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-2 (1), 2009 European Journal of Economic and Political Studies

Socio-Economic, Political and Theological


Deprivations’ Role in the Radicalization of the British
Muslim Youth: The Case of Hizb ut-Tahrir

‹hsan Y›lmaz*

ABSTRACT
This paper studies the Muslim youth experience in Britain vis-a-vis vulnerability to
extremist ideologies with a specific focus on the Hizb ut-Tahrir. In Britain, there is the
increasingly significant phenomenon of the indigenous-born, native-language-speaking
Muslim youth politicized by a radicalized Islam. In the British case, socio-economic and
political deprivation as far as Muslims are concerned is an everyday reality. But several
other minorities suffer also from these deprivations. This paper argues that in addition to
social, economic and political deprivations, Muslims in Britain have to also face multiple
discriminations especially in a post-9/11 and 7/7 climate and theological deprivation. Last
but not the least international incidents negatively affecting Muslims all over the world,
perceived government bias against Muslims, at home and abroad, linked to Palestinian
question and Rushdie incident of 1989 make young British Muslims more inclined to radi-
calism. In this context, HT’s discourse becomes attractive to the young Muslims who suffer
from identity issues, exclusion, racism and discrimination. HT’s easily accessible literature
provides an alternative source of political and historical information and theological inter-
pretation.

Key Words: Radicalism, British Muslims, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Deprivation, Discrimination,


Western Foreign Policy

* Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Fatih University, Istanbul, Turkey. ihsanyilmaz@yahoo.com

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Introduction
Over the last two to three decades, religion has ascended the political agenda and
become racialized. Thus, the focus of British academia and discourse on racialized
minorities has transformed from ‘colour’ in the 1950s and 1960s (Banton 1955) to ‘race’ in
the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (Rex and Moore 1967; Smith 1989) to ‘ethnicity’ in the 1990s
(Mododd et al 1997) and to ‘religion’ in the present time (Runnymede Trust 1997). With
the significant growth of the Muslim populations in the West (Peach 1990; Vertovec and
Peach 1997), coupled with the politicization and ideologisation of Islam, religion has
become be a more important variable for socio-geographic investigation than race or eth-
nicity, at least as far as Muslims are concerned (Peach 2006: 653).1
In Britain, and also in Western Europe, there is the increasingly significant phenome-
non of the indigenous-born, native-language-speaking Muslim youth politicized by a rad-
icalized Islam. This is in contrast to those who argue that by alluding to an Islamic state,
political Islam has largely failed to achieve its intentions to bring about a wholesome solu-
tion to global problems (Abbas 2007: 431). Today, young British Muslims experience
“exclusion, marginalization, disempowerment, media bias, political rhetoric, far right hos-
tility, perceptions in relation to British and US foreign policy, a lack of appropriate Muslim
leadership in Britain and a regressive interpretation and application of Islam as a reactive
rather than a pro-active experience” (Abbas 2007: 430).
Moreover, recent events like the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, bombings
in Indonesia, Turkey, Spain, and England, and the ongoing crisis in the Middle East have
shifted the way Muslims are perceived in the West. Thus, at present, a great deal of ten-
sion between Muslims who live in the West and the rest of the American and European
populations is easily observable. As a result, “there has been an alarming increase in dis-
crimination against Muslims in Europe and the United States, due to both their religious
(i.e., Islam) and ethnic (Arab, Pakistani, etc.) backgrounds” (Cainkar 2004).
Hizbut ut-Tahrir (HT) benefits from all the above-mentioned factors in recruiting
young British Muslim youth in addition to taking advantage of growing anti-Americanism
and anti-Semitism worldwide. The HT actively promotes the clash of civilizations and the
destruction of what they view as American hegemony. While the U.S. has so far not
advanced any convincing arguments for either its invasion of Iraq or its subsequent man-
agement of the occupation, HT for its part has built a strong ideological case (Baran 2004).
Islamists were outraged by President Bush’s reference to the war on terrorism as a “cru-
sade” in September 2001. Similarly, when he declared that “you are either with us or
against us”, HT inferred from this comment and subsequently conveyed to its grassroots

1 The Censuses of Great Britain in 2001 included, for the first time since 1851, a question on religion. In the 2001 census, 40.6
million people, 71.2 per cent of the population, reported themselves as Christians, 1.6 million or 2.8 per cent as Muslims, 1
per cent as Hindu, 0.6 per cent as Sikhs, 0.5 per cent as Jewish and 0.3 per cent as Buddhist, Peach 'Muslims in the 2001
Census of England and Wales, Peach 2006: 655.

