The implication of the regular references to ‘Islamist terrorism’ in the Government literature is simply not thought through. Islamism is a form of political Islam that is a well‑established and growing trend both within Muslim communities in Europe and particularly in the Islamic world. Political Islam comes in many strains and certainly not all are marked by an attachment to violence.^[16] As we have noted, the term ‘Islamism’ has been used especially since the early 1990s to identify movements that are based on an assumption that Islam has a predominant political mission. The essence of such movements is their view that the ability to practise Islam fully as a religion is dependent upon the ability to create an Islamic political system. Western political systems, as well as the current political systems in the Muslim world, are seen as obstacles to this. Some variants of Islamism, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which is powerful in the Middle East, and of which the Palestinian Hamas is a component, do subscribe to violence as a method of establishing their aims. In the Middle East, Islamist parties have had great success at the polls in the recent past, as evidenced by elections in Palestine, Egypt and Bahrain. This prominence gives supporters of the Islamist movement in Europe a high degree of legitimacy. The Muslim Brotherhood works within Mosques and is well represented in Britain through the Muslim Association of Britain, which is a component of the Muslim Council of Britain, a group often seen by the Government as representative of the Muslim communities. This is not to say that the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain supports terrorism within the country. However, its support for terrorism in the Middle East, in particular against Israel, does show that there is a great blurring at the boundaries of where ‘violent extremism’ begins and ends.

An example of this problem is Sheikh Yusef Al‑Qaradawi, who is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Is he a moderate because he condemns terrorism in Britain or an extremist because he supports it against Israel? In July 2004, Al‑Qaradawi was asked on the BBC why he supported suicide bombings in Israel. His answers were instructive:

The enemy in the case of Israelis can be civilians as he explains in a highly gendered statement, ‘Israeli women are not like women in our society because Israeli women are militarized’. As a result he continues, ‘I regard this type of martyrdom operation as justice of Allah almighty. Allah is just. Through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak what the strong do not possess and that is the ability to turn their bodies into bombs like the Palestinians do.’^[18] Al‑Qaradawi has a major influence on Muslims through his teachings, which are broadcast through his web site (Islamonline), and his regular television program on Al Jazeera, ‘Law and Life’. He has been regarded by many as a moderate and has shared platforms with many Western politicians including former United States President Bill Clinton and the former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone. The latter has made an extensive defence both of Al‑Qaradawi and of his own association with him. At the time of the BBC interview, Al‑Qaradawi appeared at a London conference organised by the Mayor and when objections were made to his presence due to his position on suicide bombing, Livingstone’s defence was posed in these terms:

This statement from the Mayor of London, while not constituting approval of the position of Al‑Qaradawi, as he later makes clear, nonetheless presents a rather neutral rendering of it. As Livingstone explains his own position, he appears to equate suicide bombings with the military policy of Israel: ‘it would be impossible to refuse to speak to a person like Dr Al‑Qaradawi who has no personal involvement in violence of any kind, but at the same time speak to an Israeli Government, which kills Palestinian civilians with modern weapons every week’.^[20] Despite Livingstone’s disavowal in the same interview of violence in the Palestinian‑Israeli conflict (‘I condemn violence in Israel and Palestine’), the Mayor is rather gentle with Al‑Qaradawi’s position. Thus, support for suicide bombings in the Israeli‑Palestinian conflict is constructed as just one opinion amongst others. As such, Livingstone appears to legitimise it as a policy choice. This policy choice if applied to Britain would no doubt come under the Government’s view of ‘violent extremism’.

Al‑Qaradawi’s support for suicide bombing as a legitimate tactic against Israel is not an isolated position but is commonly held amongst many segments of political Islam. It is a position that has its roots in the methodology of a political movement that is founded on the distinction between Muslims and Non‑Muslims, as well as the distinction between full Muslims and failed Muslims. The prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, sought to create a Muslim vanguard that would overcome the false Muslims and offer new leadership to Non‑Muslims.^[21] Central to his argument is the use of the concept of Jahilliyyah, which originally referred to the period of ignorance before the Prophet’s mission in the seventh century. Qutb adapts this concept to the contemporary period: in this account the leadership of the Muslim world, both political and religious, is in the state of Jahilliyyah. As a result the Muslim community is

Qutb contrasts the state of the Muslim world with

However, while material issues are not unimportant, Muslims must ‘have something to offer besides material progress’ and this ‘faith and a way of life must take concrete form in human society — in other words, in a Muslim society’.^[24] The main obstacle to achieving this is that the ‘whole world is steeped in Jahilliyyah’.^[25] Qutb explains his very modernist use of the term. First, according to this view, it takes the form of a ‘rebellion against God’s sovereignty on earth’.^[26] Second, ‘it is now not, in that simple and primitive form of the ancient Jahillyyah, but takes the form of claiming the right to create values to legislate rules of collective behaviour, and to choose any way of life rests with men, without any regard to what God has prescribed’.^[27] He regards both capitalism and communism as being similar in emphasising the priority of mankind over God. The task of Muslims is to aim for international leadership to liberate humanity from this secular materialism through a revival of Islam. A revival of a genuine Muslim society can become a model for the whole world. As all Muslim countries have been infected by Jahilliyyah the central task is to remove the corrupt leaderships.

To prove this point, Qutb contrasts the actions of politicians of his day with the practices of the Prophet, as developed during his leadership in Medina and then in Mecca (622‑632 AD). It is at this point in the seventh century that Qutb constructs the pure Islamic society and it is to this pure moment that Muslims need to return. The means of doing this is Jihad, which is seen as both a religious and a military struggle. Nor does he see the use of Jihad as confined to defensive action, as ‘this diminishes the greatness of the Islamic way of life’.^[28] Rather Jihad ‘is a means of establishing the Divine Authority’.^[29] Initially this will be within a Muslim country that then becomes the ‘headquarters for the movement for Islam’,^[30] which can in turn be the springboard to bring Islamic rule to the rest of the world. Qutb emphasises that Islam uses force to remove all the barriers to the creation of a Muslim society. The ‘Jahili’ leadership is such a barrier and exists in both Muslim and non‑Muslim countries. The aim is to create a society in which individuals will be ‘free from the servitude to men and have gathered together under the servitude of God and to follow only the Shari’ah of God’.^[31] This is a universal struggle in which national and ethnic differences are to be disregarded.

Qutb’s approach is a program for an international political Islam, the purpose of which is the creation of a universal Islamic political system. Violence can be justified. Indeed it is an indispensable means to the achievement of such a system.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928, and although it was banned there, through its front organisations it is a powerful opposition in society and in the National Assembly. It also received a boost when its Palestinian affiliate, Hamas, won the Palestinian election in 2006.^[32] It has branches in most Arab countries. It has an influence amongst Muslims throughout the world. Al‑Qaradawi is not therefore simply an individual of some prominence within the Muslim world but rather part of a political movement that, like all other political movements, vies for support and attempts to create organisations.