Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror
December 23, 2013
Following the 9/11 attacks, America shifted its focus in the War on Terror towards homegrown terrorism, which intensified after the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Using global sources, Kundnani, a visiting fellow at Leiden University (Netherlands), sees the same counter-terror tactics developed by the Bush Administration now employed by his successor, monitoring Muslim citizens and residents, and using informants and double agents to keep tabs on those who might share an ideology with jihadists. Noting several European terror triumphs, Kundnani aptly examines the four stages of evolution towards jihadismâ"preradicalization, identification, indoctrination, and action"ânow monitored by big-budgeted international security agencies watching lone wolves and sleeper cells before any eruption. In America and England, Kundnani identifies bands of young Muslims rethinking their identities in the wake of society revoking "their social white card": being treated like blacks, suffering hate crimes, and losing civil liberties. He also analyzes similarly critical topics, such as police entrapment, state surveillance, dissent and extremism, fear and suspicion in Muslim communities, and the right to assembly. Measuring his ideas against global terror experts, Kundnani offers hard alternatives to international security agencies, policing trends, and options for reasonable dissent in his thoughtful, rational plea to curb the War on Terror.
January 15, 2014
A widely researched argument about why the war on terror will have no success unless the West stops blaming Islam and starts locating the roots of political dissent. In fighting the war on terror, Kundnani (Terrorism Studies/John Jay Coll.; The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain, 2007) sees the governments of the U.S. and Britain as employing the same wrongheaded surveillance tactics that were created by the Russians and sharpened by the CIA, then the FBI, in cracking down on dissidents during the Cold War and the civil rights era. The problem, writes the author, is that Muslims have become an "ideal enemy," perceived by mainstream American and British societies as unable to assimilate properly due to the essential flaw in their religion: the inability to separate church and state. Policymakers view extremism as a "perversion of Islam's message," the twisting of what is essentially a benign religion into "an antimodern, totalitarian, political ideology." The truth is that most people are peace-loving and assimilationist, and Muslim communities have become a kind of "Asian model minority." Yet some of the youth, thwarted in their political expression, lash out in extremism--e.g., in the reaction to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the plight of the Palestinians against Israeli aggression. In the crackdown on anti-extremism, scholars of "radicalization"--i.e., the process by which Muslims move toward terrorism--zero in on a spurious "cultural-psychological predisposition" toward violence and disaffection that offers intelligence and law enforcement agencies a framework to work with but does not address what Kundnani believes is at the root of the unrest: poverty and oppression. His examples of the pernicious reach of many policing tools are useful, such as the Prevent model launched in Britain in 2004, provoking questions about privacy and discrimination. Kundnani frankly and refreshingly moves away from ideological symptoms and toward political causes in tackling extremism.
COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
April 1, 2014
Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), which has served as the linchpin for an open-ended and continuing war on terror. Unlike traditional wars, the enemy in this battle is not a country or organization but a set of ideas that have been labeled as "radical Islam." As a result, vast networks of organizations and individuals in the West have become obsessed with preventing the spread of this ideology by all means necessary. In this well-researched and crisply written book, Kundnani (terrormism studies, John Jay Coll. of Criminal Justice, City Univ. of New York; The End of Tolerance) explores the genesis and development of the domestic fronts of the war on terror in the United States and the UK. The author explains how the ideology of the war on terror has distorted these two countries' approach to their Muslim populations and has contributed to both counterproductive counterterrorism advances and the concomitant intensification of Islamophobia in the West. He describes how both the conservative and liberal modes of thinking about radical Islam have failed to account for or address underlying social and political circumstances. VERDICT An immensely useful book for academics, policymakers, and all those interested in understanding and reshaping the war on terror.--Nader Entessar, Univ. of South Alabama, Mobile
Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.