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elements that Bush meant “You are either with Western civilization and democracy, or
Islamic civilization” (Baran 2004).

The Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) in Britain


Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) was founded in 1952 by a Palestinian named Taqi ud-Din al-
Nabhani (1909–1979). Al-Nabhani asserted that Islam could only be revived if it was
restored as a comprehensive guide for daily life. He believed that most of his Muslim con-
temporaries’ lives were dominated by a mixture of Islamic, Western, socialist, nationalist,
partisan, regional and sectarian thoughts and emotions, leaving them detached from true
Islamic living. Al-Nabhani considered Western animosity to Islam as a constant ever since
the Crusades (Zeidan 2001). HT doctrine stipulates that the only way to re-establish the
kind of Islamic society promulgated by the Prophet Muhammad is to liberate Muslims
from the thoughts, systems and laws of kufr (non-believers), by replacing the Judeo-
Christian dominated nation-state system with a borderless umma (Baran 2004: 10-11).
Hizb ut Tahrir has constantly declared that “(e)xclusive to the Muslim world, our political
aim is the re-establishment of the Islamic Caliphate as an independent state.”2 According
to its official website the party “struggles in order to establish the State to implement Islam
in a radical and comprehensive manner.”3 It is an anti-systemic party and does not con-
sider democracy Islamic:
Hizb ut-Tahrir is working for an accountable government in the Muslim
world, where authority lies with the people, but not for a democracy - where sov-
ereignty is not for the Shariah and the process of legislation is open to external
interference. The Islamic ruling system, the Caliphate, allows and encourages
the accounting of the ruler and has provision for elections and consultation...
While the capitalist system advocates sovereignty in legislation for humankind,
the Islamic system advocates sovereignty in legislation for the Creator. For this
reason, democracy is not consistent with the Islamic system.4
Placing sovereignty with the Caliph and not the people, makes HT antidemocratic.
This is a critical and major difference with the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-i Islami,
who concede that while ultimate sovereignty belongs to God, it can be exercised by true
believers (Haqqani 2004: 36). The HT does not believe in East-West co-operation and
alliance of civilisations and puts, on the contrary, that:
The ‘Clash of Civilisations’ first discussed by Samuel Huntington is real and
inevitable. We endorse the notion that there is a civilisational difference between

2 http://www.hizb.org.uk/hizb/images/PDFs/HT_media_pack.pdf , p. 2.
3 http://english.hizbuttahrir.org/1-19-about-us.aspx
4 http://www.hizb.org.uk/hizb/images/PDFs/HT_media_pack.pdf , p. 12.

