Young British Muslims, Counter-Terrorism and the State: Contesting the Policy Turn

Abstract

Over the past decade national security has been at the forefront of political debate and policy-making. The terrorist attacks conducted by Islamic Fundamentalists inspired by al-Qaeda in New York in September 2001, Istanbul in November 2003, Madrid in March 2004 and London in July 2005 all serve as reminders of the capability of determined groups to puncture the myth that the nation state can ensure the security and safety of its citizens. Insofar as specific responses to the threat from terrorist networks have varied across different nations, in all Western nations counter-terrorism measures have been reviewed and augmented. In the United Kingdom, a veritable raft of counter-terrorism legislation emerged after 9/11 to combat what was politically defined as a ‘new’ and highly lethal form of terrorism (see Leitzinger, 2004; Peters, 2004). What has been striking about many of the legal developments in the United Kingdom has been the pre-emptive nature of law which has been defined to intervene early in the cycle to prevent future attacks (see McCulloch and Pickering, 2010; Mythen and Walklate, 2010). The driving logic of pre-emption is to prevent harms before they materialise, yet the tendency in government, policing and intelligence circles to ask the ‘What if?’ question has led to a blurring of the lines between fact and fiction, the real and the imaginary.