Radicalization in Western Europe

Integration, Public Discourse and Loss of Identity among Muslim Communities

Carolin Görzig, Khaled Al-Hashimi

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317812654
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Employing a theoretical framework based on the concept of identity loss, this book seeks to understand why increased integration has stimulated greater radicalization among the Muslim populations in Western Europe.

Through extensive field research in four European countries – the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and France – the authors investigate three key questions: 1) Why are 2nd and 3rd generations of Muslims in Europe more radical than their parents?; 2) Why does Europe experience more "home-grown terrorism" today than thirty or forty years ago?; 3) Why do some European countries feature more radical Muslim communities than others? The book reveals that these three puzzling questions can be solved when analyzing the loss of individuality if the face of integration and identification with European society.

While Individualist and structural approaches fail to explain radicalization of Muslims in Europe, this study, by framing radicalization through coupling the public discourse with identity loss, provides a much needed insight into the process of radicalization. Explaining radicalization and gaining an understanding of the drivers of radicalization is crucial to prevent and mitigate intercultural alienation, to further develop immigration policies, redress integration failures as well as to avoid dangerous oversimplifications. This book contributes not only to understanding why greater integration is matched by increasing radicalization, but its insights also contribute to developing ideas about how radicalization can be prevented or overcome and integration policies can be enhanced.

This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and counter-terrorism, radical Islam, war and conflict studies, European politics, IR and security studies.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315817118-1

“Do you think Islam can change?” This question can be insulting to Muslims for distinct reasons: either the respondent is upset that the adaptability of Islam is questioned or the respondent perceives a threat to the core of Islam. Those who advocate Euro-Islam¹ – a combination of Islamic and European values and principles – stand in contrast to those who label Islam as the ultimate truth which does not change – a universal mathematics. And the idea of Euro-mathematics is uncommon. How, this book asks, does Islam turn into an all-encompassing truth such that it becomes a source of radicalization for some of Europe's Muslims? Recent integration debates throughout Europe are full of questions such as the introductory one above, increasingly raising awareness about a lack of proper integration and the subsequent continuous flourishing of parallel societies. Whereas in Germany “multiculturalism is dead,”² French Muslims face a burqa ban and headscarves are prohibited in schools.

Explaining radicalization remains as important as it remains puzzling. Developing an understanding of the drivers of radicalization is crucial to prevent and mitigate intercultural alienation, further develop immigration policies, redress integration failures, and to avoid dangerous oversimplifications. This is even more the case when considering the inflation of sensationalist media coverage and oversimplified side-taking. Whereas some European right-wing politicians justify anti-Muslim sentiment with the presence of Muslims in Europe claiming Muslims were anti-liberal and obedient to doctrines, the Islamophobia thesis³ – coming from the very opposite direction – blames ignorance and irrational fears of Europeans. Yet,

… [w]hile it is true that Muslims have become a lightning rod for xenophobia and that inappropriate generalizations are often made about views and intentions of a general population on the basis of the actions of extremists, it is simplistic to blame their problems on a sort of collective European psychosis.⁴

That increasing integration comes along with increasing radicalization underlines the limitation of one-sided explanations. If blame was to be put on Muslims and the nature of Islam, how can we account for the fact that second and third generations tend to be more radical than their parents? If blame was to be put on the natives' behavior towards Muslims, why is radicalization in Europe a relatively new phenomenon? Instead of risking oversimplification by ascribing one side a causal nature and determining the other side as the result, understanding the process of radicalization helps to avoid the accusatory nature of asking for why, and to shift the focus to asking for how. Initially, however, the literature has favored explanation and the mono-causality coming along with it.

Previously, the debate on radicalization of Muslims in Europe could be categorized into one of two opposing explanations: radicalization as caused by the nature of Islamists or Muslim culture⁵ on the one end, or as a consequence of external factors⁶ on the other. The chicken-egg character of this debate, the question of what came first,⁷ reveals the causality assumption underlying the two opposing streams. Although of contradictory nature, both perspectives thus share a major commonality. They seek to blame one side only, thereby feeding into polarization.⁸ Instead of disregarding one perspective or the other, the focus on the process of radicalization promises to enable understanding rather than explaining. It tackles the question not of why radicalization takes place, but how.

The concept

“‘[R]adical’ and ‘radicalization’ mean different things to different people.”⁹ The efforts to explain and understand radicalization have not been matched by efforts to define it. Peter Neumann, for example, describes the introduction of the radicalization concept after 9/11 as an attempt to broadly refer to “what goes on before the bomb goes off.”¹⁰ Recently, however, scholars set out to clarify definitional struggles that surround the contested term.

When defining radicalization, several intricacies of the concept have to be considered. First, there is the relative nature of the term: “to be radical is to be extreme relative to something.”¹¹ Second, the end-state of radicalization merits attention. Does radicalization lead to radical beliefs or ultimately radical action?

For the purpose of this book, radicalization will be defined as the process of progressively adopting more radical beliefs and ideas of Islam. It does not explain radical action of some individuals, but rather seeks to understand the radicalization of beliefs of Muslim communities in Europe. In order to discern what drives some individuals among a radical community to terrorist action, further-going research is needed. However, the adoption of radical beliefs and the resort to radical action are here understood as being related. How precisely they are related is beyond the scope of this book.

With regard to the relative nature of the concept, in this book “radical” is specified as a progressively more extreme adoption of Islamist beliefs that will be explained with the salience of an overarching Muslim identity in the theoretical chapter “Understanding radicalization.” A moderate Muslim might be a pious believer but will not adopt extreme Islamist beliefs to the extent that his or her other roles in society are disregarded. As the theory on identity loss will clarify, a moderate Muslim is understood as an individual that has a Muslim identity next to other multiple identities while a radical Muslim substitutes his or her multiple identities with an overarching Muslim identity.

