Is terrorism more driven by identity than extremist ideology?

How do you define, in the context of free speech, extremism? Is extremism a belief, opinion or world view beyond arbitrarily defined societal norms or merely an exaggerated response or attachment to a given ideological position? The general view is that extremism is the former:

“Extremism is the vocal or active opposition to our fundamental values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and respect and tolerance for different faiths and beliefs. We also regard calls for the death of members of our armed forces as extremist.”

This comes from the UK government's counter extremism strategy, a document that gives rise to the much-criticised Prevent strategy which "...explicitly makes a causal link between ideology, extremist thought, and extremist actions." The criticism of Prevent has, in the main, been that it appears to (unfairly) target Muslim communities but there is a strong defence for the Home Office here since, not only are the majority of UK terrorist incidents associated with Islamist extremism but the proportion of Muslims identified through the programme has been falling:

The published figures also suggest the Home Office has developed more sophisticated methods of categorising risk. This has implications for improving relations with British Muslim communities. Previously, the Home Office relied on four categories of concern: “Islamist extremism”, “right-wing extremism”, “other extremism” and “unspecified”. Now a new category has been created: “mixed, unstable, or unclear ideology”. This increased willingness to consider disparate or uncertain motivations coincides with a reduction in the proportion of Islamic extremism referrals – down from 61% in 2016-17 to 44% in 2017-18 – and offers the grounds for tentative optimism.

The problem with Prevent (and other anti-extremism strategies) is, however, rather deeper than just the perception from one or other community that they're being targeted. The programme assumes that extremism is the result of radicalisation - “grooming and exploitation by terrorists” as the UK's security minister, Ben Wallace put it. The problem, as conflict expert, Dr Mike Martin observes is:

This understanding of the role of belonging should be considered alongside the facts that an overwhelming majority of those with extremist thoughts, far more than 99%, do not commit violent actions. What’s more, extremist thought, even were it adequately definable in a society that values free speech, is a very poor predictor of violent action. Defining extremism in this way lumps the supposed thinkers of extremism together with those targeted by the government for their criminal activity – actors of extremism.

Martin goes on to suggest that, because we have terrorism cause and effect in the wrong order (terrorists use extremist ideology to justify their violence rather than the ideology being the reason for that violence - this applies as much to animal rights violence as it does to Muslim terrorism) the Prevent strategy, far from reducing terrorism actually risks creating terrorists:

By seeking to find and punish those who harbour extremist thought, the actions of the government cause people to question their place in British society, when they might not have done so before. In short, it creates or exacerbates a crisis of belonging, even where one might not have existed.

I'm not entirely convinced by Martin's argument but it is (unlike the Prevent strategy) grounded in some good science and should be given due consideration. We need also to consider why it is that the government is so specific about some extremism ("right-wing" and "Muslim" but not "left-wing" or "vegan") as if only some ideologies are linked to terrorism. Which is odd given the long history of left-wing violence and the current spate of attacks founded on veganism or animal rights.

Two things strike me about Prevent's weakness (and Dr Martin's argument) - first that radicalisation may not create terrorism but it does provide a home for terrorism, and second that the boundary between terrorist and non-terrorist crime is very blurred especially when we come to individual acts of violence such as the murder of Jo Cox MP. For the first issue, however, we cannot be selective about ideology - it's perfectly possible to see how, in the current febrile Brexit environment, how pro-EU "extremists" could commit acts of violence (the doorstepping of Jacob Rees-Mogg gets ever closer to this, for example). Which brings us to the free speech question - who is defining what we mean by extreme. Is having a FBPE hashtag extremist?

In the second instance - when is violence classed as terrorism - we have to start with some sort of political or politio-religious rationale for the violence. So the man who murdered Jo Cox, because he appeared to have a political motive, is a terrorist whereas the man who killed Andy Pennington, aide to then Cheltenham MP, Nigel Jones, was not a terrorist because his motive was personal rather than ideological. The question Dr Martin poses is whether our distinction between these two murders is artificial. Jo Cox's murderer used extremist ideology to rationalise his act of murder leading to us seeking out radicalisation (literature, websites, far right organisation) as the problem rather than more personal motives.

