Muslims in Europe have come under unprecedented pressure over the past decade, and there is much concern at the alienation and radicalization among some sectors of Muslim youth. At the same time the actions and statements of certain politicians and governments appear to be exacerbating the situation, and there is a great deal of uncertainty over what will help harmonize relations and reduce the risks from extremism. In Britain the new Lib-Con coalition in Britain is reviewing and rethinking the former Labour government's Prevent (Preventing Violent Extremism) program, which has cost tens of millions of pounds Sterling, amidst accusations that the program has backfired and further alienated many British Muslims. All too often the debate among commentators and politicians is conducted in generalizations about Muslims, and there is an urgent need for research among Europe's diverse Muslim communities. A new book by American scholar Justin Guest makes an important contribution in this area, and challenges some of the conventional approaches and assumptions. The book, “Apart: Alienated and Engaged Muslims in the West”, is published in Britain by Hurst & Co of London. The US edition is due to be published next month by Columbia University Press. Gest is a Harvard College Fellow in the Department of Government at Harvard University. At the same time he is co-founder and deputy director of the Migration Studies Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and a research associate at LSE Global Governance. At the launch of his book at LSE a few days ago, Gest said: “Democracy's strength is based on liberty, equality, political communication and active dialogue – but insecurity seems to inspire policy decisions that limit civil freedoms. Fear can cripple our capacity to interact with one another on equal terms. And of course distrust can prohibit our capacity to interact and dialogue with one another.” In the light of this, “I believe that the greatest threat is not terrorist attacks themselves but often the decisions that we, not terrorists, make in the aftermath of such attacks. The threat is rarely the attack itself, it's how we react to it and how we govern our society in its aftermath.” Through his research he tried to understand the nature of the political sphere in what he sees as two particularly interesting case studies: the Bangladeshi community in London's East End and the Moroccan community in the Lavapiés district in southern Madrid. These are key Muslim communities in liberal European democracies in their second generation of residence. And both are in cities which have suffered major terror outrages carried out by young Muslim extremists. The March 2004 train bombings in Madrid killed 191 people, while the four suicide attacks on the underground train system and a bus in London on July 7 2005 killed 52. The 7/7 attacks in London provoked additional consternation in that three of the three of the four suicide bombers were British born. There are continuing fears about the “enemy within” and “home-grown extremism”. Gest has worked in print and broadcast journalism, and his reporting instincts remain strong. His research was “a wonderful opportunity to get out there and interact with a most fascinating group of people whom I thought were quite misunderstood.” In conducting his field studies he interviewed some 100 people in London and Madrid, among them community elders, imams, extremists, politicians, gangsters and “ordinary people trying to get by”. Many of the interviewees were young men aged 18 to 28. Professor Henrietta Moore, the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, said at the book launch: “One of the remarkable things about this study is that it integrates political science with anthropology: this is a remarkably rare occurrence.” Moore added: “The book deals with the question of how young people themselves feel about the state that they are part of. The point about democracy is that you are allowed to dissent. But we constantly deal with these young people as if their dissent is a problem. Gest “goes a long way in giving us an insight not only into how these young people think but into the frailty of our current conceptual and intellectual ways of understanding the dilemmas we face in multicultural societies.” Gest said there is a tendency to see “radicalization” and “fundamentalism” as the brainwashing and indoctrination of a subject who is “an empty vessel, a receptacle of information that they simply accept without any real persuasion or previous ideas”. In contrast, his study “treats human agents as human agents with their own perceptions and ideas, with their own histories, and biases, and stories, and families and a unique set of perspectives that makes them amenable to certain ideas but not others.” At the source of every political movement, and every trend, are many individuals who make individual choices. His book explores three principal debates: Are Muslims intrinsically different from other minority groups in Europe? What is the role of Islam in shaping European Muslims' reconstructed identities? And what is the impact of different regimes on Muslims' choice to engage with the political system? By comparing two groups of young European Muslim males living under different policy regimes, he aimed to identify cross-cutting trends that connect the European phenomenon of Muslim marginalization, and to answer his primary research question: What are the characteristics and causes of political alienation among young Muslim men in European democracies? Gest critically reviews the classical conceptions of “alienation” and “engagement” and finds that disaffected European Muslims do not fit them. And the empirical sociology that seeks to explain anti-system behavior is insufficient to determine why, among young Muslims facing largely the same circumstances, some engage or accept the political system and others reject it. His research in London and Madrid found two remarkably different political communities, both irreversibly transformed by horrific terrorist attacks. Among the Bangladeshis in East London he found an “extraordinarily civically active and cohesive ‘village'.” There is a sense of entitlement, and a cacophony of competing identity structures, moral paradigms and means of civic organization – including a high level of “apartist activism”. In Madrid, he found “significant atomization and low levels of social trust – for Spaniards and other Moroccans.” Participants demonstrated utter divestment from and disorientation in the Spanish political sphere, along with extremely low levels of civic participation. The myth of return to Morocco strongly endures, and contrary to London there is a high incident of “apartist withdrawal”. Gest hypothesizes that different behavioral reactions to the same set of sociopolitical conditions are dependent on individual perceptions. One set of perceptions promotes the reproduction of democratic institutions, while another set of perceptions – which he calls ‘apartist' – leads individuals to disrupt or withdraw from democracy. Gest proposes that there is an association between political behavior and the discrepancy between individuals' expectations of their political system and society and their perceptions of how closely the political system meets those expectations. “Those whose expectations and attainments match are obviously going to be more engaged and more satisfied with their political systems.” Those with the larger gap between expectations and attainments are those who tend to rebel more. One of his key findings is the “counter-intuitive” finding that “those who are the most alienated tend to have been quite integrated in the first place: indeed you have to know the system that you are critiquing before you can be disappointed by it.” In his conclusion Gest examines the possible application of his findings to America, which has (at least until recently) applauded itself for not suffering the problems of Muslim alienation and home-grown terrorism experienced by Europe. He warns that integration fosters a sense of entitlement which leads those who are integrated to expect a more complete set of rights and liberties than the less integrated. “The sense of injustice is therefore significantly more sensitive and disappointment more poignant among those with greater expectations, with a strong sense of rejected national identity, but without much faith in the democratic system to remedy the inequity.”