Thus, radicalization is framed as a process. The interaction between person and situation is taken into account and the focus is set on the role of identity in the process of radicalization.

The field

Employing a discourse analytic methodology situates radicalization within a wider framework and helps to provide insights into the role discourse plays in this process. That there is a connection between language and identity formation is nothing new. Particularly within the last decades, there has been a surge in studies that focus on the function discourse has in the creation of identity. This book shifts the focus from the role discourse plays in identity creation to the role it plays in identity destruction. Discourse analysis of three puzzles guided by this methodological approach constitutes the empirical basis of this book.

The first field chapter tackles the puzzle that second and third generation Muslims in Europe tend to be more radical than their parents. Based on field research and analysis of the European public discourse it establishes a link between discourse and identity loss.

The second chapter tackles the puzzle that radicalization has become a matter in Europe only recently. Similar to the previous field chapter, an analysis of the public discourse helps to find a link between discourse and radicalization.

The third and final field chapter tackles the puzzle that some European countries feature more radical Muslim communities than others. In fact, countries where the topic of integration is at the forefront are more subject to the radicalization phenomenon than countries less progressive in this regard. Comparison and discourse analysis serve to solve this third puzzle, demonstrating how discourse can destroy identity.

The findings

The perception is widespread that excessive identification with a radical interpretation of Islam leads to extremism, not a lack thereof. Scholars assert that radicalization is the expression of too much identification with religion. Terrorism researchers such as Bruce Hoffmann explain radicalization in spite of lacking direct contact between radical Muslims in Europe and groups as Al Qaeda with the unifying element of excessive religious identification – a common ideology as the bonding glue for otherwise disparate actors.

Both – extreme identification and lack of identity – are closely connected, however. In fact, taken together they contribute to understanding the radicalization process. While identification with a collective social identity determines the border between in- and out-group, the belonging to a multiplicity of in-groups constitutes individuality. The unique combination of multiple belongings differentiates one individual from another. Thus, my individuality is the result of multiple identifications: I am daughter or son, girl- or boyfriend, teacher or student, European or non-European, etc.

The link between loss of individuality and extreme identification with only one social category characterizes the radicalization process. When one begins to identify with one of multiple categories only, he or she becomes part of a bigger collective and can no longer differentiate his or her individuality from the social in-group.

While individualist as well as structural approaches are limited by their neglect of the impact of one of two interrelated components, this book takes advantage of the trans-disciplinary use of the concept of identity and its focus on the interaction between individual and society.

Integration increases the risk of radicalization. Understanding the radicalization process as loss of identities helps to solve this puzzle. Only established identifications can be destroyed; non-existent categories cannot be lost. The field chapters find three steps in a radicalization spiral triggered by the linkage between the public European discourse and identity loss. On each level, discourse leads to identity loss with the result that only Islam comes to replace lost identities.

On a first level, the European discourse, as it is depicted in media outlets in several Western European countries with regards to the headscarf debate, draws borders between a private in-group and a public out-group, in which the identification with both of the two frames part of the identity of Muslims in Europe. This is especially the case for second and third generations of Muslims in Europe. The tendency to depict Muslim and European cultures in opposition leads to a situation where youth who are influenced by a blend between Muslim culture experienced in the private family sphere and Western culture experienced, for example, in school are suddenly depicted as experiencing clashing civilizations. Self-categorization as a European Muslim becomes impossible, because the discourse forces the individual to see its previously complementary private and public in-group turning into an in-group in opposition to an out-group.

On a second level, the public discourse¹² tends to ascribe one Islamic identity to such diverse categories as Sunni or Shiite, Algerian or Moroccan forms of Islam. In essence, Islam becomes tantamount to religious extremism. The identification with a particular category is equalized with a larger homogenized group, which at the same time is defined as an out-group in contrast to secular Europeans therewith, excluding the possibility of secular Muslims living in Europe. Criticism expressed by Muslims is depicted as a form of sympathizing with terrorism. A polarized discourse depicts the political in-group – identification with European democratic values – in opposition to religion and more specifically Islam. Debates revolving around cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, for example, reveal how Islam is depicted as standing in opposition to the European political system, i.e., democracy. Forced to decide between political in-group and religious affiliation, the individual lets the Islamic in-group take over the previous political in-group.

On a third level, the public discourse¹³ hinders identification through the equalization of national in-group and non-Muslim out-group. It is no longer possible for the European Muslim to distinguish between friend and enemy. This ambivalence of borders between friend and enemy necessary for self-categorization is consequential and apparent, especially in European countries where Muslims enjoy considerable freedom in exercising their religion. Particularly in Britain and the Netherlands, Muslims are left in a state of unbearable confusion when their identification with the respective country cannot tolerate occasions in which that same country goes to war with their fellows in Iraq, for example. Where the public discourse turns the war on terror into a war against Islam, European Muslims are confronted with deciding for an in-group and against an out-group, both of which previously constituted two layers of the Self. Just as in the case of the first two puzzles, enhanced integration intensifies this problematic.

Organization of the book

This book aims to provide answers not to questions of why radicalization of Europe's Muslims takes place, but how. It shifts the focus from an explanatory to an understanding approach. This qualitative research project is based on investigations and interviews of Europe's Muslims in four European countries: Germany, France, the Netherlands and Great Britain. A discourse analytic methodology helps to frame processes of radicalization and...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The state of the art
• 3 Defining radicalization
• 4 Researching radicalization
• 5 A new generation of Muslims in Europe
• 6 A puzzling historical context
• 7 An intra-European comparison
• 8 Understanding radicalization
• 9 Conclusion: the findings, implications, and applications
• Bibliography
• Index