I'll finish with Dr Martin's conclusion because it speaks to this very problem, to the personal rather than to the organised exploitation of people through radicalisation:

Globalisation, and particularly immigration, has detached people from the groups they once belonged to: their families, their ethnicities, and their nations. The modern world can be a profoundly lonely place. If individuals feel that they don’t belong, they are more likely to reach out for extreme ideas that will fill that vacuum, offering them a sense of identity.

It seems that our sense of identity - and the feeling that this identity is being denied or excluded - has more to do with terrorism than ideology or the promotion of ideology.

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If Birmingham's a 'jihadi breeding ground' it's not a very good one

Islamist terrorism is undoubtedly a problem. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the UK's home grown Islamist terrorists nearly all come from with the Muslim community. This means that the largest such communities - Birmingham, Bradford, Luton and so forth - are more likely to produce terrorists.

Here's the Daily Mail:

Sparkbrook has become synonymous with Islamic extremism; one in ten of all Britain’s convicted Islamic terrorists, we now know, have come from Sparkbrook (population 30,000) and four adjoining council wards.

In total, these highly concentrated Muslim enclaves, occupying a few square miles of the city, have produced 26 of the country’s 269 known jihadis convicted in Britain of terror offences.

Over a fifth of Birmingham's population identified as Muslim in the 2011 census - that's about 250,000 people. And they are, as with most immigrant populations, concentrated:






That population - one of England's largest concentrations of Muslims - has produced just 10% of terrorists and the number (26) of those terrorists represents just 0.01% of the population. We should be vigilant, carry on working to prevent and protect, but this really doesn't tell us that Muslim communities are rife with budding terrorists and more than Jo Cox's murderer living on a council estate makes such places riddled with Nazi-sympathising nutters.

Confusing the dominant Deobandi version of Islam in Britian's Kashmiri population with ISIS is wrong, if at times understandable. Deobandi beliefs are very traditional and include very definite views about the role of women (and how they should dress), a reverence for the physical Qu'ran rather than its contents and an increasingly assertive approach to other Muslims who don't adhere to these positions. So when the Daily Mail describes Sparkbrook, it shows a scene that is familiar to anyone from my city of Bradford:

Visit the area and you’ll inevitably pass along Ladypool Road, the neighbourhood’s bustling main artery, at the centre of the Balti Triangle, so named because of the number of curry houses that line the pavement.

The shops are largely Islamic, too. There’s Only Hijab, the Islam Superstore and Kafe Karachi, to name a few. Dotted around Ladypool Road are 22 mosques, dominated by the twin minarets of Birmingham Central Mosque.

None of this suggests that somehow terrorists are being created by the presence of curry houses, hijab shops and an Asian cafe. Yet that is somehow the impression that is given - tens of thousands of perfectly ordinary Birmingham residents being categorised as some sort of problem because a tiny handful of men from that place committed terrorist offences.

The Mail is right to point at the manner in which Labour politicians pander to pressure from Deobandi organisations - Cllr Wazeem Jaffar and the four-year-old in the headscarf is a shocking example of indulging religious fundamentalism. But then the same politicians play a game of community politics unrecognisable to those of us campaigning in the rest of the country. And, yes, this is a problem - from electoral fraud through to grant-farming and favour-mongering - but it is not creating the basis for young men becoming Islamist terrorists.

In discussing the threat of Islamist terror - and there is a threat - we need to get away from the from the idea that mainstream Islam in the UK is promoting that terrorism. We should remember, and perhaps Birmingham is a good place to do this, that throughout its existence the IRA exploited sectarian sympathies and enjoyed the support of some Catholic priests. But this didn't make the rest of the Catholic population of England and Ireland complicit in the IRA's murder and terror. Islamist terror groups are no different, they exploit Muslim grievance (just as those Birmingham Labour councillors exploit the same grievances) and find some sympathetic voices. But what comes across most strongly is that so few - a tiny group - Muslims from Birmingham get involved in the world of Islamist terrorism.

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Freedom or security? Is this really the choice?

