Radicalization is not so simple
That narrative consists broadly of four elements: First, the claim that people become terrorists because they acquire certain, usually religiously informed, extremist ideas. Second, that these ideas are acquired in a different way to the way people acquire other extremist or oppositional ideas, such as , say, Marxism or anarchism, or mainstream ideas such as conservatism or liberalism Third, that there is a ‘conveyor belt’ that leads from grievance or personal crisis to religiosity to the adoption of radical beliefs to terrorism And, fourth, the insistence that what makes people vulnerable to acquiring such ideas is that they are poorly integrated into society.
Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Very few have been brought up in strongly religious households, and there is a higher than average proportion of converts.
But if the conventional radicalization thesis is without foundation, much of the criticism of it is also flawed. Many of the critics argue that is not religion but politics that drives wannabe jihadis to terror. Western intervention in the Middle East and in Muslim-majority countries elsewhere, they suggest, from the war in Iraq to the support for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, has radicalized many Muslims and pushed them into the hands of the jihadists.
What both forms of the radicalization thesis miss is the specific historical context of the contemporary attraction of jihadism. Muslims have been in Europe in large numbers for more than half a century. It is only in the past 20 years, though, that radical Islam has gained a foothold.
Similarly Western governments were intervening in Muslim-majority countries long before Osama bin Laden took to a cave in Afghanistan, let alone the Islamic State began its brutal rule in swathes of Iraq and Syria. From Winston Churchill ordering the use of mustard gas against Iraqi rebels in the 1920s, to the CIA engineering a coup against the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq in Iran in 1953, to the brutal attempt by the French to suppress the Algerian independence movement in late 1950s, to Western backing for Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran in the 1980s – there is a long history of such intervention. There has always been resistance to Western intervention, and often violent resistance, but specifically Islamic opposition is relatively new, and nihilistic terrorism newer still.
What the radicalization thesis of either form fails to explain is why it is at this historical moment, and only at this historical moment, that the savage form of jihadism that we associate with Islamic State has arisen, or that some Muslims in West are drawn to nihilistic terror.
The answers to these questions are, of course, highly complex, ranging from the failures of secular regimes to the impact of Western intervention, from the role of Saudi Arabia to the demise of traditional anti-imperialist movements. Most of this is beyond the scope of this talk. I want here to try to address a small part of the answer: what it is about this historical moment that turns some Muslims in the West into wannabe jihadis?
Dalje:
Or take the Kouachi brothers, the two French Muslims responsible for slaughter of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris in January. They were raised in Gennevilliers, a northern suburb of Paris, home to around 10,000 people of North African origin. Cherif Kouachi, who appeared to mastermind the operation, only rarely attended mosque, and appeared not to be particularly religious, but was driven by a sense of social estrangement. He was, according to Mohammed Benali, president of the local mosque, of a ‘generation that felt excluded, discriminated against, and most of all, humiliated. They spoke and felt French, but were regarded as Arabic; they were culturally confused.’ According to Benali, Kouachi was most affronted by the imam’s insistence on the importance of political engagement. ‘When the imam told everyone to enrol on the register of electors so they could take part in elections, and play their part in society, he refused. He said he wasn’t a French citizen and wanted nothing to do with the democratic process. He then walked out of the mosque.’
Cherif Kouachi and Mohammed Sidique Khan are both of a milieu that has been caught not between two cultures, as is often suggested, but between no cultures. Wider society labels them ‘Muslim’, yet they have little affinity with the Islam of their parents, of tradition. As a consequence, some of them have turned to Islamism, and a few have expressed their inchoate rage through jihadi-style violence. Common to all the stories wannabe jihadis is their distance from conventional Muslim traditions and institutions, either because they have rejected them or because they came to Islam later in their life. Disengaged from both Western societies and Muslim communities, some reach out to Islamism.
What Islamism provides to the likes of Ifthekar Jaman and Sahra Ali Mehenni and Kreshnik Berisha is not religion in any old-fashioned sense, but identity, recognition and meaning. Detached from traditional religious institutions and cultures, many adopt a literal reading of the Qur’an and a strict observance of supposedly authentic religious norms to mark themselves out as distinct and provide a collective identity. Disembedded from social norms, finding their identity within a small group, shaped by black and white ideas and values, driven by a sense that they must act on behalf of all Muslims and in opposition to all enemies of Islam, it becomes easier to commit acts of horror and to view such acts as part of an existential struggle between Islam and the West.
At the same time, the framing of an issue necessarily changes over time.
Consider, for instance, the concept of the ‘radical’, central to the ‘radicalization’ thesis. I was, and indeed still am, a ‘radical’. But when I was growing up, ‘radical’ in a Muslim context meant being secular, ‘Westernized’, leftwing. Today, it means almost the opposite; it describes someone who is a religious fundamentalist, anti-Western, hostile to secularism and to traditional leftwing politics. In the shift in the meaning of that single word is encompassed the remaking of a whole social universe. And without understanding the remaking of that social universe, we will never grasp the reasons for which some European Muslims find jihadism attractive.
https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/1 ... so-simple/
