The Muslims Are Coming!

by Arun Kundnani

  Whereas before 2001 the term “radicalization” had occasionally been used informally in academic literature to refer to a shift toward more radical politics (usually not referring to Muslims), by 2004 the term had acquired its new meaning of a psychological or theological process by which Muslims move toward extremist views. By 2010, over one hundred articles on radicalization were being published in peer-reviewed academic journals each year. In this chapter, I examine the work of some of the leading scholars of radicalization and show how their analyses owe more to the aims and objectives of the states that are the primary consumers of their literature than to an objective study of the subject. This is not solely a matter of biases introduced by funding, by the revolving doors between government agencies and think tanks, or by other institutional pressures, but rather a matter of ideological assumptions that determine what counts as legitimate and illegitimate within the terms of this discourse. The result is that radicalization scholars systematically fail to address the reality of the political conflicts they claim they want to understand. Instead a concept has been contrived that introduces biases and prejudices into officials’ thinking; in turn, this thinking shapes government practices and structures introduced to combat radicalization, resulting in discrimination and unwarranted restrictions on civil liberties. My method is not to challenge the conclusions of radicalization scholars with alternative sets of empirical data but rather to explore the conceptual frameworks used to make sense of the data where they exist, and to show that even the limited data that are available ought to lead to different conclusions.

  A Cultural-Psychological Predisposition

  A 2004 article by Walter Laqueur provides a bridge between the older terrorism studies and the then–emerging radicalization literature and a useful starting point. Lacqueur, a seasoned Washington insider who first came to prominence in the 1950s as Israel’s representative to the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom,6 begins by asserting that “al Qaeda was founded and September 11 occurred not because of a territorial dispute or the feeling of national oppression but because of a religious commandment—jihad and the establishment of shari’ah.” His argument for rejecting any linkage between terrorism and either poverty or causes such as Palestine is that there are many groups who suffer poverty or oppression but not all resort to violence. With this he moves away from a macro focus on economics or politics and descends to the level of the individual: “How to explain that out of 100 militants believing with equal intensity in the justice of their cause, only a very few will actually engage in terrorist actions?” Here we confront the founding question of the radicalization discourse, which, Laqueur states, has been hitherto neglected. Answering it will provide a root cause that no longer references the wider political context but instead focuses on what he calls “a cultural-psychological predisposition.” Framing the root cause question in this way, and providing a model of this “predisposition,” also, of course, offers intelligence and law enforcement agencies the possibility of an analytical framework that can be used for surveillance purposes. Scholarship that associates a particular kind of predisposition, be it cultural, psychological, or some combination, with terrorist violence enables intelligence gatherers to use that predisposition as a proxy for terrorist risk, and to structure their surveillance efforts accordingly.

  To illustrate the argument, Laqueur turns his attention to Europe, which he describes as “probably the most vulnerable battlefield” and “the main base of terrorist support groups.” He claims that this is the result of a process “facilitated by the growth of Muslim communities, the growing tensions with the native population, and the relative freedom with which radicals could organize in certain mosques and cultural organizations.” The failure of “Muslim newcomers” to integrate into Europe—“cultural and social integration was certainly not what the newcomers wanted”—reflected a desire to maintain a separate religious and ethnic identity. This, in turn, led to “the radicalization of the second generation of immigrants” that featured acute feelings of “resentment and hostility” toward the authorities and non-Muslim neighbors, nourished by underachievement and “sexual repression.” Hence a “free-floating aggression” underlies the “milieu in which Islamist terrorism and terrorist support groups in Western Europe developed.”7

  In this early account, the main components and confusions of the radicalization discourse are already present: the focus on the religious beliefs and psychology of individuals and the downplaying of political factors; the view that terrorism is rooted in a wider youth culture of anger and aggression; and the listing of factors likely to drive individuals toward support for terrorism, such as anti-Western attitudes, religious fundamentalism, and self-segregation. Already the term “radicalization” tends to merge a number of meanings—disaffection, youth alienation, radical dissent, religious fundamentalism, propensity to violence—which ought to be kept analytically distinct. Already unfounded and biased assumptions about the social and political history of Muslims in Europe are being introduced, and a causal process from a “cultural-psychological predisposition” to violence is being asserted without any substantial evidence. Finally, it is worth noting that there is no mention of US and UK government rhetoric on the need to fight a war against radical Islam, of the war on Iraq, of the uniting of millions of European Muslims and non-Muslims to actively oppose it, and of the failure of these mobilizations to prevent the war by democratic means.