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Islam and the West and that the problem for the West is Islam and the problem
for Islam is the West. By arguing this, we also maintain Islam, as a universal ide-
ology, came for all of humankind, Muslim and Non-Muslims, and as such it is only
Islam that serves as a Rahma (mercy) for all mankind. As the western ideology
dominates the world today, the only challenge to it must come from Islam.5
The party official website reads that the party proceeds in the three periods and the
third period is “(t)he period of attaining and seizing the reins of power through the Ummah
in order to implement the ideology in a comprehensive manner, because it is forbidden
to seize partial power. Hence, the arrival at the ruling must be total and the implementa-
tion of Islam must be comprehensive.”6
HT has for over half a century been engaged in the war of ideologies, but it came to
benefit greatly from the post-September 11 atmosphere of divisiveness (Baran 2004: 10-
11). HT members claim ultimately to want freedom and justice, rather than violence. Since
it is not a terrorist organization, it is much more appealing to the young average Muslim.
In Western Europe, HT conveys a message of “justice” to Muslims alienated from main-
stream society, which it views as imperialistic and anti-Islamic (Baran 2004: 10-11).
In the 1970s, HT began operating in Western Europe, where it was able to take
advantage of the political openness of the region. Al-Khilafah Publications, HT’s print
media center, which produces HT leaflets and publications explaining the party’s philos-
ophy and its position on world events, is based in London (Baran 2004: 36). Since Britain
has not banned HT, the party has been able to operate in London with few limitations. HT
does not recruit people with less than a high school degree. It holds conferences and
demonstrations throughout the city and actively recruits in London schools. HT uses dif-
ferent names and shows up at legitimate Islamic students’ meetings and takes over the
agenda (Baran 2004: 37).
In Britain the HT appears to have gone through three distinct phases in its evolution.
It came to public notice with its call to hijack airplanes containing Israelis and Jews and
then embarked on a series of public confrontations, under the founding leadership of the
Syrian expatriate Omar al-Bakri Muhammad, and another Syrian expatriate, Farid Kassim.
These included well-publicized large-scale conferences at Wembley Conference Centre
and Trafalgar Square. It has sought to coerce moderate Muslim students into joining and
has intimidated Sikh, Hindu and Jewish students. Ultimately this brought it publicity and
considerable notoriety and eventually led to its banning by the National Union of Students
and by those universities where it was active. Omar al-Bakri was held in low esteem by
other Islamist leaders as a consequence of his bragging that led in the end to the dismissal
of al-Bakri, who left to found al-Muhajiroun with Saudi expatriate Muhammad al-Massari.

5 http://www.khilafah.com/index.php/about-us
6 http://english.hizbuttahrir.org/1-19-about-us.aspx

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HT thereafter embarked on a period of semi-clandestine recruitment and growth. HT


operates at two levels: clandestinely, recruiting mostly among students, and to a small
extent on the street (though not to the extent seen in the past); and through its communi-
cations modes, such as its web-based journal Khilafah and its communiqués (Whine 2004:
101). Now that it is barred from many mosques, its main vehicle for recruitment is through
Islamic or Study Circles. These meet at members’ homes or community centers and gen-
erally involve five or so aspirant members meeting regularly under the supervision of an
experienced member. An indoctrination period usually lasts for up to two years, at which
point the member is accepted into the organization. Although its members are secretive,
HT leaders deny this. Senior members’ and correspondents’ email addresses are listed in
Khilafah, and they actively seek media interviews. HT uses the Internet for promotion of its
ideology, and email and face-to-face meetings for command and control. Communiqués
and press releases published by the group are all published in the same format and with
the same type of wording. Initially, HT sought to recruit only among students. HT does not
now recruit on the streets or in the prisons. HT went someway down recruiting the disen-
chanted from the streets but has now reverted to recruiting in the universities. HT is not a
populist movement like the Brotherhood or other Islamist movements; it is elitist. To appeal
to established people, HT also promotes a progressive line on family issues and one which
is designed to appeal to educated elites (Whine 2004: 102-106).
Overwhelming majority of educated British Muslims have distanced themselves from
HT and have harshly criticised it:
The more people know about Hizb-ut-Tahrir, it often seems, the more they
are likely to be suspicious of it. In light of the group’s insistent proclamation that
it is completely non-violent, why should this be? There are at least three reasons:
ideology, attitudes and behaviour. Its commitment to the idea of an Islamic state
(caliphate) as the focus of Muslims’ prime allegiance makes it unpopular with
Muslims seeking accommodation between their faith and the nation-states they
live inside; its members have been racist (against Jews) and homophobic; and
its spectacularly awful style of communication with mosque trustees in Britain has
created widespread distrust... The Muslim Council of Britain has repeatedly
called on Britain's Muslim communities to go to the police if they know of anyone
involved in terrorism. Hizb-ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun regard such a call as an
act of treason against Islam, because to them Muslims are being asked to snitch
on fellow Muslims, something that the Hizb-ut-Tahrir manifesto regards as sinful
(Masood 2005).
Ethnographic and anthropological academic works on Muslim ethno-religious com-
munities underline their high degree of social encapsulation (Ballard 1990; Halliday 1992;
Shaw 1994; Shaw 2001) and it has been argued that “(t)he ways in which communities are
subjected to multiple disadvantage and alienation accelerates the process of isolation and
disenfranchisement determined by the actions of the nation-state” (Abbas 2007a: 439).

