Securing Identities, Resisting Terror: Muslim Youth Work in the UK and its Implications for Security

Abstract

The chronological regularity of actual and attempted attacks committed by a tiny number of young, British-born or British-based Muslims, including shoe bomber Richard Reid in 2001, the two Tel Aviv ‘Mike's Place’ bombers in 2003, the four 7/7 London bombers in 2005 and the Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmuttallab in 2009, has seen the wholesale stigmatisation of young Muslims in Britain. Specifically, young Muslims have become a focal point in the War on Terror, identified both by state security and by terrorist recruiters as vulnerable to violent radicalisation. Despite, or perhaps because of, the lack of consensus in defining and explaining this process of radicalisation, certain factors have been identified as key in increasing or curtailing this vulnerability. One such factor is identity, and this article explores the way in which, at the level of discourse, each ‘side’ in the War on Terror competes for control over the social, political and religious positionality of young Muslims. Identity thus becomes a symbolic battleground coopted through three recurring narratives: belonging, loyalty and duty. For young people, the impact of these dominant and regulatory discourses in pathologising their identities, especially in the sensitive social context of post-7/7 Britain, can be devastating, creating further insecurity and alienation. This article identifies the role of specialist Muslim youth workers who provide a coherent, grassroots-orientated challenge to these narratives, and who, at considerable personal and professional risk, work with the most vulnerable young people to create alternative articulations of identity. I suggest that Muslim youth work not only encourages more positive ways for young Muslim people to engage with and experience the world, but also, in resisting the binaries created within the War on Terror, contributes to a more holistic, human-focused approach to security.

Notes

It is vital to note that as the vast majority of young people, including Muslim young people, have never been and never will be involved in terrorism, it would be inaccurate and unwelcome to suggest that all Muslim youth work is relevant to security. However, the research explored in this article has involved organisations which do work with the issue of violent radicalisation and which come from specific and highly relevant standpoints, dealing with young people whose views are sympathetic to violence, and who can draw on personal experience and empathy.

Spalek, El Awa and McDonald (2008, 2010), under the auspices of the AHRC Religion and Society Programme, at the University of Birmingham (see: http://www.iass.bham.ac.uk/staff/basia-spalek/projects.shtml) At the time of writing, in-depth qualitative interviews, textual analysis and participant observation has been carried out with a total of 104 individuals who are directly involved in or affected by the engagement between Muslim communities and the state in relation to counter-terrorism. This includes young people, youth workers, members of community-based organisations including mosques, counter-terrorism police officers (overt and covert), policy makers and other key stakeholders.

The use of the term ‘Islamist’ is highly problematic: it is ill defined; it implies that those labelled with it adhere to a stronger Islamic framework than other Muslims; and it is used to decontextualise, group together and homogenise a diversity of religious and political ideas, acts and organisations. For these reasons I flag it between inverted commas throughout this article.