Dr. Danila Genovese has been researching on Islamism, Critical Race Theory and Gender studies since 2006. After completing her PhD in Social Science at the University of Westminster, London, Danila held several research and teaching positions on Critical Terrorism Studies and Critical Race theory in the UK and in Italy. She is the author of La meta-politica e il terrorismo. Gli islamisti britannici tra politiche multiculturali e pratiche di razzismo (Mimesis:Milano) and of many peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters.
She is a lecturer in Sociology at the Università degli Studi del Molise (UniMol) and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES).This article summarizes the key messages from the interview, and the content has been reviewed and authorized for publication by Dr. Danila Genovese.
Islamism is not terrorism
SPCIS: As a researcher of Critical Terrorism Studies, you always oppose the culturalist and Orientalist reading of Islam or considering the Muslims as an inherent radicalism, but put emphasis on their political discourse and practice. So how do you think the relationship between Islamism and terrorism should be properly understood？
Dr. Danila Genovese: Islamism is a political ideology and a practice and it should be recognized, addressed and dealt with politically, within the political arena. Terrorism is mostly a marginal phenomenon within the political practice of Islamist parties. And yet, while it constitutes a gross violation of human rights that we should condemn, without any hesitation, at all times, it is also a tragic event that it has no specific ideology. I like to say that Terrorism ( exactly like racism) is an ideological scrounger, as it has historically demonstrated its ability to dress up in various disparate ideologies even as the irreparable and destructive effects of its practices on its victims remain the same.
Violence and political violence can always occur within the interacting and clashing of different political discourses and practices, regardless of the genealogy they are discoursed through. Unfortunately, our contemporary history abounds of examples of terroristic acts committed by far right and far left parties and organizations. As no one could ( and should) reasonably argue that left wing parties or right wing parties are inherently violent and pose a terroristic threat, the same line of reasoning should be applied to Islamist parties, if we were looking at the world without any orientalistic or racist lens.
On the other hand, terrorism remains a real political threat, but one which could be dealt with more effectively by using better intelligence, by investigating financing and the preparation of terrorist violence, by promoting counter- racist policy tools and by not waging wars. Counter- terrorism strategies that imply that Muslims are prey to an inherent radicalism are faulty and counter- productive. They are based on a culturalist and orientalist reading of Islam; above all they contribute to marginalising minority members, whose social experience, as my long field work shows, has already marked them as racialized, second class, immigrant children.
Islamic political parties and mainstream British political culture
SPCIS: Based on your fieldwork amongst the British Islamists, could you shed light on the role and identity of “Islamic parties” in British politics, and how can they establish a harmonious relationship with the mainstream British political culture?
Dr. Danila Genovese: I would like to start answering your very interesting and crucial question by saying that mainstream British political parties should too strive to find a way to build harmonious relationships with Islamist parties and generally with parties and organizations formed by minority members (ethnicity -based associations, faith-based organizations, LGBT+ rights organizations): the so called ‘identity groups’ who propose a practice and a view of politics that is not so rigidly identified with right and left.
Those parties and organizations are part of the civil society and they fight for a more inclusive and progressive society that is not so regressively cut along old ideologies and party divisions.
My experience and my long field work in UK have suggested that unfortunately traditional British parties are not so open to diversity and to members of minority groups, generally speaking. The latter ones might be part of their parties and some might even become Prime Minister but this does not imply that mainstream British political parties are ‘inherently’ anti- racist on a social and political level (let aside epistemologically).Islamist parties and their political re-presentation by the public opinion and British politicians are an excellent example of this ‘closure to diversity’ shown by traditional UK parties.
During my ethnographic work in the UK ( 2005-2013), I had the chance of meeting and exchanging several conversations with various members of the Labour party as well as of the Tory party. Generally, the majority of them rejected the idea and the possibility of Islamist parties taking part in the political life in the UK. They justified their ‘veto’ by adducing reasons of a ‘different political ontology’ inherent to Islamist parties that were- according to their line of reasoning- incompatible with Democracy, always represented as a Western product. They considered Islamist groups only as religious and/or cultural organizations that could work to improve Muslim religious and/ or cultural rights in Britain. My ethnographic experience and my analysis of the ethnographic data have revealed that the use by mainstream parties of the categories of religion and culture to identify Muslim organizations and parties has been historically a cunning expedient to de-politicize them and to weaken their political and social demands for far -reaching reforms inside the British society.
