cent to 18% a year later. The number of non-Muslims
who believe that "practically all British Muslims are peaceful,
law-abiding citizens who deplore terrorist acts as much as anyone
else" fell from 23% to 16% in the same period. Further, 53%
of non-Muslims said they felt threatened by Islam (as distinct
from fundamentalist Islamism)—up from 32% in 2001. Overall,
only 36% of the general population believes that Muslims are loyal
to Britain.
13. These increasingly negative perceptions
of Muslims by the general population play a fundamental role in
the formation of British Muslims' self—and social-identities,
serving to reinforce a sense of exclusion from British society.
Yet these perceptions are largely fueled by reactionary and irresponsible
reporting in the mass media, catalysing processes of social polarisation.
An independent study of UK press coverage of British Muslims from
2000 to 2008, found that: "Four of the five most common
discourses used about Muslims in the British press associate Islam/Muslims
with threats, problems or in opposition to dominant British values."
14. Ironically, then, the media has served
to reinforce the sense of blocked social mobility, discrimination
and alienation experienced by many British Muslims, while simultaneously
stoking widespread paranoia about Islam amongst non-Muslims and
promoting the views of Islamist extremists as representative of
British Muslims. These factors interplay to create an environment
that undermines the notion that Muslims belong intrinsically to
British society, culture and values as citizens, and even negatively
affect the formation of British Muslim social identity.
15. Exclusion and discrimination are known
to be key causative factors in mental health problems, and there
is little doubt that these processes have detrimentally affected
British Muslim mental health, raising the question of the link
between mental illness and young Muslims' vulnerability to identity
crisis. Although there are insufficient studies of this, one survey
found that 61% of British Pakistanis believed that negative perceptions
of them by the media and society had damaged their mental health,
but were reluctant to seek help due to lack of community-based
or women-based faith—and culturally-sensitive mental health
services.
16. By themselves, the social factors described
above do not lead to violent radicalization, even while they do
undermine community cohesion. However, they generate a climate
in which British Muslims are vulnerable to identity crisis. It
is at this sociological moment that the "pull" of Islamist
extremist organisations becomes significant. These extremist groups
exploit conditions and perceptions of disenfranchisement fuelled
particularly by grievances over British and Western foreign policy,
to recruit British Muslims who due to a convergence of personal,
psychological and social reasons linked to their peer-networks,
family environment and so on, may find a potential resolution
of their identity crises in these organizations.
17. The organization of most concern is
al-Muhajiroun, founded by Syrian cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed in
1996. The Centre for Social Cohesion reports that 15% of convicted
terrorists in the UK were either members of al-Muhajiroun or knew
members of the network. In the last decade, "one in seven
Islamist-related convictions" have been linked to al-Muhajiroun.
18. Al-Muhajiroun's primary function is
neither logistical nor operational, but consists of providing
a radicalizing social network that employs ideological
techniques to indoctrinate and motivate recruits, as well as providing
access and connections abroad through which recruits may receive
opportunity to undergo terrorist training with groups associated
with al-Qaeda. Al-Muhajiroun exploits grievances about both perceived
discrimination in Britain, and British foreign policy in Muslim-majority
countries, and is often the first time recruits will come across
a detailed presentation of ideas associated with Islam. An April
2004 joint Home/Foreign Office report concluded that among
the factors attracting young Muslims to extremism is "a perception
of 'double standards' in British foreign policy, where democracy
is preached but oppression of the 'Ummah' (the one nation of believers)
is practised or tolerated eg in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Kashmir, Chechnya; a consequent sense of helplessness over the
situation of Muslims generally; the lack of any real opportunities
to vent frustration." This frustration is galvanized to inculcate
an "Us" and "Them" mentality in which violence
against "Their" (Western) civilians is justified by
misappropriation of Islamic language and symbolism as a response
to "Their" killings of "Our" (Muslim) civilians
abroad.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
"PREVENT"
19. The Government's focus on capacity-building
to undermine violent extremism purely under the rubric of the
'Prevent' agenda is highly counter-productive, and communicates
to Muslim communities that the only line of engagement between
them and their government concerns terrorism (ie Muslims as either
conducive or a hindrance to terrorism). It is necessary to widen
the terms of engagement beyond the "Prevent"
remit so that the Government addresses Muslims as British citizens
with inalienable social, civil and human rights (not simply as
potential terrorists), even if some of the outcomes of doing
so would fulfill that remit.
