Tahir Abbas, ed., Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. 306 pages.

As jihadi ideology shifts from articulating a perpetual conflict against the “far enemy” (read: the United States and its allies) and the “near enemy” (read: the United States’ clients) within the Middle East and the wider Muslim world to taking the conflict to the heart of the far enemy in North America and Western Europe, it is time for academics to take stock of what has happened, how it has happened, and why. The “radicalization” debate, as it is called, tries to ask the pertinent question of why some Muslim male citizens of these “western” states feel so disenchanted, dis-integrated, and alienated from their immediate communities that they can perpetrate such gross acts of violence as the bombings in Madrid in March 2004 and 7/7 in London. The challenge of such violent radicalism (and it is important to qualify it as such, since radicalism traditionally has been a political virtue of the Left demanding change) affects security policy as well as the integrity and dignity of Muslim communities.

Tahir Abbas, a reader in sociology at the University of Birmingham and a leading expert on the sociology of Britain’s Muslim communities, has assembled a vibrant interdisciplinary circle of specialists, comprising Muslim and non-Muslim academics and activists, to tackle this question. The collection brings together studies in political science, political sociology (the primary focus for the debate on radicalism), anthropology, psychology, criminology, and related disciplines. The contributors concentrate on Britain, albeit within a European context, and thus this book might be of value for those studying Islamismin other Muslim-minority contexts (particularly the United States) and even in Muslim-majority contexts as a base of comparison.

The title suggests a concern with the wide spectrum of Muslim radicalism, one ranging from Islamism to jihadism. One need not be a constructivist to recognize the significance of contextualization. Thus the studies examine not only internal issues within Muslim communities, but also the role of government, Islamophobia (a reality with which many Muslims have to live and which was succinctly defined in the famous Runnymede Trust report of 1997, even while it is being attacked by the Left in an ironic twist of events akin to the recent onslaught on multiculturalism), the media, and global events. The structure is remarkably coherent: part 1 sets the scene with key definitions; part 2 examines the wider European context; part 3, which comprises the bulk of the volume, focuses on Britain; and part 4 brings together a number of short reflections by key Muslim political activists in post-7/7 Britain. As such, it successfully bridges the requirements of an academically rigorous volume and the exigencies of informing policy debates.

Apart from Abbas’ own introduction, a brief but excellent summary of the volume’s concerns and contents, the other paper that caught my eye was Ismail Patel’s examination of what one means by political radicalism on the scale from “moderate” Islamists to Salafi jihadis. His simple equation of political radicalism as a response to foreign policy is too basic, for anti colonialism and anti-imperialism are also strong motivations for the development of modern Islamisms. Advocating mono-causal explanations is problematic. Part 1 seems somewhat unsatisfactory in that it assumes a widely held notion of what radicalism is. It also requires some disaggregation, given that there are clearly several overlapping and even mutually exclusive types of radical ideology present within Muslim communities. Yet all are objectified as belonging to a generic overarching rationale for violence that the media (and, unfortunately, many in the intelligence community) reify and simplify as “al-Qaeda.” In addition, the radicalization debate often strips young Muslim men of any agency and volition. Surely people are not  “radicalized,” but rather choose certain pathways due to certain conditions, motivations, frustrations, opportunities, and ideologies.

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