On the other hand ( unfortunately), several Islamist groups and parties have accepted this sort of ‘depoliticization from above’ status imposed on them by mainstream political parties, in order to have the possibility of being involved in the British political life, without being perceived as a threat. In literature, this is called the Gramscian paradox and this is what I call in my book ( La meta politica e il terrorismo) a form of meta-politics, a deflection of the political action that weakens the democratic life of a country and impedes its social progress, on every level.
Among the British Islamist activists, there are also those who refuse the British democratic system and are unwilling to interact with it and the mainstream political parties. They claim that the only legitimate political system is the Caliphate. They are generally considered by the UK public opinion and the British political class as extremists, fundamentalists and as a matter of fact, parties that embrace this idea (al Ghurabaa, the Saved Sect and recently Hizbu ut tahrir) have been banned by the British Home Office as ‘terrorist parties’, even though they have never been found guilty of a terrorist attack.
As I explain in detail in my book, through the analysis of my ethnographic work with members of those ‘rejectionist parties’, they too contribute to a dynamic of meta-politics, that depoliticizes Islamist social demands, as the important fight against practices of anti-Muslim racism in the UK, and inflates a narrative of perpetual insecurity that facilitates- what I call- the militarization and securitization of democracy in Europe.
Finally, to answer your interesting question about the possibility of an harmonious and constructive relation between Islamist parties and mainstream British political parties, I would say that there is an urgent need for both actors to recognize the political legitimacy of the Other and to work towards a political dialogue or confrontation on social and economic issues of discrimination and inequality, that affect the Muslim minority in Britain. The perverted dynamic that I call meta-politics in conjunction with a sort of fetishism for politics, nurtured by both the Islamist parties and the UK political representatives, are an unconstructive way to build and develop the political and social future of a de-facto multicultural and multi-racial society like Britain, that should not be reduced to a mono-cultural dis-plurality.
The limitation of Britain's current counter-terrorism policy
SPCIS: In your extensive experience, to what extent are current approaches to preventing people being involved in terrorism working, and how do you think the Prevent Strategy and Duty can prevent terrorism and extremism while safeguarding social equity and justice？
Dr. Danila Genovese: Current approaches to counter terrorism policies in the UK are informed by popular radicalization models that focus on the ideological-theological choices made by the political actors/ terrorists or their psychological predisposition . My field work has shown that this is not the case. The adoption of a radical ideology does not necessarily lead to violence; the event of a terror attack is deeply embedded in the political and social circumstances of its perpetrators, and the way that they experience and make sense of the social and political context in which they live.
As I have extensively argued in my work, Prevent, as a key element within ‘ CONTEST’, has been discriminatory and counter-productive from the outset. Through its specific targeting of Muslim communities, Prevent has been regarded with suspicion and experienced, by a great majority of British Muslims, as a “ tool to gather and collect intelligence” ( Maajid, member of Hizbu ut tahrir, personal conversation with the author, July 10, 2010). Its approach made it the responsibility of schools, universities, hospitals, local councils, etc. to prevent people from becoming terrorists. From trade unions to international human rights research and policy organizations and UN institutions (Rights Watch UK 2016, Open Society Justice Initiative 2016, UN Committees on the Rights of the Child and the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of peaceful Assembly and of Association) the same concerned are raised: Prevent is discriminatory in its operation, with the consequences that it alienates the same people it claims it want to engage with. My young interviewees, former members of Al Ghurabaa and The Saved Sect, all agreed on the notion that PREVENT was “a way to silence Muslim opposition and to suppress their political and social liberties inside the UK society”(focus group held by the author with 10 former members of Al Ghurabaa and The Saved Sect, East London, August 25, 2011). Another young member of Al Ghurabaa claimed, perceptively, that “ Prevent extols the British values of democracy while it denies our rights as a minority in Britain” (Samir, personal conversation with the author, April 6, 2012). Some of my young interviewees were referred under Prevent for “the most stupid reasons” (Munir, former member of The Saved Sect, personal conversation with the author, July 7, 2014). One of them declared that he was referred “ for reading a book on the colonization of Palestine by Israel, that I found in my library at uni” (Samir, former member of Al Ghurabaa, June 9, 2015). Another one claimed that he was referred because he wanted to “organize a demo against the imperialistic colonization of Iraq by the West”( Muhammad, former member of Al Ghurabaa, June 9, 2015). The effects on young Muslims, wrongly regarded as potential terrorists, are traumatic: they concur- paradoxically-to their alienation from the British society. As another young interviewee claimed, after being referred under Prevent, “Prevent is the clear sign that the government wants to eliminate Muslims, as the Nazis did with the Jews”. (Yunis, former member of The Saved Sect, personal conversation with the author, May 15, 2015).
