Equalities of Oppression: How an Entrenching of Terrorism Laws Harms us All

By Dr. Asim Qureshi, Research Director at CAGE International

There have been at least two statements circulated by Muslim imams and groups in the last ten days. The first was signed and distributed by over eighty imams as general advice to Muslim communities in how to respond to the anti-Muslim pogroms – being confident in themselves and their communities. The second, distributed more informally across social media channels, was released as a Statement by Greater Manchester Muslims without any specific affiliations being stated. While organised statements and responses by Muslim community leadership are to be welcomed due to the need to help deliver guidance to communities, such statements should look to the future of Muslim life in the UK beyond the immediacy of scenes of rioting nationalists targeting mosques. 

Since the ascent of the Terrorism Act 2000, there has been a structural violence that has embedded itself against Muslim communities. As catalogued consistently by our team at CAGE International, there exists in the UK a very real two-tier system of laws where terrorism laws, in particular, target Muslim communities. From being disproportionality detained at ports of entry and exit under terrorism laws, through to the almost exclusive use of citizenship deprivation cases against our communities– the law is felt in its discriminatory nature. What is key to understand, is that this is not an incorrect application of the law, but actually the way the law was purposely designed to operate – from its inception through to its operation – it was always intended for Muslims. 

Calls for the proscription of the largely defunct English Defence League (EDL) does little to end the organising of racist riots and attacks against Muslim communities – especially if we understand the EDL as the final manifestation of a narrative-making that stems from the media and political class – the narrative they feed from is not exceptional, it is ubiquitous. Thus, calling for more use of proscription laws – the same laws that are politically used to serve the purpose of delegitimising resistance movements abroad and supporting genocidal states such as Israel – do not serve any purpose other than to position them within the rule of law, rather than an abhorrent bastardisation of fundamental justice. 

Care must be taken in relation to calls for the use of legislation to deal with hate speech and calling for increased legislation in this area. The historical reality of such calls is that they are often over policed in racialised ways in order to inhibit people of colour from expressing themselves truthfully to their own beliefs and values. Two years after the ascent of the Race Relations Act 1965 which was intended to protect Black and Asian communities, among the first individuals to be convicted of racial offences were prominent black activist Michael X and a group of five Bengali men (described as Pakistanis in the media) in 1969.  Today we see individuals being prosecuted for satirical uses of a raccoon emoji or coconuts in order to make political points – but are being treated by the police as being racially aggravated offences. Even a cursory look at British colonial history will show how laws such as the Blasphemy laws in Pakistan have been consistently used for the purposes of power to express its own interests as opposed to their stated reasons for enactment. The joint letter by the imams mentioned above calls for the element of intention to be removed from incitement to religious hatred – but surely this is a double-edged sword in a racialised environment where the IHRA definition of anti-semitism is so consistently being weaponised against those critiquing the apartheid settler colonial genocidal state of Israel.

The reality of racism in the UK is that the police, judges, journalists and politicians do not recognise the root causes of the far-right as being an issue, because they see their own views being reflected in the most basic narrative points that the far-right hold on to. Discussion points on immigration, on the place of Islam in the public space, the perceived dangers posed by young black men and women are all part of the everyday racisms that are ubiquitously perpetuated at every single level of British society. Thus, when we call for an increased use of laws that predominantly impact on people of colour, we normalise a system of violence by acquiescing its existence for ourselves. Rather, our consistent call should be the complete abolishment and repeal of racialised policing. 

Words such as ‘terrorism’, ‘extremism’ and ‘radicalisation’ have largely become irrelevant because the mission creep of the War on Terror has led to increased pre-crime securitisation in almost every single part of public and private life. As Timothy Snyder writes in On Tyranny:

Extremism certainly sounds bad, and governments often try to make it sound worse by using the word terrorism in the same sentence. But the word has little meaning. There is no doctrine called extremism. When tyrants speak of extremists, they just mean people who are not in the mainstream—as the tyrants themselves are defining that mainstream at that particular moment.

Most recently, we have seen the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announcing that she intends to include ‘extreme misogyny’ in the category of ‘extremism’ – making such categorisation even more irrelevant and from the way we have seen the policing and narrative-making around ‘grooming gangs’ – another categorisation that will be racialised. 

Amrit Wilson and Sumanta Roy explore this further in relation to violence against women and girls (VAWG). In their work they found that funds were redirected by the state from women’s groups to Muslim groups under Preventing Violent Extremism programmes, which they believe had a knock-on effect of allowing for increases in VAWG. Traditional funding routes for women’s organisations were closed, and instead religious groups dealing with VAWG were directed towards Prevent funding streams, forcing their hand into becoming involved with the programme if they desired to tackle the issues they saw within their communities. This was further evidenced by Wilson and Roy in showing how a Community Leadership Fund prioritised Muslim women’s groups that were taking on, “violent extremist influences,” _but as they were told by a community worker from Leeds, _“It's not about women at all but about supporting those who do not criticise government policies.” The authors summarise the position well: 

“...it would appear that in the new state and media discourses, the measure of Muslim women’s ‘empowerment’ is not whether they are able to confront or escape domestic violence but whether they can be involved as the state’s allies in the surveillance which is central to the ‘War on Terror’.”

In a leaked document obtained by the advocacy group CAGE International, two VAWG practitioners wrote policy and practice recommendations for the UK government on the connections between ‘radicalisation’ and ‘interpersonal violence’. The document was produced in collaboration with representatives from VAWG groups, but also in discussion with Prevent and social care teams. 

Creating new categories of offence that do not deal with the structural inequalities of society do little other than to harm the most vulnerable communities even further. Further, the use of terrorism laws would only exceptionalise a certain type of behaviour by the far-right, thus normalising the discourse of everyday racism and great replacement theory by being able to claim that the law operates to tackle the far-right. The problem is, to hold the baseline racism to account, means that it would require turning the gaze on every single public institution from politicians in both major parties, through to the media and ultimately in the way these views are policed.

Everything is a choice in this situation. And what we see so palpably, is that the choice is to reframe the pogroms as being rooted in genuine fears - except those fears are constructed ubiquitously through the state. It is a choice to call them ‘anti-immigration protests’ by politicians and the media – rather than calling a movement so clearly steeped in racism what it is: racist. 

Ultimately we should turn our gaze on those institutions that have provided the fertile ground for the far-right to grow by planting the seeds of anti-immigration policies, the threat of black bodies, and the threat posed by Muslims to wider society. None of this emerged in a vacuum, and only by serious acknowledgement of the structural root causes of all this violence, can there be any chance of addressing its final manifestation in the riots and pogroms we saw spreading chaos across the UK. As my colleagues at CAGE International wrote as our response to the far-right: 

Identify the true perpetrators: We must not allow the media and politicians to use ‘far-right’ agitators as a scapegoat for their actions. The alliance of lobbyists, politicians, journalists, social commentators involved must be held to account for their role in fomenting racial hatred through sensationalist headlines, manufactured moral panics and discriminatory laws.

By limiting our focus on the far-right and seeking equality in oppressive state structures, it would ultimately be an act of self-cannibalism, as the entrenchment of the national security state would inevitably be turned back around to our own communities. Concern on the blowback to our communities is the very minimum we should expect of ourselves – rather – our positioning should be far more radical. As Muslims, the onus is on us to change society for the better, and that ultimately means dismantling all the systems and structures of oppression that wilfully perpetuate a divide between communities – it is to power we should aim this change, not seek power’s conflicted benevolence. 

Photo by James Eades on Unsplash