Look elsewhere for the enemy within
The evidence from UK campuses is that young Muslims are not terrorists in the making.

 

The devastation wreaked last week in Mumbai, India's economic capital, has already been presented as India's 9/11. Terrorism is far from uncommon in India; this event was given prominence because, for the first time, a significant minority of the victims was western. While Pakistan and Islamist terrorist networks allegedly harboured there were the focus of initial suspicion, it was not long before the media started to point a finger at Islamists with British roots; a link strongly denied by the British Foreign Office. The claims echoed the popular fears that escalated when it was discovered that the perpetrators of 7/7 were "homegrown" – a discovery which seemed to shock the country, proud of its multicultural heritage, to the core, particularly as those responsible seemed to be well-integrated and well-educated British Muslims.

 

Britain and other western countries undeniably contain within their boundaries minorities engaged in terrorist activity. However, the extent of this has been unjustifiably exaggerated as the press runs scare stories about British Muslims' involvement in "madrasas" in Pakistan, (considered to be training camps for terrorists), or imams from overseas supposedly importing radicalism and infecting a suggestible cohort of disaffected youth in British mosques. The involvement of highly-educated Muslims in terrorist attacks has led to a perception of British Muslims, especially those at college or recently graduated, as an increasing threat to national security and social democracy, with the cases such as the Yorkshire-based Muslims involved in 7/7 and the Muslim doctors' involvement in the attack on Glasgow airport, presented as evidence.

Research I conducted over the past year shows that headline-grabbing stories about militant, young British Muslims (typically male) are a far cry from reality. The students who took part in this study, from the Universities of Cambridge and Bradford and the London School of Economics, were secure in their British identity and committed to the principles of civic rights and responsibilities. Indeed, it was their belief in the values of British citizenship that underpinned their protests against both terrorism and the disproportionate surveillance of British Muslims. They contrasted British freedom of speech favourably with their countries of origin, condemning Pakistan and Egypt, for example, for corruption and unacceptable curtailment of the basic freedoms they enjoyed in the UK.

They dissociated themselves from radical political Islam and felt unfairly targeted by the government's new anti-terror measures, including guidelines issued to academics in higher education to look out for Muslim extremists. Such measures, they thought, breached fundamental British values and made them vulnerable to scapegoating and, in some cases, verbal or physical abuse.

Far from experiencing a level of insecurity that might force them to turn to terror networks for solace, these students were self-confident and concerned to promote greater engagement in the political mainstream. Their political interests were often outward-looking, unlike the intensive (often mosque-based) local connections retained by their parents' generation. They were more likely to join Amnesty International than al-Qaida and while most had contacts with student Islamic organisations, they were not involved in transnational political activities.

The government's reaction to new security threats, in particular an increasing surveillance of Muslim students, is a public-relations exercise to satisfy popular demands for tough action. The portrayal of a disproportionate threat from the Islamic community does not reflect informed opinion about how most young British Muslims – and university students in particular – live their lives. In this respect, it could well be counter-productive, alienating a law-abiding part of the British population.

These young, educated Muslims are opposed to anti-Islamist governments in countries such as Turkey, Pakistan or Egypt not because they support political Islam, but because they feel those countries' governments are narrowly nationalist, oppressive, and breach human rights. If the government continues to scaremonger about this new generation of young Muslims in Britain it will only create problems for itself, by demonising a group of young people which is often more internationalist and concerned about liberal values than its non-Muslim peers.

Source: The Guardian (Comment Is Free)