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Abstract
This article critically analyses the securitisation of Islam post-9/11 in the US and argues that this securitisation is a remote securitisation whereby the securitisers – the security practitioners – are placed at a distance from the securitisees – the Muslim community. This is achieved through two processes of security practice: linguistically by euphemising language and using metaphors, and analytically by understanding radicalisation through a rationalist perspective, which follows the “logic of expected consequences”. This article further problematises the rationalist view of radicalisation in the counterterrorism sector in the US and concludes by introducing a Bourdieusan concept of relationality to critical counter-radicalisation studies.
Acknowledgements
This paper received the Palgrave Macmillan Best Paper Prize at the Bristol Insecurities International Conference (Bristol). I would thus like to thank Palgrave Macmillan and the Bristol Insecurities Centre where I had the chance to present this paper in November 2014. I would also like to thank the people that greatly contributed to my fieldwork: Dr Peter Lehr at the University of St Andrews, two former officers at the NYPD who wish to remain anonymous and a very helpful “gatekeeper” who also wishes to remain anonymous; John Cohen, the Deputy Counterterrorism Coordinator and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Department of Homeland Security and the lead on Countering Violent Extremism, as well as Leonard Levitt, a former NYPD reporter who gave me a very insightful interview, and finally to Rachel Meeropol at CCR and Fahd Ahmed at DRUM, both working to end what they see as unethical security practices. I also wish to thank my supervisor Professor Karin Fierke and Hannah Party-Jennings for reading and commenting on many versions of this article, and the anonymous reviewers who provided pertinent feedback. The final version and the remaining mistakes are my sole responsibility.
Notes
1. See, for example, Croft (Citation2012), Cesari (Citation2009), Mavelli (Citation2013) and Edmunds (Citation2012). Critical approaches to the concept of (counter)-radicalisation have also blossomed; see De Goede and Simon (Citation2013), Heath-Kelly (Citation2013), Martin (Citation2014) and Baker-Beall, Heath-Kelly, and Jarvis (Citation2015).
2. Although traditional, or non-critical, approaches to radicalisation are “a heterogeneous and fluid group” (Heath-Kelly, Baker-Beall, and Jarvis Citation2015, 3).
3. An ECC, according to Fierke (Citation2015, 35), “is a concept that generates debates that cannot be resolved by reference to empirical evidence because the concept contains a clear ideological or moral element and defies precise, generally accepted definition.”
4. Neumann (Citation2013) defines studies on “cognitive radicalisation” as studies focusing on the extremist belief itself, whilst “behavioural radicalisation” refers to the acts of violence and political action departing from extremist beliefs. This will be further discussed in this article.
5. Two former representatives of the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Intelligence Bureau and Counterterrorism Office asked for anonymity; this article marks them as Interviewee 1 (interview for fieldwork, 2013) and Interviewee 2 (interview for fieldwork, 2013), respectively.
6. The notions of Orientalism, secularisation and the association of Islam with terrorism have been significantly discussed in academic literature. In regard to Orientalism, see Amin-Khan (Citation2012). In regard to Orientalism and new forms of governmentality, see Edmunds (Citation2012). In relation to the discourse of the Clash of Civilisations in the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis, see Hansen (Citation2011). In concerns to secularisation, see Mavelli (Citation2013). The association of Islam with terrorism is also discussed by Croft (Citation2012), Jackson (Citation2007), Mamdani (Citation2002) and briefly in Ahmed (Citation2003, 76) when she argues that by metonymy, the word “terrorist” sticks to the bodies of “Muslims,” without necessarily requiring an explicit statement.
7. The concept of ontological security was developed by the sociologist Anthony Giddens (Citation1991) in Modernity and Self Identity. Ontological security can be defined as “a security of being, a sense of confidence and trust that the world is what it appears to be” (Kinnvall Citation2004, 746).
8. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for pointing this out. I would however argue that the idea of remoteness and rationalisation are never explicitly stated in the literature or are referred to in a different way. This article aims to make distance and rationalism explicit in securitisation processes.
9. Bigo (Citation2008,10) defines the “management of unease” as the “contemporary convergence of defence and internal security into interconnected networks, or into a ‘field’ of professionals.” He continues, “this form of governmentality of unease, or ban, is characterized by three criteria: practices of exceptionalism, acts of profiling and containing foreigners, and a normative imperative of mobility” (Bigo Citation2008,10).
10. See for example, Dick Cheney’s (Citation2009) assertion that Guantanamo prisoners are “the worst of the worst” and that the only alternative to Guantanamo naval prison was to kill terror suspects incarcerated there; see also his defence of waterboarding and torture at Guantanamo (Cheney Citation2014). See also Bush’s (11 September 2001 and 20 September 2001) reference to terrorists as “evil” and as “the worst of human nature.”
11. The other logic explaining the basis of human action coined by March and Olsen (Citation1998) is the logic of appropriateness. The latter has often been defined associated with Constructivism (or a weak version of constructivism at least).
12. However, Neumann (Citation2013, 886) argues that the European model deals with both cognitive and behavioural radicalisation.
13. Coolsaet (Citation2011a, 260) argues that “most democratic states would not exist but for some radicals who took it upon themselves to organise the revolt against a foreign yoke or an autocratic regime.” Radical thinking has led often to positive change, including ending slavery, the civil rights movement, women’s suffrage, and so on.
14. The critical field of technologies of risk and the idea of “precaution” and “pre-emption” have blossomed in the last decade. For an excellent critical introduction on “Security, Technology of Risk, and the Political,” see the 2008 special issue edited by Aradau, Lobo-Guerrero, and Van Munster in Security Dialogue, vol. 39, nos. 2–3. For more literature on critical approaches to risk and the War on Terror, see Amoore and De Goede (Citation2008), and Heng and Kenneth (Citation2011). On risk and resilience, see Neocleous (Citation2012).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Clara Eroukhmanoff
Clara Eroukhmanoff is a PhD candidate in the Department of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. Her research interests focus empirically on the security practices directed at the Muslim population in the US in counterterrorism, and theoretically on securitisation theory, critical terrorism studies, speech act theory and broadly critical security studies.