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Some claim that foreign policy is the root of all terrorism while some essentialist others
identify the threat of a neo-religious imperative, and insist that its evil is enough to cause
any act of radical violence while some others “underline a lack of Muslim integration in
Europe. The reality is a mixture of all these factors” (Hellyer 2008: 8).

Socio-Economic and Political Deprivation and Discrimination


In the West, HT’s recruitment efforts benefit from discrimination against Muslims and
from the unfulfilled expectations of Muslim migrants, who often see the functioning of their
host societies as “unjust” (Baran 2004: 131). The British Muslim population is young and
rapidly growing; its socio-economic profile is depressed, marked by the exceptionally
low participation rate of women in the formal labour market, and by high concentration in
areas of multiple deprivations (Peach 2006). Muslims generally live in areas that are fac-
ing high levels of social tension and economic deprivation through direct discrimination
and racial hostility. Muslims often have had little choice but to retreat into their communi-
ties (Abbas 2007b: 289-290). Evidence from the 2001 Census and Labour Force Surveys
clearly shows that the unemployment rate for Muslim groups was still almost three times
as high as the rate for whites (Anwar 2008: 131). An overwhelming majority of Muslims
live in inner-city rundown areas with a high general level of physical housing problems
(Anwar 2008: 132). Where there is this clear separation between Muslims and non-
Muslims, there is room for jealousy and resentment, and this is something that far right
Islamists or far right secular political actors can exploit (Abbas 2007c: 725).
HT is known to target frustrated youth who have lost faith in their home country’s “sys-
tem” (Gruen 2004: 116). One reason why other groups with similar goals seem unable to
amass the same degree of international support is that HT adapts its message to appeal to
the desires of the populations it is trying to impress. In Europe, where Muslim populations
often feel marginalized, HT has positioned itself as a political advocate (Gruen 2008: 122).
For the first generation Muslim immigrants, the ‘myth of return’ justified a socio-eco-
nomically motivated migration but “for the second and third generations, ‘homeland’
attachments and the idea of a possible return to Pakistan represent, instead, a response to
contemporary political tensions and Islamophobia” (Bolognani 2007: 59-76). The Pakistani
men arriving in Britain planned to make a small fortune and then go back home. Having
set their own objective in their homeland, they “never organised major resistance to
labour exploitation or racism in Britain” (Bolognani 2007: 63).7 Nevertheless, the mythical
‘community of suffering’, which is, within their community, normally viewed as the origin
of post-war wealth for the whole Britain, is often criticised by the second and third younger
generations (Bolognani 2007: 63). Uncertainty, discrimination, marginalisation and strug-

