British Muslim youth: radicalisation, terrorism and the construction of the “other”

Abstract

Academic interest in Muslim youth, Islam, radicalisation and Islamic-inspired terrorism exploded in the aftermath of 9/11, aimed at discovering the connection between Islam and terrorism, radicalisation and terrorism and how to detect and understand those who might become involved in them. Radicalisation as a process has increasingly become associated with Muslim youth, particularly male Muslim youth, as the precursor to Islamic-inspired violence against Western states. In an effort to understand these youths, the radicalisation of, or potential radicalisation of, Muslim youth is linked in the literature to alienation due to living in separate or parallel communities, identity crisis and intergenerational conflict. Because of this, terrorism, radicalism and extremism have become entangled with notions of identity, integration, segregation and multiculturalism, and this entanglement has made being a “Muslim youth” a precarious designation in the United Kingdom. This article examines some of the concepts that are central to the process of radicalisation as it is described in the literature. Using empirical data from a study with Muslim youth, the article examines the realities of the emergence of new transcultural identities and generational change amongst Muslim youth in the United Kingdom as a feature of their lived experience, rather than as evidence of a process of radicalisation.

Keywords:

• radicalisation
• Muslim youth
• identity
• Britishness
• transnationalism

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by a grant from the Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship Scheme (IRCHSS).

Notes

1. 1. “In the period following the attacks of 9/11/2001, immigration, and more explicitly asylum, featured significantly in the political framing of the problem of terrorism. Abuse of the asylum system, removal and exclusion of people from the national territory soon became key elements in the legislative packages as well as in the general framing of the fight against Terror” (Huysmans and Buonfino 2008, 7).

2. 2. For example, in an article in Foreign Affairs, Blair (2007) spoke of a global terrorism, regardless of motive, ideology, history that was ideologically related all part of the “same battle”.

3. 3. See the life history of Omar Sheikh, a public school and university educated individual, the man convicted of murdering Daniel Pearl, (Sageman 2004). Similarly, Mohammad Khan, one of the 7/7 bombers had a third-level education, worked as a learning mentor at a primary school and participated in charity work in his local area (Sivanandan 2006).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Orla Lynch

Orla Lynch is Director of Teaching and Lecturer in Terrorism Studies at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Her research interests relate to the use of social and cultural psychology in understanding terrorism and radicalisation and those impacted by it. Currently, she is PI on two large EU multisite projects: one considers the experience of victims of terrorism and political violence in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country, and the other looks at the involvement of victims of terrorism and political violence in peace initiatives, post conflict.