  Later writers of works in the radicalization discourse can be seen as attempts to systematize the basic framework laid out by Laqueur in 2004; they travel in a number of directions from this starting point. For some the question of religious belief—the cultural part of Laqueur’s predisposition—is most significant. If a set of religious beliefs, an ideology, can be identified that terrorists share with a wider group of radicals but which moderate Muslims reject, then a model can be developed in which such beliefs are seen as indicators of radicalization, a point along a pathway to becoming a terrorist. This can be called the theological approach to radicalization. It offers a scientific basis for security officials to target surveillance and investigative resources at a group of people who happen to have specific religious beliefs—say, for example, Salafi Muslims. The problem is that if there is no real reason to think that these radical religious beliefs are associated with terrorist violence, then the theological radicalization model is merely legitimizing unwarranted state intrusion into the private religious lives of large numbers of citizens.

  The other direction of travel from Laqueur’s 2004 paper is to attend to individual and group psychology. What is the process by which some individuals’ mental states of alienation or resentment escalate to extremist beliefs whereas others’ do not? This psychological approach to radicalization offers the same predictive possibilities, and a more complex account is developed. A psychological process, such as a group dynamic or a struggle with identity, is seen as interacting with a process of acquiring an extremist ideology. A particular combination of psychological factors and religious beliefs becomes the best guide to identifying radicalization. Implicit in both the theological and psychological approaches is the notion that the circulation of extremist ideas, seen as a kind of virus, is able to turn people into violent radicals. This then leads law enforcement agencies to try to prevent exposure to this virus, whether it is found in the contents of books or Web sites, or in the words of preachers or radical activists.

  One further point worth noting: because security officials are interested in patterns of belief and behavior that correlate with terrorist risk, irrespective of whether they cause terrorism, questions of causality are usually left unaddressed in this discourse, despite theorists’ claims to be interested in root causes. Instead of answering the question of what causes terrorism—the key question demanded by Kant’s “public use of reason”—radicalization discourse claims predictive powers but lacks explanatory powers. Scholars generally talk of factors or indicators that are statistically a
ssociated with radicalization, and which intelligence agencies can put to use in their efforts to detect future threats, while tending to refrain from reflecting on the larger question of causality.

  Radicalization as a Theological Process

  A 2009 study by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Laura Grossman, entitled “Homegrown Terrorists in the US and UK: An Empirical Examination of the Radicalization Process,” published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), provides a case study of scholarship that attempts to demonstrate the central role of theology in radicalization. While the study is typical of many in its approach and conclusions, it stands out for the authors’ claims to rigor—“an empirical examination of behavioral manifestations of the radicalization process in 117 homegrown ‘jihadist’ terrorists”—and in the interest it has attracted among policy makers in Washington.

  The key question the study sets out to answer: “What clues might there be that an individual is self-identifying with, or being indoctrinated into, jihadist ideology?” The data for the study is statements by terrorists themselves, trial transcripts, and newspaper reports that provide biographical information on “every known Islamic homegrown terrorist in the US and UK who perpetrated an attack, attempted to do so, or illegally supported Islamic terrorism through the end of October 2008.” Based on this data, the authors claim to discover clusters of indicators that recur sufficiently to suggest a shared trajectory of radicalization. The indicators are not regarded as sufficient conditions to produce a terrorist but as useful markers of risk.

  This study primarily focuses on specific behavioral changes that homegrown terrorists went through as they radicalized. It examines six manifestations of the radicalization process: the adoption of a legalistic interpretation of Islam, coming to trust only a select and ideologically rigid group of religious authorities, viewing the West and Islam as irreconcilably opposed, manifesting a low tolerance for perceived religious deviance, attempting to impose religious beliefs on others, and the expression of radical political views.

  The study concludes that the first five factors—all associated with religious ideology—are sufficiently present in enough cases to demonstrate that

  the individuals’ theological understanding was a relatively strong factor in their radicalization.

  There are a number of rather obvious problems with the study that can be noted initially. The study does not include a control group of persons who are not terrorists, and so it has no basis on which to associate terrorism with the religious manifestations it is considering. There seems to be no basis on which these six manifestations of the radicalization process were chosen as opposed to other possibilities. One might also ask how much insight into ideology can be gleaned from breaking down a person’s beliefs into six discrete religious and political manifestations. Even if these problems are set aside, there remains the difficulty that selecting to study the category of so-called jihadist terrorism assumes that this form of terrorism has specific causes that differ from other forms of violence. In fact, this assumption runs up against even the limited data gathered by Gartenstein-Ross and Grossman. The study’s sixth ideological manifestation, what it refers to as the expression of “radical political views,” is summarized:

  Western powers have conspired against Islam to subjugate it, both physically and morally. At the same time, Muslims worldwide have lost their faith, and lack the strength that they possessed during Muhammad’s time. The only proper response to the present situation is military action.