7 See already earlier Anwar 1979; Dhaya 1970.

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gle for integration, together with the widely experienced ‘glass ceiling’ in one’s career,
take these generations “back to a myth which may owe its revival to psychological and
political reasons, tied to frustration in attempting to achieve social and economic goals,
and to feelings of insecurity and Islamophobia” (Bolognani 2007: 65-66).
Moreover, British and US foreign policy has impacted on the perceptions of already
much maligned and disenfranchised young Muslim males who feel they have no voice
(Abbas 2007b: 291). It is not only the legal and juristic debates relating to the minority
British Muslim community that have influenced how engaged British Muslims are with the
nation-wide political issues, but also “the external influences such as the climate of politi-
cal apathy in Britain and Europe which naturally affect the British Muslim community. One
may therefore see, as is the national trend that younger people from the Muslim commu-
nity are generally more apathetic to voting than their parents” (Hussein 2004: 378). Since
the Rushdie affair, a series of other crises has disrupted any processes of integration into
Britain and induced a sense of widening alienation. The Gulf War, Bosnia, Palestine,
Kashmir, Chechnya, September 11, the nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan,
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have all mobilised Pakistanis and other Muslims on to the
streets of Britain, with Muslim representatives regularly invited to Downing Street and
Muslim MPs openly protesting against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Werbner 2004:
905). Pakistanis in Britain identify deeply with the plight of Palestinians, Bosnians,
Kashmiris, Afghans or Iraqis. They see the West as an oppressor, resulting that rather than
peaceful integration, the British Muslim has had to lurch from one crisis to another, from
the Rushdie affair to the Gulf War to September 11. The images of alienation these con-
flicts have generated have been exacerbated by the inner-city rioting of young Pakistanis
in northern British towns and by the revelation that some young British Muslims had joined
the Taliban (Werbner 2004: 907).
Many Muslims link their perception of discrimination also with international affairs,
pointing towards a British government bias in favour of Israel and against Palestinians
(Baran 2004: 58). Members of the Muslim community argue unequivocally that the British
Muslim community has been unable to effect any real change in the British foreign policy.
At the level of foreign policy, the government has sought consultation with the British
Muslims in part to gain acceptance of its foreign policies. It is a way of informing and
(hopefully) convincing British Muslims (Radcliffe 2004: 376).
Despite the legislation in Britain against racial discrimination for the last four decades,
ethnic minorities including Muslims are still victims of racial discrimination. Sometimes
Muslims face multiple discriminations, racial as well as religious. Lacking a strong Islamic
cultural foundation, and feeling the sting of European apprehension towards Muslim immi-
grants, many Muslims living in Britain have begun to perceive the society in which they
live as discriminatory and racist. In a sense, their perception is not without foundation. For
example, despite the fact that most British Muslims view religion to be a dominant factor
in their identity, the Race Relations Act of 1976 recognized “Gypsies, Sikhs and Jews as

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special ‘ethnic groups’ and provided them with special racial protection”, excluding
Muslims altogether (Wictirowics 2004). Muslim women could also face additional discrim-
ination based on gender. There are only four Muslim Members of Parliament (MPs) in the
House of Commons out of a total of 646 MPs. However, to reflect the numbers of Muslims
in Britain there should be more than 20 MPs of Muslim origin. There are nine members of
Muslim origin in the House of Lords. Again to reflect the Muslim population there should
be at least another 18. Some councils remain actively hostile to Muslims. In addition the
policies put in place to tackle the problems are insufficiently implemented in practice. For
example, despite the government’s policy to fund faith schools, only seven have received
government funding nationwide (Anwar 2008: 132-134). Muslims generally feel that gov-
ernment departments are unsympathetic to issues concerning Muslims and that Muslims
are under-represented in the higher echelons of power in central government (Anwar
2008: 134). Little attention is being paid to widening economic, social and cultural polari-
ties, and the role of foreign policy. The continued focus on culture, identity, ethnicity and
religiosity per se takes attention away from alienation, exclusion and disempowerment
(Abbas 2007c: 723).
Disaffection, disenfranchisement and isolation are functions of both poorer and rich-
er Muslims, and are adequate to lead either into radicalisation (Abbas 2007b: 19). Against
the backdrop of social alienation and internal disorder, “Islam has become a template for
the culturally confused, a language of protest for the politically frustrated” (Murphy 2002:
276). The media generally highlight the extreme views of a tiny minority of individuals
which make headlines but which are damaging community relations, and increasingly
contributing to the feeling of insecurity among British Muslims (Anwar 2008: 133). As a
result of ongoing racism, they experience a sense of dislocation and alienation, perceived
or real, which negatively affects their outlook. These experiences encourage some to
seek to ‘‘resolve’’ Muslim issues, both at home and abroad (Abbas 2007b: 291). Young
British Muslims today, with exclusion, marginalization, disempowerment, media bias,
political rhetoric, far right hostility, perceptions in relation to British and US foreign policy,
a lack of appropriate Muslim leadership in Britain and a regressive interpretation and
application of Islam as a reactive rather than a pro-active experience (Abbas 2007a: 430).
Furthermore, since 9/11 and 7/7 the civil liberties of the British citizens have been
eroded. Already generally excluded, disadvantaged, alienated, misrepresented and vili-
fied, the British Muslim minorities are further thrust into the limelight in generally negative
terms. ‘‘Home-grown’’ radicalisation is a phenomenon that has emerged through rever-
sion to a monocultural politico-ideological project that came as a response to the 2001
urban disturbances in the North of the UK and the events of 9/11 in the USA. This has sig-
nificantly impacted on civil liberties as well as providing a blame-the-victim approach
propagated by dominant media and political discourses (Abbas 2007b: 288).
A recent survey on the British Muslims has found that the emotional aspect of citizen-
ship is the most critical because it determines whether the citizens feel connected to or

