man – indigenous or otherwise – failing to display visible signs of integration into Western society, you immediately became an object of suspicion and fear. In fact, you didn’t necessarily have to be Muslim – just of a light brown complexion and rushing to work, as in the tragic case of Jean Charles de Menezes, who, on 22 July 2005 (two weeks after the London 7/7 bombings), was mistakenly identified as a potential suicide bomber and shot dead by a team of armed police at Stockwell Tube Station in London. We have reached a point where society has demonized these people in the worst possible way, assuming Muslim men are a threat to our lives and the lives of others.
The backlash against Muslims following the rise of terrorist incidents by Muslim men born in Western countries has been phenomenal, and is probably the greatest challenge to date to our Western model of secular multiculturalism. In response, both Muslim communities and the Western societies they are part of have become vulnerable to extremist views from each side of the argument. The rise of populism has destabilized the political and liberal centre ground in many Western countries, and Muslim men across the socioeconomic groups find themselves on the fault line. For all our sakes we must face the epic twofold challenge in front of us: to tackle the root causes that lead Muslim men to become radicalized in the first place, and to quash the Islamophobia that has reared its ugly head in response.
Five times: the amount more media coverage a terrorist incident receives if the perpetrator is Muslim.*
The route to radicalization
We know that poverty, lack of employment opportunities, and alienation from wider Western society offer a more direct route to radicalization. When disenfranchised young Muslim men, who do not identify with their parents’ interpretation of their faith or with mainstream Islam, can opt for a political extremist interpretation, which resonates with their anger over Western foreign policy towards Muslims around the world, everyone is at risk – especially the young men themselves. Our lack of diversity has a lot to answer for.
However, poverty and lack of opportunity is not the only route to radicalization, as well-educated and relatively affluent Muslim men have also embraced and acted on extremist views. This is difficult for liberals and centrists in the secular West to reconcile. How can Muslim men who have been afforded the opportunity to be part of Western society and been rewarded for their contribution opt to actively work towards the destruction of that society? Indeed, the destruction of their neighbours, colleagues, and fellow citizens who, you would assume, are also friends and acquaintances? You’d think that religious freedom, democracy, and the opportunity to achieve prosperity is a pretty good deal. We’ve covered all the bases, right? All the things that should matter to them? What are we supposed to do?
Sadly, it’s never that simple. Growing up in East London, I witnessed the insidious creep of radicalization and its divisive effects first-hand. I had friends at college who I suspect became radicalized before I even knew what that meant. They became estranged from their friends, were told they needed to separate themselves from ‘infidels’ in order to get closer to God. Their style of dress and patterns of behaviour changed, and they became strangers, while we became ‘others’ to them. These were young men we had all previously socialized with and considered friends. Our teachers had no idea how to reach out to them, and neither did we. But we shrugged our shoulders and continued on our life journeys, as it’s only natural that some friends will drop off as we progress from adolescence to adulthood. So what if those who ‘dropped off’ happened to be disenfranchised Muslims with an underlying resentment of Western foreign policy? Who cares?
Well, Londoners did on 7 July 2005 when our citizens were killed and maimed by fellow citizens, for whom Britain was their home but no longer where their hearts resided. I would later discover that two of the bombing suspects had attended a mosque not far from where I grew up.
Twelve years later, London and its global visitors would face the same horror again, but the Westminster terror attack on 22 March 2017 forced us to rethink our assumptions of those most likely to do us harm. We’d always thought young Muslim men were the danger – radicalized, impulsive, and with not too much to lose – but this time the perpetrator was not a young man and neither was he born a Muslim. He was a 52-year-old mixed-race male born Adrian Elms, and was a late convert to Islam. Having previously been imprisoned at Her Majesty’s pleasure several times for violent attacks, he drove a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and went on to stab Police Constable Keith Palmer, killing four people in total.
This atrocity, as well as the murder of MP Jo Cox in June 2016 by 52-year-old far-right extremist Thomas Mair, and the Finsbury Park attack on 19 June 2017, perpetrated by 47-year-old Darren Osborne – both middle-aged, non-Muslim men – have proved that radicalization in all its forms – be it Islamism, far-right extremism, or Islamophobia – is equally dangerous and that the profile of a ‘terrorist’ is far broader than we thought. It seems some men do not grow out of violence but rather into it, and isolation and exclusion from society leaves them and us vulnerable to the impact of the indiscriminate violence of terrorism.
The multifaceted threat we all now face, not just from terrorism but from extremist responses to it, became disturbingly apparent just two months after the Westminster attack, when the city of Manchester fell victim to perhaps the most heinous of terror attacks so far; this time the target was children – mainly young girls attending the concert of pop sensation Ariana Grande. The devastation resulted in 22 fatalities and 59 injured. And to make matters worse, following the Manchester atrocity there was a reported 500 per cent surge in Islamophobic attacks in Greater Manchester. This is something we must denounce with all our might. We have to stand up for compassion and the rule of law, even when it is hardest to do in the face of hostility – in fact, this is when it’s most important. Less than two weeks after the Manchester attack, London was hit again, this time on London Bridge and in nearby Borough Market, where people were enjoying a night out in cafés and restaurants. The attack lasted just eight minutes, thanks to the brave and speedy acts of the police, but in that short space of time, three young Muslim men armed with knives were able to murder eight innocent victims – from Britain, Australia, France, Canada, and Spain – and injure an additional 48. And again, the police reported a 40 per cent increase in Islamophobic attacks immediately afterwards. London still stands as the multicultural jewel in the United Kingdom’s crown – but the threat to our unity remains.
This is where we must consider the devastating effects of a lack of diversity not only on the minority who are excluded, but also on wider society. And of course the problem is not unique to the UK and US. In recent years Europe has also experienced numerous horrific incidents of Islamist terrorism that have left the world stunned and citizens traumatized. The civil wars in Iraq and Syria have been used by purveyors of a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam to attract young European Muslim men and women to travel to these war-torn regions, and this in turn creates a challenge for the authorities: what to do with returning citizens who may pose a terrorist threat following weapons training and potential involvement in atrocities? Some suggestions I’ve heard here in the UK have been that we should remove passports, revoke citizenship from dual nationals, or imprison without trial. I understand the desire and the need in some cases for harsh measures. But these are short-term responses when what we need is a long-term solution: prevention. We must explore other options, since marginalizing these men and allowing them to be ‘other’ exposes them to the very extremism that many would not turn to if fully accepted and supported by society.
The route to integration
So what can we do to tackle this proliferation of radicalization? How about the tough love approach? What about banning burkas and burkinis (French proposals) and enforced English language tests for Muslim mothers (a British proposal advocated by David Cameron)? Oh wait, all those proposed measures, supposedly aimed at dealing with the threat of extremist Muslim men, target Muslim women instead – how unfortunate. How about a ‘Muslim travel ban’, as ordered by the Trump administration in early 2017? Well, according to UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd, this gave ISIS a ‘propaganda opportunity’ – and the evidence suggests that the more we isolate or alienate a particular group, the more vulnerable to extremism they are. Again, all these measures are short-term and short-sighted, and motivated as they are by Islamophobia and prejudice, they relegate all Muslim men to the category of ‘other’.