Richards (2011:143) argues that there has not, to date, been any ‘consistent notion of what is meant by radicalisation’, or any agreement as to the part that radicalisation plays in encouraging violent behaviours. Spalek (2016) suggested that there could be no single definitive definition of radicalisation, as it is based, in part, on positionality. For example, what does radical or radicalisation mean? The understanding of language and meaning are based on experiences, and so who is considered a radical must also be based, in part, on one’s position, gained through experience. Throughout Prevent the terms radical and radicalisation are used interchangeably, alongside the terms terrorist and terrorism. For example, in the Prevent summary (2011b), it states:
All the terrorist groups who pose a threat to us seek to radicalise and recruit people to their cause; We now have more information about the factors which encourage people to support terrorism and then to engage in terrorist-related activity; Terrorist groups can take up and
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exploit ideas...those who have been radicalised [italics added at source]
(2011b:13).
However, these terms are contestable and their meaning can vary depending on one’s culture, political and sociological position, as well as one’s basic understanding of language (Schmid, 2004). Dalgaard- Nielsen (2010: 798) suggests that there is a separation in understanding between someone framed as a radical and someone framed as a violent radical. An understanding of the process in which the radical develops into violent radical is in itself problematic, with a clear separation needed to fully understand both processes and labels.
In Prevent, the description of radicalisation is limited; it simply states that radicalisation refers to the process by which someone comes to support terrorism and forms of extremism leading to terrorism (2011:108). This limited description means that separating the concept of radical and violent radical becomes impossible, as there is no room for interpretation within the description. Violent or non-violent, vocal or non-vocal, political or subversive, all forms of extremism are swept up within the description of terrorism. Terrorism is itself equally minimally described in the Terrorism Act 2000. One may suggest that a vague interpretation could occur due to a lack of terminological specifics within policy. The specifics needed in order to understand the challenges of terrorism from differing perspectives is highlighted by Dojcinovski and Odzakov (2014), who address the problem of terrorism strategies from an international perspective. They say that:
Different perspectives on the problem of broadening of crises left the firm stance on fighting terrorism and contributed to a selective support in preventative actions of international organisations and collective
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security systems. Terrorism is defined as an act of violence, but the intensity of the activities is different at different stages of action (Dojcinovski and Odzakov, 2014: 99).
This research would suggest that having a shared understanding of terminology (both policy makers and targeted communities) is paramount in order to facilitate cooperation through shared motivation (the reduction of violent terrorism). Post- 9/11, we have seen the terminology of radicalisation/radical become firmly established within academic discourse as well as in the political vocabulary (see Antunez and Tellidis, 2013). And yet, conceptual clarity still seems lacking. There still seems little consensus of understanding regarding what exactly radicalisation is (Pisoiu, 2013). However, this has not stopped the ‘process’ of radicalisation being blamed for violent extremism by government (Cameron, 2011; Home Office, 2013; Home Office, 2014). With a lack of agreement on what the radical or the radicalisation process is, however, there can be no clarity as to how this process may differ from other learning/socialisation processes.
A Blurring of the Targets
The war on terror heralded an increase in punitive security strategies that have placed Muslims under increased pressure and speculation from politicians, security experts and the media (Giroux, 2016). I would suggest that these processes have also targeted other non-Muslim minority groups, due to a blurring between the neo- Western categorisation of race and ethnicity in association with identity. The Prevent strategy assessment (2011b) contained very little differentiation between the terminologies of race and ethnicity. Effectively, they were used interchangeably
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and melded together and so a distinct separation of concepts was rejected. The report suggests:
As such, the analysis of the comments received under these is included together. For the purposes of this EIA, Race has been taken to include colour, nationality, ethnic and national origins, in line with the Race Relations Act 1976 (2011b:6).
This blurring between race and ethnicity suggests that the construction of an identity, be it Black/Muslim/Black-Muslim, or any other, can be interchangeable (see Nishi, Matias and Montoya, 2015). A study by Moosavi (2013: 1) suggested that this may be true given that ‘White’4 converts to Islam can be re-racialised as
‘not quite white’ or even as ‘non-white’, because of a persistent conflation of Islam as a ‘non-white religion’. The loss of ‘whiteness’ faced by converts to Islam can be entailed by being ‘Pakistanised’ (Kose, 1996:135), or, as Franks (2000) suggests, by crossing the borders of whiteness. Moosavi (2013) further suggests that this re- racialising to something other than ‘white’ marks subjects as something other than ‘normal’. It identifies them away from the dominant culture as outsiders and leaves them vulnerable to racial targeting. He suggests that one of the starkest manifestations of this targeting is when converts are called names such as ‘Paki’ (a derogatory term for a Pakistani person), or ‘(dirty) Arab’. The re-racialising of converts is also linked with the disassociation of Britishness and a negative assumption that ‘non-white’ is in some way foreign. The mutual reinforcement of
4 The categorisation of people based on skin pigmentation is rejected in this thesis. The terms ‘Black’, ‘white’, or any other colour descriptive are therefore placed in inverted commas here and elsewhere in the thesis to highlight this rejection.
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concepts such as foreign or ‘non-white’ can be seen in work by Jensen (2008: 390) and Franks (2000: 922).
Unlike the fluidity concerning the categorisation of race and racial language within political language, there seems to be an agreement that although all radicals are not terrorists or engaged in any other form of illegal activities per se, all terrorists are radical (see Bakker and De Graaf, 2010). What must be considered is the way in which the terminology of radical/radicalisation has been used, and the way radicalisation is being researched within a broader context, in order to better understand if this assumption is in fact true. Debatably, incidents of violent terrorist acts have sparked research into causation and the processes of radicalisation. Nevertheless, there has also been an assumption that to successfully stop violent terrorist action governments must prevent radicalisation. This has arguably linked the two constructs. Examining the definitions and the evidence used to construct the state’s position on the subject of radicalisation is a way for us to evaluate those positions, but also the agendas that may have influenced them. The consensus from the British government is that radicalisation is bad. This is apparent by the construction of Prevent and the fear of the radical presented throughout the document. However, one’s positionality must be considered an influencing factor in the use of the term radical: in 2015 the Former Prime Minister suggested that the government must be fearlessly radical regarding equality within British universities (available at gov.uk). The term radical here takes on positive connotations, since the Former Prime Minister was effectively talking about radical issues while under the protection of his position within society. Had a Muslim from a minority group in Britain voiced this same discussion challenging the way British universities
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recruited their students, it may have been considered differently. How radicalisation is problematised and framed is important to consider, and it is to this issue that we now turn.