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alienated from wider surrounding society. British Muslims are struggling to balance their
sense of belonging to Islam and Britain in an environment where only less than 10% agree
that their government and society respect them and support them. The respondents
underlined that they expect equal rights and called “for more Muslim representation in the
government and the development of a cohesive society through public awareness and
acceptance of Islam as a legitimate religious and cultural value system” (IHRC 2004). The
survey has also found that discrimination against Muslims in Britain “is rising. Overall, 80%
of the women and 78% of the men surveyed reported discrimination, with practicing
Muslims experiencing the most discrimination” (IHRC 2004).

Theological Deprivation
Many young inner-city-British-born Muslims are disconnected and disgruntled and
as highlighted in the previous sub-section, “they lack social, cultural and economic oppor-
tunities, while disengaged from the political process. They cannot always connect with
rural-born uneducated leaders and elders whose attention is on matters elsewhere”
(Abbas 2007c: 731). As a result, looking for orientation, they are led to “religious seek-
ing—a process in which an individual searches for some satisfactory system of religious
meaning to interpret and resolve his discontent” (Wictorowicz 2004). However, given that
many of them lack a strong understanding of theology, and that the Muslim communities
in which they live lack a proper social and theological infrastructure, many are left to self-
declared religious and spiritual leaders, who provide them with a quick fix for their iden-
tity crises while pushing them slowly towards radicalism (Baran 2004: 59). Interviews con-
ducted by Quintan Wictorowicz with members of al-Muhajiroun (a splinter organization
from the HT) confirm radical Islam’s role in exploiting the vulnerabilities carried by
Muslim “seekers”. He found that “(v)irtually all of the members who were interviewed
recalled a point in their lives where they felt they had no purpose in life and lacked a sense
of belonging” (Wictorowicz 2004).
In the British context, where a majority of Muslim religious scholars are imported
from Pakistan, very few of them could be judged sophisticated scholars of Islamic law and
exegetes of the Qur’an. Moreover, the social status of the majority of mosque imams is
modest, whether in Pakistan or in Britain (Lewis 2006: 274). Negative perceptions are the
staple of many Muslim websites, commenting that teaching methods of imams are char-
acterised by ‘the stick not love’ (Lewis 2006: 276).
In general, local Islamic institutions are not fit for purpose. A sometimes radicalised
(pseudo) Islamic outlook is promulgated by burgeoning Salafist bookshops. Young peo-
ple have the ability to download problematic fatwas from websites, with the medium of
English used to communicate fanatic ideals with much effect (Abbas 2007c: 724). There
are numerous social scientists and humanities experts but one cannot easily count on one
hand the number of high-profile Muslim theologians who could be regarded as notable
(Abbas 2007c: 731).

