Jihadi John and London's culture of gang violence

The world of Mohammed Emwazi, the man alleged to be the IS executioner nicknamed Jihadi John, was not an easy one to grow up in. Emwazi was born in Kuwait in 1988. His family are from Jahra, a town near Kuwait City. He’s of Bedoon origin, which in Arabic literally means “without.” Bedoons in Kuwait are marginalised with no citizenship rights, a situation that has not changed in over 50 years—making them effectively stateless. And, despite living in one of the richest nations in the world, they are poor. Emwazi's family moved to Britain in 1994 and received asylum in 1996. He grew up in various parts of West London, most recently on the infamous Mozart Estate in Queen's Park—a pocket of urban poverty nicknamed “crack city” in the 1990s. It has since suffered from drive-by shootings, drug wars and gang violence. Housing nearly 12,000 people in two square kilometres of high-density accommodation, the area including the Mozart Estate ranks 624th out of 625 on the Greater London Authority’s wellbeing index. Emwazi’s family were neither poor nor wealthy. His father, according to reports, was a mini-cab driver. Poverty does not appear to have driven his son's radicalisation. But the areas in which Emwazi grew up sit alongside pockets of extreme wealth.

He is alleged to have been a member of the “London Boys”, a gang focused on north-west London, which carried out violent robberies to raise funds for the militant group al-Shabaab in Somalia. He is said to have once kidnapped two teenagers at gunpoint in retaliation for a gang attack on his younger brother Omar, dumping them beside the M1 in their underwear. (This has been disputed.)

A number of extremists in recent years have had links with gangs, such as Bilal Berjawi, an alleged member of the London Boys. He came to Britain as a child from Lebanon, but had his British citizenship revoked, and was killed in a US drone strike on the outskirts of Mogadishu in 2012. Mohamed Sakr, British-born with Egyptian parents, was a friend of Emwazi who lived next door to Berjawi in London. Sakr also had his citizenship stripped, and he was killed a few weeks after Berjawi in a US drone strike in Somalia. In 2009, Emwazi, Berjawi and Sakr travelled to Tanzania, in what they claimed was a safari trip. They were denied entry and eventually returned back to the UK.

I grew up in a similar area to Emwazi in Camden, North London. Some of the men I knew in the 1990s turned to drugs, gangs and violence. One, Ibrahim Magag, was born in Somalia, and moved as a child with his family to Britain. He grew up in Camden, and had alleged connections with al-Shabaab in Somalia. By 2013, he had become one of the UK’s most closely monitored terror suspects—he absconded from a Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures notice by jumping into a black cab on Boxing Day in 2013. There has been little information about him since his escape, and today his whereabouts are unknown.

Another I recall is Mahdi Hashi. Hashi had been granted British nationality after arriving with his family from Somalia in 1995. He grew up in Camden, and attended Haverstock School, where Ed Miliband was educated. He was involved in local youth groups, and became a carer. He ended up returning to Somalia, it is alleged, to fight with al-Shabaab. In 2012, he appeared in a New York court on terror-related charges. He had his British citizenship stripped on the grounds of national security, though he has never been charged with any crime in Britain. He has been held in solitary confinement in New York for more than two years, and is currently awaiting trial.

What connects the lives of these young Muslims is alienation. They feel rootless, disenfranchised and disillusioned. I know from personal experience that tension pervades such areas in London. Sometimes it comes out late at night when youths take over the bus with music blaring or the daily grind with police. Such tension creates feelings of being cut-off. Further, there has been a sharp rise in the Muslim prison population, which has doubled in a decade to 12,000. Muslims represent 4.7 per cent of the population in England and Wales, yet they make up 13 per cent of the prison population. In London, 27 per cent of all prisoners are Muslim, more than double the 12 per cent of Londoners who are Muslim.

In the 1990s gangs were often exclusive to a particular ethnic group—many turf wars were ethnic-based. But growing up, I saw many gangs become mixed and better reflect the area in which they were situated. By the mid-2000s patterns shifted again, with ex-gang members transiting into radical Islamist circles, as more became aware of their Islamic identity. Some listened to radical preachers, others attended rallies, as Emwazi apparently did during his university days.

The lure of radical Islam was enticing enough to transcend tribal differences, and to connect the Somali refugee with the second-generation Pakistani, to the Irish, Afro-Caribbean converts—it gave them a shared sense of brotherhood, of meaning, a voice, and it gave them certainty. This often leaves their parents bewildered—unable to make sense of an interpretation of their faith ripped out of its cultural context—serving to widen the generational distance.

Take the Woolwich killers. Michael Adebolajo, from a hard-working Nigerian Christian family, converted to Islam as a first-year politics student at Greenwich University. He was soon politicised, moving in London’s radical Islamist circles, moving away from a youth of gangs, smoking cannabis and dealing drugs. In 2010, Adebolajo headed to Somalia to join al-Shabaab. He was arrested by Kenyan authorities en route to Somalia, and was deported back to London. His accomplice Michael Adebowale also grew up in a Nigerian Christian family, before his conversion to Islam. He quickly spiralled out of control. Neighbours recall a “lovely boy” who was kind to the elderly, who ended up in the Woolwich Boys, a notorious gang composed mostly of Somalis who had come to dominate that area of south-east London. Both men became angry, wayward and they moved from gang life to a deadly embrace with radical Islam.

Becoming British is overwhelming for many young Muslims. For some, first gangs, and then radical Islamist groups become a means of escaping their uncertain worlds. If we are to deal with the threat of radicalisation, then we must understand these parallel worlds that exist all around us.