Muslims, for the most part, hail from countries that were less dominated by the West. So, unlike most colonized communities, Muslims were able to keep their language, faith, and customs rather than adopting European equivalents. This is something they were also able to maintain during modern migration, still retaining their faith in predominantly Christian and secular societies. Many also chose to retain the language and style of dress of their country of origin, protecting, in theory, a clear cultural identity and sense of belonging. So we have a scenario in which the British Muslim male child finds himself in a Western society where he is visibly different, sometimes in dress as well as beliefs and complexion, and with a family at home who often wish to retain many aspects of their original culture. As is the case with most immigrant communities, Muslim families wish their young men to gain acceptance and develop the ability to pursue success and support a family of their own. To this end, many young Muslim men will study diligently and embark upon a career path and seek the same respect, recognition, and acceptance that we all strive for.
For some it’s not acceptance at any cost, however, and as we’ve seen with black men, when ‘other’ men feel excluded by the main culture, they form a subculture. British Muslim communities tend to be close-knit, and they have a strong economic presence, especially in London, that provides a back-up option for those who may fall outside the confines of wider society.* So the question for these young British Muslim men is in fact not so dissimilar to the one the British people have recently faced in their relationship to their European neighbours: integrate or separate?
15%: the proportion of Muslim prisoners in 2015 (up from 8% in 2002)*.
Let’s be clear: the vast majority of Muslim men have chosen integration, while still proudly retaining their Muslim identity. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and nor should there be. Keith Ellison, Mahershala Ali, Aziz Ansari, Hasan Minhaj, and Reza Aslan in the US, Zayn Malik, Rageh Omaar, Mo Farah, Sajid Javid, Riz Ahmed, Adil Ray, and London’s mayor Sadiq Khan in the UK are all examples of Muslim men who have made a contribution and commitment to their respective countries, while celebrating their Muslim identity.
However, on 11 September 2001 the question of the integration of Muslim men suddenly became acutely urgent. If you happened to be a Muslim man – indigenous or otherwise – failing to display visible signs of integration into Western society, you immediately became an object of suspicion and fear. In fact, you didn’t necessarily have to be Muslim – just of a light brown complexion and rushing to work, as in the tragic case of Jean Charles de Menezes, who, on 22 July 2005 (two weeks after the London 7/7 bombings), was mistakenly identified as a potential suicide bomber and shot dead by a team of armed police at Stockwell Tube Station in London. We have reached a point where society has demonized these people in the worst possible way, assuming Muslim men are a threat to our lives and the lives of others.
The backlash against Muslims following the rise of terrorist incidents by Muslim men born in Western countries has been phenomenal, and is probably the greatest challenge to date to our Western model of secular multiculturalism. In response, both Muslim communities and the Western societies they are part of have become vulnerable to extremist views from each side of the argument. The rise of populism has destabilized the political and liberal centre ground in many Western countries, and Muslim men across the socioeconomic groups find themselves on the fault line. For all our sakes we must face the epic twofold challenge in front of us: to tackle the root causes that lead Muslim men to become radicalized in the first place, and to quash the Islamophobia that has reared its ugly head in response.
Five times: the amount more media coverage a terrorist incident receives if the perpetrator is Muslim.*
The route to radicalization
We know that poverty, lack of employment opportunities, and alienation from wider Western society offer a more direct route to radicalization. When disenfranchised young Muslim men, who do not identify with their parents’ interpretation of their faith or with mainstream Islam, can opt for a political extremist interpretation, which resonates with their anger over Western foreign policy towards Muslims around the world, everyone is at risk – especially the young men themselves. Our lack of diversity has a lot to answer for.
However, poverty and lack of opportunity is not the only route to radicalization, as well-educated and relatively affluent Muslim men have also embraced and acted on extremist views. This is difficult for liberals and centrists in the secular West to reconcile. How can Muslim men who have been afforded the opportunity to be part of Western society and been rewarded for their contribution opt to actively work towards the destruction of that society? Indeed, the destruction of their neighbours, colleagues, and fellow citizens who, you would assume, are also friends and acquaintances? You’d think that religious freedom, democracy, and the opportunity to achieve prosperity is a pretty good deal. We’ve covered all the bases, right? All the things that should matter to them? What are we supposed to do?
Sadly, it’s never that simple. Growing up in East London, I witnessed the insidious creep of radicalization and its divisive effects first-hand. I had friends at college who I suspect became radicalized before I even knew what that meant. They became estranged from their friends, were told they needed to separate themselves from ‘infidels’ in order to get closer to God. Their style of dress and patterns of behaviour changed, and they became strangers, while we became ‘others’ to them. These were young men we had all previously socialized with and considered friends. Our teachers had no idea how to reach out to them, and neither did we. But we shrugged our shoulders and continued on our life journeys, as it’s only natural that some friends will drop off as we progress from adolescence to adulthood. So what if those who ‘dropped off’ happened to be disenfranchised Muslims with an underlying resentment of Western foreign policy? Who cares?
Well, Londoners did on 7 July 2005 when our citizens were killed and maimed by fellow citizens, for whom Britain was their home but no longer where their hearts resided. I would later discover that two of the bombing suspects had attended a mosque not far from where I grew up.
Twelve years later, London and its global visitors would face the same horror again, but the Westminster terror attack on 22 March 2017 forced us to rethink our assumptions of those most likely to do us harm. We’d always thought young Muslim men were the danger – radicalized, impulsive, and with not too much to lose – but this time the perpetrator was not a young man and neither was he born a Muslim. He was a 52-year-old mixed-race male born Adrian Elms, and was a late convert to Islam. Having previously been imprisoned at Her Majesty’s pleasure several times for violent attacks, he drove a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and went on to stab Police Constable Keith Palmer, killing four people in total.
This atrocity, as well as the murder of MP Jo Cox in June 2016 by 52-year-old far-right extremist Thomas Mair, and the Finsbury Park attack on 19 June 2017, perpetrated by 47-year-old Darren Osborne – both middle-aged, non-Muslim men – have proved that radicalization in all its forms – be it Islamism, far-right extremism, or Islamophobia – is equally dangerous and that the profile of a ‘terrorist’ is far broader than we thought. It seems some men do not grow out of violence but rather into it, and isolation and exclusion from society leaves them and us vulnerable to the impact of the indiscriminate violence of terrorism.
The multifaceted threat we all now face, not just from terrorism but from extremist responses to it, became disturbingly apparent just two months after the Westminster attack, when the city of Manchester fell victim to perhaps the most heinous of terror attacks so far; this time the target was children – mainly young girls attending the concert of pop sensation Ariana Grande. The devastation resulted in 22 fatalities and 59 injured. And to make matters worse, following the Manchester atrocity there was a reported 500 per cent surge in Islamophobic attacks in Greater Manchester. This is something we must denounce with all our might. We have to stand up for compassion