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Local Muslim leadership is relatively weak, including its capacity and the vision it has
for the future. Inter-generational tensions are not being resolved, particularly in relation to
patriarchy. And, for the most part, mosques and imams have underserved their commu-
nities, not in terms of how the young are thought to have become radicalised, but rather,
in how they have been removed from the direct religious edification of Muslims. Young
Muslims have subsequently gone on to form their own study circles, use the Internet to
access alternative sources of information and utilise modes of communication familiar to
them, that is, the English language. Here, the already marginalised and predisposed are
particularly vulnerable to negative external influences when all else has failed them inter-
nally (Abbas 2007b: 297). The root lies in the identity vacuum of second- and third-gener-
ation Muslim minorities, and the reason for that has as much to do with the working of gov-
ernment policies in the inner cities as it has to do with the infectiveness and the lack of
resourcefulness of Muslim communities, particularly in the north of England (Abbas
2007a: 437).
Western Europe’s difficulty with absorbing and integrating Muslim immigrants has
left many Muslims without a sense of belonging and purpose, which HT can provide
(Wiktorowicz 2004). Confused about their identity, they become attracted to HT, which is
able to provide them with answers. The increasingly anti-Muslim mood in Western
Europe further leads Muslims to feel they must adopt an identity that is prescribed for
them. If they are perceived first as Muslims (and only second, if ever, as Europeans), and
if that identity is equated with terrorism, radicalism and even backwardness, Muslim pride
kicks in (Baran 2004: 58). For second and third generation Muslims living in the West,
many of whom do not speak Arabic, HT’s easily accessible literature (in PDF format on HT
websites) provides an alternative source of political and historical information and theo-
logical interpretation. These Muslims often complain their only source of information about
Islam is books written by Western specialists, the “Orientalists”. HT fills this void with its
own interpretation of religion and world events, thus purportedly raising the conscious-
ness of these and other Muslims. The recruitment method varies from country to country,
but in general, a young person who is looking for answers to existential questions meets
an HT member, who is either a co-worker, another student or a neighbor, who then brings
that person to the party. Prospective candidates are formally introduced to the party appa-
ratus by interacting with a study circle. Most people initially join to learn about Islam, but
then are gradually indoctrinated. HT’s propaganda machine reaches its prospective con-
stituency through the party’s print media circulations, the Internet and personal recruit-
ment. There are at least seven websites that are related directly to HT. One of these web-
sites is devoted exclusively to interaction with the mass media. HT’s print media outreach
generally takes the form of leaflets. Party leaflets, emulating a tactic used by Marxist-
Leninist groups during the Cold War, will usually convey three concepts: a statement of
the party’s mission, a detailed expression of its position on current political issues, and a
call for recruitment. The leaflets in English are unusually well written and indicate a good
understanding of global affairs. These leaflets, accessible over the Internet in various lan-

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guages, provide the umma with timely and coherent explanations of current events in a
way that fits HT’s framework (Baran 2004: 20-31).

Conclusion
In the British case, socio-economic and political deprivation as far as Muslims are
concerned is an everyday reality. In addition, theological vacuum is also influential in mak-
ing HT’s discourse attractive to the young Muslims who suffer from also identity issues,
exclusion, racism and discrimination. Moreover, British foreign policy which is perceived
as unfriendly, to say the least, towards the Muslim world, in the eyes of the young Muslims
only justifies what HT has been asserting so far. Lack of community leadership together
with lack of intellectual and theological Muslim scholarship makes HT’s otherwise naïve
and simplistic rhetoric virtually unrivalled.
International ideas and events impact upon the course and effectiveness of Muslim
political activity in Britain for better or for worse (Radcliffe 2004: 370). Chatham House
claimed directly after 7/7 that the war in Iraq made the UK a target and many within the UK
domestic security services often express their exasperation for having to pay for what
they view as mistakes in the British foreign policy (Hellyer 2008: 12). The difficulty in situ-
ating UK foreign policy within an account of the radicalization towards violence of some
British Muslims, as a means of objectively assessing how it has or has not contributed to
that radicalization, pervades many of the analyses that followed the London attacks. The
issue of foreign policy is raised, its central importance is noted, but little if any account is
offered of its relationship with domestic radicalization. Instead, there is a return to the need
for ‘integration’ and by extension for a reworking of the domestic framework of multicul-
turalism (Brighton 2007: 3). But as we have seen above, economic, social, political, theo-
logical deprivations and international climate surrounding Muslims are all inextricably
intertwined and interlinked. The British state cannot decide to work on some of these con-
cerns and leave the others out. Unfortunately, having been extremely badly affected by
the global financial turmoil, the Britain seems to lost its traditionally acclaimed, commend-
ed and even admired self-confidence as can easily be deduced from even leftist politi-
cians’ –such as some leading figures of the governing Labour Party- surprisingly almost
xenophobic statements, a more fragmented society, instead of a cohesive one, looms
large on the horizon.

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