  It turns out that belief in this political narrative scores highest among the manifestations examined; indeed, there are no cases in which this political dimension was found to be absent. But the study seeks to evade the implications of its own data. Having noted that the political component of radicalization appears more consistently than the theological, the authors immediately caution that to conclude politics is more significant than religion would be “crude” because “when individuals are committed to a physical fight against the West, it is natural that they will try to justify this on multiple levels”—which rather defeats the purpose of looking to a person’s own account of their beliefs, as the study sets out to do. The authors go on to ask whether

  individuals’ religious awakening preceded or followed their political awakening. For the homegrown terrorists who exhibited signs of political radicalization, the religious awakening preceded the political awakening 40.7 percent of the time. In contrast, we found that political radicalization preceded any kind of religious radicalization 11.6 percent of the time. (In the other 47.7 percent of cases, it is unclear whether political or religious ideology came first.) Thus, in our view, a nuanced look at the role of religious ideology in homegrown terrorists’ radicalization should find that religion likely plays an important role.8

  But whether religious awakening or political radicalization comes first in the process of becoming a terrorist is only relevant if we assume that one must be a gateway to the other; only then does it make sense to ask the order in which these manifestations occurred. No empirical evidence is offered for this assumption. Within the study’s own framework, a more natural interpretation of the data would be that religious awakening is neither a precursor to political radicalization nor vice versa, and that political radicalization is the key factor in becoming a terrorist. In any case, without including a comparison with cases of radicalization that did not result in terrorism, it is impossible to draw any positive conclusions that associate a particular set of beliefs with jihadist terrorism.

  Why this eagerness to downplay political factors, even when the data suggests otherwise? Part of the answer might lie in the politics of the study’s publishers and funders. The FDD is one of several neoconservative pressure groups set up in the wake of 9/11 that helped build support for the US war on Iraq. The study was funded by three private foundations, one of which was the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation that donated more than $1.2 million to the neoconservative Project for the New American Century and has provided millions of dollars to Islamophobic propaganda groups in the US, such as the Center for Security Policy and the David Horowitz Freedom Center.9 For such groups it is convenient to root terrorism in religious ideology rather than in the political interaction of Western foreign policy and Muslim terrorist groups. But perhaps the main reason is a bias in favor of knowledge claims that can be put to use by national security practitioners without institutional discomfort. Breaking down religious extremism into different manifestations that can be scientifically associated with terrorism is knowledge that law enforcement and intelligence agencies can easily utilize; on the other hand, painting a more reflexive picture, in which state agencies and terrorists are caught in a dynamic political conflict, is much harder to sell. In an introductory section to the FDD study, Brian Jenkins Mead, a prominent analyst of terrorism at the RAND Corporation, makes clear its potential use by law enforcement and intelligence agencies: “The indicators identified by Gartenstein-Ross and Grossman … have value … in deciding whether to initiate a closer look or to not waste limited resources where it is not warranted.”10 And the FDD study’s lead author has, according to his Web site, provided

  instruction to members of the US military preparing for deployments to the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf. He also designs training courses and specific modules for use by US government agencies, including the State Department’s Office of Anti-Terrorism Assistance.11

  Radicalization as a Theological-Psychological Process

  Counterradicalization policy in the US and Europe is pluralist and involves making compromises among multiple approaches within the limits of the basic assumptions outlined above. Radicalization scholarship reflects this range of approaches. While accounts that focus purely on religious ideology have had a certain influence, at least as significant have been more complex models that involve processes and interactions among theological and social psychological journeys. Religious beliefs by themselves do not drive individuals
to violence; rather, the picture is one in which ideology becomes more extreme in response to what is called a “cognitive opening,” an identity crisis, or a group-bonding process. This implies a more sophisticated counterradicalization practice that addresses the interdependence of theology and emotions, identity, and group dynamics.

  Among the most prominent exponents of this perspective is Marc Sageman, whose Understanding Terror Networks and Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century together constitute perhaps the most ambitious attempt to develop a comprehensive theory of radicalization.12 His model has come to be known as the “bunch of guys” theory because of its emphasis on friendship and kinship as central to the radicalization process. Sageman, a psychiatrist, was, as noted earlier, formerly a CIA operations officer specializing in Afghanistan, and he was based in Islamabad from 1987 to 1989, where he ran “unilateral programs with the Afghan Mujahedin.”13 (Who better to carry out research on the causes of “jihad” than someone who used to be an official organizing the US government’s funding of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets? Unsurprisingly, that particular history plays no role in his analysis.) Sageman has also been an adviser to the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for a number of years, and in 2008 was named its scholar-in-residence.14

  In line with the basic assumptions of the radicalization literature, Sageman rejects accounts that consider economic or political circumstances as significant, on the grounds that these factors affect millions of people whereas only a small number become terrorists. And he breaks with those who think religious ideology can by itself create a terrorist: “These perspectives imply an overly passive view of terrorists, who are the recipients of social forces or slaves to appealing ideas.” Instead, he argues convincingly that we need to ask how terrorists interpret the structural conditions that they are confronted with and how they attempt to forge a common struggle in response. In addressing these questions, Sageman makes strong claims to academic rigor, claiming to bring the methods of social science (statistics, sampling theory, survey techniques, measurement, data analysis) to the study of radicalization. Yet the object of his study lacks any objective definition. The closest we get is his statement that he is interested in analyzing