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It's OK folks, I'm not going to recycle that Ben Franklin quote but you'll all have noticed that the government, the possible next government and perhaps the last government too (not to mention governments in Europe and the USA) are all very keen to tell you that them having the power to stick their neb into any and every part of our lives is necessary for reasons of 'national security'.

You see, dear reader, some British people have decided that living in Birmingham or Billericay is dull and have headed off to Syria or some other part of the middle east to join in the excitingly murderous civil wars going on round there. These young folk are, in the jargon of today, "radicalised" and represent a serious existential threat to our civilisation and to that nebulous but convenient thing, 'national security'.

"It is the first duty of government to protect our national security and to act quickly when that security is compromised. As events in Iraq and Syria demonstrate, now is not the time to be scaling back on our ability to keep our people safe."

Now I rather understand why Prime Ministers are wont to say this sort of thing - after all when there is some sort of terrorist incident they're the ones who have to front up the government's response and deal with the media's inevitable "you didn't do enough" line.  And there are some British people fighting out there in the middle east who may well return to the UK puffed up with their radicalised ideas ready to do terrible things. It's not clear how many there are out there - some reports suggest 700 and other reports also suggest that a couple of hundred or so are already back in the UK.

So it seems eminently sensible for the security forces to keep an eye on these chaps so as to make sure they aren't up to nefarious stuff that threatens our security. This is what we employ spies to do, I think. But those spies have all the powers and systems they need to keep tabs on a relatively small number of dodgy radicalised men who've been out to Syria on some sort of jihad. I don't see how the ability to monitor people who have done nothing wrong and are doing nothing wrong adds to our security.

This intrusion makes us less secure. It doesn't make us safer from the terrorist or the murderer but it provides government with the means to interfere in the lives of innocent people. This is the world of micro-chipped waste bins, covert surveillance of parents, the use of anti-social behaviour orders to effect social control and the preference for the banning of anything that makes the police or security services have to do their core job of protecting us.

We are less secure because an ever widening collection of anonymous officials can order investigations, gather data and take action to enforce a mountain of controls and regulations. Everything from the smoking ban in pubs and the use of curfew orders on drinking through to legislation on speech that is so broadly written as to allow the authorities to arrest almost anyone on whatever pretext they want. And all this intervention in our lives is done to protect us, to prevent offence and to make sure that we all comply with the latest iteration of equalities-speak dreamt up by those with an interest in extending its scope.

For sure the government won't be earwigging you calling the local kebab shop for a delivery of doner and chips. Nor will they be routinely opening your post or giggling at your inane text messages. But they are giving themselves the power to do these things should they wish to. All on the basis of 'national security', a term so ill-defined as to place little or no limit on the scope of the security services and police.

If we are to have changes to surveillance rules and to give secret agencies powers to make greater use of such powers then this needs to be accompanied by two other significant additions - much greater openness and transparency from the security agencies and strong guarantees of free speech in legislation. Conducting a review of laws created for a pre-internet age does make some sense but this should not be undertaken without a wider public understanding of what any new rules might mean. Simply saying something akin to "look at the scary terrorist man with a beard" as the basis for new rules isn't right and gives me little comfort that my freedoms - especially my right to an opinion you may disagree with - will be protected.

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Things that aren't extremism

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Today is clearly a day to talk about  extremism. But to do this we need first to know what people mean by 'extremism'. Here are some things that are not extremism:

1. Living your life according to the tenets, strictures and requirements of a religious faith

2. Asking that the institutions of society recognise your right to live according to your religious faith

3. Promoting your religious faith to others as a good way of living

4. Asking that a school respects your faith in its education of your children

5. Criticising the action of government where those actions attack the practice of your religious faith

The problem is that we appear - regularly for Islam and increasingly for Christianity - to confuse religious orthodoxy with extremism and seek to marginalise religious belief where is doesn't accord with the assumed mores of the secular majority. We also have a new intolerance of ideas - we may believe otherwise but for many Christians, Muslims and Jews homosexuality remains a sin (just as sex outside marriage remains a sin). To seek to close down this belief - to demand that people believe otherwise - is to reject a central premise of our society: the idea of free speech. And this, for me, is a far worse extremism than being a devout Muslim, Jew or Christian.

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