The root cause of extremism among British Muslims is alienation
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Version 0 of 1. Britain has a problem with terrorism. Nothing focuses the mind more than the image of an apparently British man addressing the world in high definition as he brutally beheads a fellow Brit. But while the numbers of violent extremists are, by all accounts, relatively small, the issues underlying their reasons for turning towards terrorism are widespread. I’ve been talking to young Muslims for a documentary on the root causes of extremism, and it’s clear there are a series of common complaints. Primarily, even though David Cameron may have said the killers of David Haines “are not Muslims, they are monsters”, young Muslims still have a profound and consistent sense of being demonised by society, and as creating a source of fear. Further, many people still fail to distinguish between the different motivations for Brits travelling to the Middle East. It struck me how many young Muslims want to travel to Syria to help with the desperate humanitarian situation, or to join rebels trying to bring down President Assad – a goal that until recently was in line with Britain’s own foreign policy. However, the people I spoke to fully expected to be welcomed back to the UK by being arrested, slapped with a TPim and stripped of their passport. For a passionate teenager, watching the suffering in Syria and believing that they are barred from contributing because of double standards driven by Islamophobia can create extreme feelings of alienation. And for those who are converted to extremism, there are usually other factors: contact with a seductive and effective hate preacher, indifference towards or a desire for violence, a sense of purposelessness – in some cases the same factors that attract young people to criminal gangs. For a generation of non-Arabic speaking Muslims for whom the complexities of their faith can be lost in translation, recruiters from groups such as Islamic State (Isis) can play on this vulnerability. As Shahid Butt, who fought in support of Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s, told me: “Islam is a very very powerful tool. It’s like a nuclear bomb. If you put a nuclear bomb into the hands of a little kid with no checks and balances, you are going to have a disaster.” But little discussed is that many of the young Muslims now suspected of moving towards extremism are the second- or third-generation descendants of migrants who came to this country from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Somalia in the 70s, 80s and 90s. And they feel more alienated in this country than their parents and grandparents. They are British; they were born here, and don’t know life anywhere else. But they are sharply aware that mainstream society has not quite grasped this. If you are not white in the UK, people constantly ask you where you are from. With a father who was born here and a mother who moved here when she was 11, I have tried a variety of answers to this question: “south London” rarely suffices. People want an explanation; perhaps an arrival date, a stamp in the passport. Indeed, immigration figures have been criticised in the press for counting second and third generations as British – the implication being that they are not. Though no one seems to mind Winston Churchill being regarded as British, despite his American mother. Minority British people have developed their own labelling, “Black British” or “British Muslim”, for instance, or in some cases, simply opting for the non-white country in their heritage to explain their identity – I’ve frequently ended up describing myself as “Ghanaian”, despite having visited the country for the first time when I was 15. In this new reality, Muslims have something to cling on to. As Kash Choudhary, a rapper on the Asian grime scene, told me: “For British Pakistanis like me there is a gap. I don’t feel British. When I go to Pakistan, I don’t feel Pakistani. But I do know that I’m a Muslim – Islam fills that gap.” The focus is on what happens when Muslims embrace an extreme ideology to answer their questions of identity. But instead we should be asking a bigger question. Is it really sustainable for a whole generation to feel that to earn the right to fully belong in this country, a lifetime of being British is apparently not enough? |