Statics published by the National Police Chiefs’ Council show a significant increase in referrals between 2014 and 2020; there was an increase of nearly 90% in the total number of Channel referrals, including an increase of 114%in referrals of young people under 18 during this 6- year period. This data also discloses consistently high proportions of Muslims being referred during those years.
For the two year period March 2014 to March 2016, the total recorded as Muslim was nearly 7 times greater than the total recorded as belonging to any other religion..Since 2015, Prevent relies on frontline public sector institutions, having become a legal duty of these institutions under the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 ( CTSA 2015).Under the CTSA, public authorities must have regard to the Home Secretary’s guidance on how to meet the Prevent duty. While the guidance states that Prevent is intended to deal with all kind of terrorist threats, it is difficult not to read into it a clear targeting of Muslims. Noting that “ terrorist associated with the extreme right also pose a continued threat” the guidance nevertheless places particular emphasis “on the dangerous ideology of Islamist extremists”.
The guidance implies a progression from non- violent extremism to terrorism-a progression that is implied to be proven. However this link between extremism and radicalization seems necessary to support the government’s emphasis on challenging ideas and ideologies as an effective strategy to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.
The very general wide definitions of the core concepts of Prevent, in the guidance, allow a variety of individual interpretations, including those affected by prejudice and forms of anti-Muslim racism, leading eventually to implementation based on practices of discrimination and pernicious stereotypes.
With pressure on teachers, doctors, social workers and the police to refer individuals and no sanctions for over referral, it is likely that a climate of anti- Muslim racism will be normalized at the institutional level, especially inside schools and on university campuses.
This will result in the unnecessary intimidation and stigmatization of many Muslim children and adults who have done nothing wrong and who, as a result, might feel further excluded from the British society. As Khuram Butt, guilty of the 2017 London Bridge terror attack, so tragically declared during one of our interviews “I know for sure that the War On Terror and the counter terror strategies in Britain are a war against Muslims and their Muslimness, but we are fighting back” (Khuram Butt, focus group held by the author, East London, August 10, 2012).
Countering the terror threat and proving security from terrorism are in the interest of all citizens in the UK ( and in the rest of the world).However, it seems counter-productive and against the principle of equality and the human rights that a specific minority group (the Muslims) are expected to endure forms of discriminations, racial stereotyping and a regime of surveillance in order to enact counter -terror strategies.I would like to draw your attention on the impact that the Prevent program has had on young Muslims and Islamists (as my field work data revealed), who have grown up and lived in a society with a substantial experience of racialization, carrying a badge that was no longer their race or their culture but predominantly their alleged “innate” tendency to radicalization, extremism and terrorism. As a result of that, those young Muslims have experienced their “daily life at school, college or on university campuses as we need surveillance from the government, because we are prone to violence” (Munir, Hizbuut Tahrir, personal conversation with the author, August 10, 2015).
A constructive analysis of extremism, radicalization and terrorism in Britain should involve the burden Muslim communities have had to suffer through widespread practices of racialization and their stereotyping as a terror threat. My field work data has also clearly suggested that practices of anti-Muslim racism do not reduce the risk of terrorism: quite the opposite, they inflate it.
The Government, the police and other bodies involved in Prevent should acknowledge that the possible benefits that Prevent may provide to protect the country from the terror threat are greatly outweighed by the long standing damages it inflicts on Muslim communities and therefore on the whole of the British society. The popular idea of “fundamental British values” endorsed by Prevent seems to be a rhetorical tool when it is considered that the effects that Prevent had had on Muslims are those of stigmatization, alienation and exclusion, as my young interviewees declared .
It is paramount that the public discourse concerning Prevent starts to acknowledge and analyze the harm it inflicts on British Muslims inside the UK institutions.This is why it is crucial to conduct a truly independent inquiry into all aspects of Prevent and its impact on Muslims, ensuring the opportunity to hear evidence from all affected communities.
Any government attempt to challenge extremism should not be directed towards a particular racial or faith group and must address social inequalities.For policy makers, it is imperative to elaborate security policies that consider forms of violence and (social) terror in a broader sense, reflecting that those who feel terrorised, as victims of violence and discrimination, without the prospect of obtaining justice from institutions, might eventually (and tragically so) entertain the idea of employing disruptive means of bringing about a change, in a perpetual War of Terrors.
Comments