The radical ambitions of counter‐radicalization

Abstract

The "Trojan Horse" scandal laid bare an anxiety at the heart of the British security establishment; an anxiety that brings together questions of identity, values, and security within the demand to manage radicalization. It is an anxiety that, I will argue, reveals a novel conceptualization of threat that has driven the UK's security and communities policies within the "war on terror." This conceptualization emerges within Prevent, the UK's counter-radicalization strategy. Yet, I argue, the extensive literature on Prevent has failed to adequately articulate this underlying, core logic. To date, the Prevent literature has effectively demonstrated the ways in which Muslim communities in the United Kingdom have been policed through British counter-radicalization policy. Yet, this analysis struggles to explain the expansion of Prevent into a wider range of "extremist" spaces. In this article, I contend that it is more useful to situate Prevent as a particular conception of power; a logic and an analysis of threat that demands new forms of government intervention. To do so, this article provides a genealogical reading of Prevent, locating it as a radical extension of state security ambitions to intervene early, making explicit a vision of security in which life as a process of becoming is produced as an object of management.The paper draws out the ramifications of this analysis to think through fundamental shifts in the principles and practices of contemporary security aspirations.

The Role of Faith-Based Organizations in Counter-Radicalization in Nigeria: The Case of Boko Haram

“…From this informed perspective, several studies have focused on the state-centric approach prioritizing the traditional role of the state in countering the activities of this violent radical group, through the use of force or the military, while the non-military (soft and smart power) approach to counter radicalization remains largely underdeveloped (Falode 2016;Sampson 2016;Onapajo 2017;Agbiboa 2020;Martin 2020;Onapajo and Ozden 2020). It is in this context that this article will examine the role and effort of FBOs in counter-radicalization, with specific emphasis on the Boko Haram radical insurgent group.…”

Contesting Power: A Comparison of Muslim Civil Society Responses to Counter-Radicalization Policies in Canada and the U.K.

“…There is some evidence of importation of ideas pertaining to counter- undergirding CR policies (Ali, 2020;Kundnani, 2012bKundnani, , 2014Nagra & Monaghan, 2020;Younis, 2021). Second, in light of the racialized understanding of Muslim violence, CR policies characterize 'radicalization' and 'extremism' not merely as public safety issues, but as threats to national values (Martin, 2020). This view has led to the institutionalization of CR governance based on notions of 'risk,' while impacting the relations between state institutions and Muslim communities (Heath-Kelly, 2013).…”

“…These analyses have salience for the expansion of CR policies toward other forms of violence. The vague and malleable container of 'radicalization' has been used to racialize domestic Muslims as dangerous Others (Kundnani, 2012b;Pisoiu, 2013), but more recently it has been deployed to treat as deviant a wide range of political beliefs (Martin, 2020). With 'radicalization' conceived as a transition to 'extreme' beliefs rather than political violence, CR policies have justified interventions in the social, cultural, educational, and community realms where social values and beliefs are formed (Kundnani & Hayes, 2018).…”

“…First, it legitimates the use of the label of "terrorist" and "radical" more widely, granting state agencies even greater power in deeming who is a terrorist or radical. Indeed, as the counter-radicalization apparatus has been expanded to tackle white supremacist violence, it has also been deployed to curtail legitimate forms of political dissent including anticapitalist protests and environmental activism (BBC, 2020a;Crosby & Monaghan, 2018;Martin, 2020). Second, the posture of neutrality does little to address the underlying, racialized structures that make CR policies flawed in the first place.…”

“…Such stringent requirements to address 'radicalization' in schools, universities, prisons, faith-based organizations, and charities, exposed the government's ambition for further securitization of a broad cross-section of society (Open Society Justice Initiative, 2016).Instead of tackling the conceptual shortcomings in the radicalization discourse, the emphasis on "British values" under the revised 2011 Prevent strategy only confounded matters. Several scholars noted that the notion of British values remained subjective (and vague, as the government arbitrarily determined who was committed to British values) and, extremism, defined by its distance from British values, seemed to suggest legitimate forms of political dissent were extremism(Martin, 2020;O'Donnell, 2016;Richardson, 2015). Still, the focus of Prevent remained on Muslim communities.…”