Muslim alienation in the UK??? It's Israel's fault...

It's so easy to blame Israel....

British government officials claim that Israel’s recent actions in Gaza are likely to encourage a ‘process of radicalisation’ amongst British Muslims. The security and counter-terrorism minister, Lord West of Spithead, says the New Labour government’s attempts to contain the radicalisation of British Muslims will have been undermined by Israel’s military venture.

So in Lord West’s view, there is a direct, causal relationship between Israel’s foreign policy and an increased risk of terrorism or anger in Britain. He clarified his outlook on the matter by slamming Tony Blair’s dismissal of any such causal relationship. ‘Well, that was clearly bollocks’, said Lord West (1). West’s linking of the tragic events in Gaza with the growth of radicalisation in the UK echoes warnings made by Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, last month; he, too, is of the opinion that Israel’s actions might help to boost the ideological appeal of radical Islamic sentiments in Britain.

The response of British Muslims to Gaza points, not to the rise of a powerful new radical ideology, but to an interesting process in which protesters selectively reject the British ‘way of life’ while pragmatically utilising some of its cultural resources. So while many young Muslims resent the moral authority that the Holocaust endows on the suffering of Jewish people, they are more than happy to manipulate the symbolic significance of the Holocaust for their own purposes; they describe events in Gaza as the ‘Palestinian Holocaust’ and compare the Gaza Strip to the Warsaw Ghetto.

Officialdom’s misdiagnosis of ‘radicalisation’ amongst British Muslims, when in fact it is more accurately described as alienation, is symptomatic of the nervousness of security officials like Lord West today. Blaming the war in Gaza for the politicisation of British Muslims is a way to avoid asking some very difficult questions about the problem of youthful Muslim alienation. No doubt, it is tempting for British officials to point the finger of blame at Israel for their own inability to win the hearts and minds of young Muslims – but at the end of the day, they cannot avoid the fact that the problem is rooted at home.

Insofar as there is any hint of a strategy in relation to tackling radicalisation, it always has a fantasy-like character. Often, the official discourse on radicalisation has much in common with attitudes that underpin the child protection industry. It warns that ‘vulnerable’ and ‘impressionable’ young people may be targeted on websites, campuses and at social venues, and ‘groomed’ by cynical operators. In November 2007, it was reported that the UK government’s Research, Information and Communication Unit would draw up ‘counter-narratives’ to the anti-Western messages on websites ‘designed to influence vulnerable and impressionable audiences here [in the UK]’ (2). In November 2006, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, said ‘it is the youth who are being actively targeted, groomed, radicalised and set on a path that frighteningly quickly could end in their involvement in mass murder of their fellow UK citizens’ (3).