20. Citizenship is a two-way social contract
between Government and citizens, involving mutual rights and duties
enshrined in the rule of law. The entrenchment of social exclusion
of Muslims in Britain undermines this social contract, and is
indelibly linked to the identity crises that render a minority
of British Muslims vulnerable to Islamist extremist indoctrination
and terrorist recruitment. This illustrates a serious failure
at the heart of Government social policy towards its Muslim citizens—of
which continued Governmental insistence on addressing British
Muslim citizens solely in relation to counter-terrorism is itself
symptomatic. The "Prevent" agenda requires urgent efforts
to revitalize the social contract between Government and British
Muslims outside this agenda, on its own terms. This will
generate renewed trust, confidence and good faith between British
Muslims and their Government that will impact directly on "Prevent".
21. New long-term social policies must be
devised to address the severe social inequalities faced by the
country's majority of Muslims, particularly in terms of unemployment,
housing, and education, to open up opportunities for social mobility.
In the near-term, this can be kick-started by mobilising civil
society organisations, particularly Muslim community groups and
charitable bodies, to develop opportunities for young British
Muslims especially in deprived regions linked to a wide variety
of professions and skills. This should be accompanied by establishment
of more community-based faith and culturally-sensitive local services,
particularly in the health and social care sectors. Further, new
research is needed to understand the link between British Muslim
social exclusion, mental illness and identity crisis.
22. This should be pursued in tandem with
stronger legislation and procedures to tackle institutional discrimination
against Muslims, especially in the form of Islamophobia. Such
measures should be extended and enforced in relation to Islamophobic
media reporting, which violates journalistic obligations to report
with honesty and integrity, and implicitly encourages hate-crimes.
This should include establishing transparent and enforceable professional
standards to avoid demonization of Muslims as a group, as well
as ensuring more equal representation of Muslims as journalists,
editors and commissioners in media institutions. Such standards
need not be established solely for Muslims, but should be developed
to protect the safety of all ethnic, religious and racial groups.
23. Tentative acknowledgement by Government
of the centrality of British foreign policy as a recruiting sergeant
for extremists is welcome, but should be supplemented by greater
inclusion of Muslim community stakeholders in the consultative
processes by which foreign policies for Muslim-majority countries
is formulated. This should include cultivating formal institutions
for sustained consultative dialogue between security agencies
and British Muslim civil society organisations concerning the
extent to which these policies genuinely conform to the national
interest. These should provide space for meaningful grievance
platforms providing opportunities for Muslims disaffected with
foreign policy to critically engage with policymakers.
24. More focused counter-ideology
measures should be adopted against Islamist extremist organisations
to de-legitimize violent extremist ideology. Rather than
being so broad-based as to potentially demonise common Muslim
religious beliefs whose relation to British shared values is contested,
focus should be on actively de-constructing and de-legitimizing
the specific Islamist "jihadist" theological, ethical,
and socio-political interpretations mobilised by al-Qaeda, and
adopted by groups like al-Muhajiroun. This also requires the cultivation
of alternative progressive interpretations of Islam—particularly
regarding the key issues such as jihad, voting, women, Shariah,
and so on—that remain authentic, traditional and scholarly,
while also dynamic, modern and British, so as to be truly appealing
to grassroots British Muslim communities. This inclusive, progressive
vision for British Islam needs also to provide a positive outlet
for positive political activism commensurate with British civil
society, such as social welfare, ecology & environment, human
rights, and so on. Such a dynamic and vibrant vision of Islam
as indigenous to Britain and supportive of progressive values
shared by all citizens, is not only possible, but an inherent
requirement of authentic traditional Islamic scholarship. However,
this cannot be truly achieved simply by importing foreign scholars
from the Middle East and Central Asia, but requires efforts to
nurture an indigenous, inclusive British Islamic discourse and
scholarship, supported by grassroots British Muslim communities
themselves.
September 2009
50 The term "Islamist" here denotes simply
the mobilisation of Islamic language and symbolism to legitimize
a specific political ideology, often (but not always) involving
violent action, and should not be assumed to be co-extensive with
Islam. Back
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