Shiv Malik gives us a well-chronicled background to the motivations that may have lay behind the 7/7 bombings. He is less good at adding to our understanding of why one or two individuals follow a certain trajectory, as opposed to the many others in similar circumstances who do not.
Malik tells us that Mohammad Sidique Khan, a young and relatively unremarkable second-generation migrant, had issues with identity and family, and took refuge in religion. This led him to embrace fundamentalist Wahhabism, and ultimately resulted in his signing up to al Qaeda and becoming the ringleader of the 7/7 bombers. This suggests that the cult-like status of political Islam in Britain, combined with a crisis of identity in young Muslims, is where our future problems will lie—as Khan's profile was not unique. These are problematic hypotheses, but the article fails to pull together the causal links.
For those familiar with the segregated south Asian communities in the north of England, there is much in Malik's description of Beeston and the Khan family that will resonate. What is surprising is that Malik devotes considerable space to the identity question but fails to tell us what is so unusual about this particular case. Dislocation and anger among young males growing up as racial minorities are commonplace wherever legal equality has not yet started to resonate as "felt equality," in David Goodhart's words.
Malik's emphasis on failed identity is particularly unconvincing when he comes to his tacit support for a theory that states that British race riots occur around 30 years after the arrival of a minority, as a second generation gets established and then frustrated with its status: Jewish riots in east London in the 1930s, the Afro-Caribbean riots of 1981 and disorder in Oldham in 2001. But this lumping together of public disorder with identity politics does not hold water. The Jewish riots followed a period of increasing antisemitism across Europe, and its importation by Moseley's brownshirts was an important factor in raising tensions. The Afro-Caribbean riots of 1981 were caused, according to the Scarman commission, in large part by poor policing, and what we might today describe as institutional racism.
Malik's thesis, while provocative, will be welcome in Whitehall circles. There is an increasing tendency on the part of government (as opposed to the security services) to see identity crises as the foundation for violent extremism, and to focus policy on improving integration. This does little to challenge fundamentalist political Islam, which ultimately uses Islam itself as a basis for the righteousness of its cause. I subscribe to a view that al Qaeda and its terrorist variants reflect an political ideology distinct from lower-order issues to do with identity and frustration about race and traditional family structures. This does not imply that I think that public policy should not be focused on the lower-order matters.
Where I agree with Malik is that the eradication of jihadi terrorism is going to be a long haul. The limitations of democracy on security matters, the extent to which fundamentalist Islamism has permeated the mindset of British Muslims, and the operational franchising of terrorist networks—all make it harder to use traditional counter-terrorism measures. Our experience with the IRA has been useful for the forensic elements of the strategy. What we lack in this pack of cards is the ace—as we can no more deliver the demands of political Islamism than put bin Laden into a democratic Saudi Arabia.
