My starting point is the British Government’s attempts to grapple with the issue. The British Government’s approach to the issue of terrorism ‘in the name of Islam’ has been the attempt to make a distinction between ‘Islamist terrorism’ and the mainstream Islam of the ‘Muslim communities’. This position is well summed up in one of the opening paragraphs of a document tabled in Parliament by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in July 2006, Countering International Terrorism: The United Kingdom’s Strategy:

In this account there is a clear distinction between ‘Muslim communities here and abroad’ and ‘a tiny minority’ who ‘are using a distorted and unrepresentative version of Islam to justify violence’. The slippage between the ‘radicalized individuals’ to the ‘tiny minority’ perhaps hints at the difficulty of deciding what the critical test of ‘a distorted and unrepresentative version of Islam’ actually is. In this and other related government documents there appears to be a view that individuals in the Muslim community are in danger of being won over to this form of Islam. If this is so then we must assume that there is a distinct form of Islam that already exists, and indeed the text of the strategy document names the threat as emanating from ‘Islamist terrorists’.^[5] This term is explained in a footnote in rather problematic terms:

This definition is rather confused as it conflates movements that regard Islamic political structures as a necessary condition for the practice of Islam with those who advocate models of Islamic governance as a possible choice. However, Islamism is useful in identifying a form of political Islam that is categorical, makes no distinction between politics and religion, regards Islam as a complete, unchangeable and finished system and is usually associated with authoritarianism.^[7] The choice of Islamism as a way of describing such movements was on the whole adopted by scholars to avoid the misleading description of ‘fundamentalism’, which became common in the media following the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

The Government is also keen to stress the assumption that there is a genuine, undistorted and representative form of Islam, which can be identified and used as a counterweight to the Islamist version. This approach in my view produces a confused and contradictory policy towards the ‘Muslim communities’. I will argue that the Government’s binary division between an assumed genuine Islam and a distorted version is flawed.

In the same year Countering Islamic Terrorism was produced, the Department of Education and Skills published a government guidance document entitled Promoting Good Campus Relations, which is aimed at helping administrators of universities and colleges engage with Muslim students. The document seeks to help Higher Education Administrators (working with ‘the vast majority of students on campus’) to isolate and challenge what it calls ‘violent extremism’.

The document then explains that ‘violent extremist activity in the name of Islam is justified by using a literal, distorted and unrepresentative interpretation of Islamic texts to advocate and justify violence in order to achieve fundamental change in society’.^[9] This view is further emphasised by adding that a ‘clear distinction should be made between these extremist individuals and the faith that they might claim to be associated with or represent … Moreover propagating false perceptions about the values and beliefs of Islam potentially adds to a vicious circle that may fuel discrimination and Islamophobia’.^[10] Such statements reinforce the view expressed in Countering International Terrorism that terrorist danger arises from those who propagate ‘false perceptions’ of Islam, which are to be regarded as ‘distorted and unrepresentative’. In this narrative the character of the distortion of Islam is identified as ‘a literal’ interpretation. Again the character of the terrorist threat is named as ‘Islamist terrorism’.^[11]

The document then outlines the way in which the Government thinks that such ideas spread in universities. It suggests that there are several catalysts that individually, or in combination, can be responsible for propelling individuals towards violent extremism. Amongst these it cites:

These factors, it is suggested, create a pool of individuals who will attract the attention of existing extremists who will then, in the terms of the document, ‘groom’ individuals into their agenda. Universities and colleges, it is said, provide environments in which extremist individuals can develop networks through student societies and the like. This pool of potential extremists is composed, according to this view, of both those who are just interested in exploring their faith and those who actively seek extremist views. In either case the involvement of such students in faith‑based societies or attendance at Friday prayers can expose them to recruiters who might be ‘charismatic radical speakers’, or whose ‘scholarly background’ might be ‘emphasized in order to give them greater credibility in the eyes of students’.^[13] There is concern that through these societies and religious activities students might be subject to peer pressure and bullying as those ‘who have a differing viewpoint can be afraid to speak and differentiate themselves from the majority’.^[14] The sudden turn from individual recruiters peddling a ‘literal, distorted and unrepresentative interpretation of Islamic texts’ to a majority within a given student society is not explained. Nevertheless, according to the process described in the document, the views have become representative at least of this group, which will now attempt to pressure the individual into accepting the majority view. This scenario is in reality quite likely, as the many Islamic societies may well be within the orbit of one variant or other of political Islam or indeed Islamist groups. Unfortunately, instead of tackling this sensitive issue, the document falls back on pathology. In this account the individual is constructed as prey to be seized by the clever extremist. The student is seen as an individual at risk from infection. Extremism is a virus that appears to be capable of being passed from one individual to another. The remedy is to break the cycle of infection. University administrators must therefore vet literature on the campus, note speakers being invited to meetings and consider inappropriate use of the internet.^[15] Strangely, university administrators are directed to these technical issues rather than to the more complex task of how to deal with an influential political movement, which while not necessarily in itself violent, may have an ambivalent attitude to violence in some circumstances.