“Islamic terrorism” in New Zealand? The John Key Government, Counterterrorism, and the “Islamic terrorism” Narrative

ABSTRACT

The presence of the “Islamic terrorism” narrative in New Zealand (NZ) counterterrorism, including its impact on NZ’s response to terrorism, has not been accorded the concern it merits. In the aftermath of the Christchurch Mosque attacks on 15 March 2019, the NZ government, the Royal Commission of Inquiry, and the media unreservedly agreed that NZ’s counterterrorism approach was misguided and erroneous. Central to this erroneous approach was the narrative of “Islamic terrorism” – the subject of this study – which sought to focus NZ’s counterterrorism efforts almost exclusively upon Islamic groups and individuals. The research employs a methodology of discourse analysis to examine how John Key’s National Party government drew on the “Islamic terrorism” narrative in its counterterrorism discourse. It then illustrates how this discourse manifested in NZ’s response to terrorism, both domestically and internationally, including in the introduction of new legislation. The primary purpose of this article is to demonstrate, and subsequently critique, the “Islamic terrorism” narrative as adopted in the Key government’s counterterrorism discourse and response. A major finding of the research is the Key government’s conflation, and at times virtual equalisation, of terrorism with “Islamic terrorism”. The concept of emancipation is proposed as an alternative to NZ’s erroneous counterterrorism approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Terrorism
• counterterrorism
• religious terrorism
• Islamic terrorism
• New Zealand
• critical terrorism studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ This is irrespective of whether NZ’s counterterrorism agencies could have done anything to prevent the Christchurch Mosque attacks.

² It functions as a narrative for two key reasons: firstly, the idea of ‘religious terrorism’ is present throughout the academic discourse on terrorism yet has no agreed definition; instead, it is composed of individuals' and groups’ conception of terrorism, previous terrorism acts, the politics surrounding terrorism, and biases and prejudices people hold towards other groups – in particular Islam. Secondly, the narrative of ‘religious terrorism’ is adopted and employed by groups and politicians and used to justify a myriad of actions. Thus, it is more nuanced than simply one thought or definition: it is a rhetoric with different interpretations, which influences aspects of politics, academia, and society.

³ “Orientalism is a system of knowledge based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction between the orient and the occident in which the orient is constructed largely as a negative inversion of Western culture, and which employs a series of biological and cultural generalizations and racial and religious prejudices, including depictions of ‘Arab’ cultures as irrational, violent, backward, anti-Western, savage, dishonest and the like” (Jackson 2007, 399).

⁴ According to Jackson (2007, 396), discourse analysis includes an “understanding of language as constitutive or productive of meaning; an understanding of discourse as structures of signification that construct social realities, particularly in terms of defining subjects and establishing their relational positions within a system of signification; an understanding of discourse as being productive of subjects authorized to speak and act, legitimate forms of knowledge and political practices and importantly, common sense within particular social groups and historical settings; an understanding of discourse as necessarily exclusionary and silencing of other modes of representation; and an understanding of discourse as historically and culturally contingent, intertextual, open-ended, requiring continuous articulation and re-articulation and therefore, open to destabilization and counter-hegemonic struggle.”

⁵ NZ’s adoption of the ‘Islamic terrorism’ narrative also shows how NZ adopted a colonial approach to counterterrorism; for a consideration of colonial counterterrorism, see Khan (2021).

⁶ More specifically, the threat of terrorism was thought of as being posed by ISIL/Daesh, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

⁷ The same NZSIS report addresses the domestic terrorism threat and notes that the NZ domestic terror threat is from “foreign terrorist fighters,” thus, showing how NZ’s threat was perceived to be from international fighters. Combining this finding with the Royal Commissions Report into NZ March 15, 2019, we can see that all of New Zealand’s suspected foreign terrorist fighters were considered Islamic fighters. We are therefore able to conclude that, in referring to ‘foreign terrorist fighters’, the 2015 NZSIS report was referring to foreign Islamic terrorist fighters.

⁸ Since the time of research there was a terrorist attack in Auckland, NZ by an individual who identified as Islamic on the September 3, 2021.The evidence presented in his study, however, exists prior to this event and therefore the Auckland terrorist attack has no implication on the discourse under the Key government.

⁹ Emphasis added by author.

¹⁰ Fives Eyes is an international intelligence alliance between the United States, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ.

¹¹ The findings from the Royal Commission demonstrate this.

¹² In 2015, NZ sent 143 non-combat troops to Iraq.

¹³ NZSIS figures for active investigations into counterterrorism between 2014 and 2018 are not public information.

¹⁴ John Key uses the term Muslim or Islam eight times in his speech on 4 November 2014 – addressing the current threat of terrorism in New Zealand – and does not name any other religious group.

¹⁵ The centrality of the terrorism threat can also be seen in the United States, for example, where no other institution or area of government receives more funding than the military. Moreover, for the past twenty years, the focus of this military spending has been on a response to 9/11, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other related wars in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan (see Norrlof & Wohlforth 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim O’Farrell

Tim O’Farrell holds a Masters from the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand.