Page 18 - Šolsko polje, XXIX, 2018, no. 5-6: Radicalization, Violent Extremism and Conflicting Diversity, eds. Mitja Sardoč and Tomaž Deželan
P. 18
šolsko polje, letnik xxix, številka 5–6
the proscribed list a Far Right organisation called National Action: the
first such group to be placed on the banned list in British political histo-
ry. The trigger was the murder a few months before of a sitting member
of parliament, Jo Cox, by an extremist proclaiming the nationalist slogan
of “Britain First!” and subsequently being found to have sympathies for
National Action.
Interestingly, the author of Jo Cox’s murder, Tony Mair, turned out
to be a troubled and embittered member of the majority white community,
who had lived for many years in exactly the same district as Muhammad
Siddique Khan, the leader of the July 2005 terrorist attacks in London
(Rayner at al., 2016). Here, we may be seeing a connection between the
dangerous embitterment of the “left-behinds”, and certain structural fac-
tors affecting minority communities living within Western society. For
these minority communities, structural discrimination and socio-eco-
nomic marginalisation may increase the lure of revolutionary ideologies
in slightly different ways.
Here, there is a particularly pertinent reference to Muslim society. A
nostalgic “golden age” thesis whereby Islamic society may be perceived to
have been progressively subjugated and undermined by Western imperial-
ism over the centuries from the heady days of the Umayyud and Abbasid
caliphates, can – in the hands of skilful ideologues – feed upon a grim
economic reality in the Middle East and, to a lesser degree, in Europe,
whereby a youth-bulge of relatively well-educated and skilled citizens find
themselves faced with extremely poor economic prospects. In Europe, the
frustration this engenders is coupled with real or perceived discrimination
and marginalisation.
Khosrokhavar (2015: p. 22) characterises the dual and relentless ef-
fect of “humiliation and despair” in such minority communities as the
most common trigger for radicalisation towards a “theology of wild
hope”, in which the perceived injustices are turned upon their perpetra-
tors and the wrongs are scheduled to be righted at some indeterminate
time in the future. Such a thesis may partly explain the “Arab Spring” up-
risings against entrenched authoritarian regimes in the Middle East from
2011 onwards, but may also offer some explanation for how some troubled
Muslims living in Western societies may be drawn towards violent jihad-
ist movements in their quest for self-meaning or redemption.
At the macro-level of analysis, therefore, structural factors in so-
ciety such as shifts in relative economic and political power relations
across different groups, feed into environmental factors that may cause
the dangerous radicalisation of certain individuals. The manifestation of
that radicalisation may emerge in several different places, such as on the
16
the proscribed list a Far Right organisation called National Action: the
first such group to be placed on the banned list in British political histo-
ry. The trigger was the murder a few months before of a sitting member
of parliament, Jo Cox, by an extremist proclaiming the nationalist slogan
of “Britain First!” and subsequently being found to have sympathies for
National Action.
Interestingly, the author of Jo Cox’s murder, Tony Mair, turned out
to be a troubled and embittered member of the majority white community,
who had lived for many years in exactly the same district as Muhammad
Siddique Khan, the leader of the July 2005 terrorist attacks in London
(Rayner at al., 2016). Here, we may be seeing a connection between the
dangerous embitterment of the “left-behinds”, and certain structural fac-
tors affecting minority communities living within Western society. For
these minority communities, structural discrimination and socio-eco-
nomic marginalisation may increase the lure of revolutionary ideologies
in slightly different ways.
Here, there is a particularly pertinent reference to Muslim society. A
nostalgic “golden age” thesis whereby Islamic society may be perceived to
have been progressively subjugated and undermined by Western imperial-
ism over the centuries from the heady days of the Umayyud and Abbasid
caliphates, can – in the hands of skilful ideologues – feed upon a grim
economic reality in the Middle East and, to a lesser degree, in Europe,
whereby a youth-bulge of relatively well-educated and skilled citizens find
themselves faced with extremely poor economic prospects. In Europe, the
frustration this engenders is coupled with real or perceived discrimination
and marginalisation.
Khosrokhavar (2015: p. 22) characterises the dual and relentless ef-
fect of “humiliation and despair” in such minority communities as the
most common trigger for radicalisation towards a “theology of wild
hope”, in which the perceived injustices are turned upon their perpetra-
tors and the wrongs are scheduled to be righted at some indeterminate
time in the future. Such a thesis may partly explain the “Arab Spring” up-
risings against entrenched authoritarian regimes in the Middle East from
2011 onwards, but may also offer some explanation for how some troubled
Muslims living in Western societies may be drawn towards violent jihad-
ist movements in their quest for self-meaning or redemption.
At the macro-level of analysis, therefore, structural factors in so-
ciety such as shifts in relative economic and political power relations
across different groups, feed into environmental factors that may cause
the dangerous radicalisation of certain individuals. The manifestation of
that radicalisation may emerge in several different places, such as on the
16
