Muslims and Extremism

In explaining the nature of extremism in the context of the experiences of Muslim minority groups, a whole host of factors require deep consideration. The dominant view concentrates on how regressive politicization based on Islamic interpretations can contribute to violence, but few consider the wider social, political, economic, and cultural dynamics of Islamist extremism and terrorism. This chapter provides a holistic, analytical perspective focusing on Islamism in the West in particular, where immigration and settlement patterns, especially in the postwar context, are important starting points in this study. Due to these migration patterns, and questions of racism and discrimination in the host society, issues relating to intergenerational change and identity politics and how it leads to an Islamism based on resistance over time can be better understood. It also reveals the significance of current manifestations of Islamophobia and its impact on counter-terrorism policy and wider societal racism, where Islamophobia is the normalization of institutionally, ideologically, culturally, and politically bounded anti-Muslim prejudice. In conclusion, Muslim extremism in the West is almost entirely explainable as a function of structural and cultural disadvantage, where the political process has failed for young Muslims who are the sons and grandsons of immigrant groups how the violence exercised by these angry young men in, is the main, the realization of an accumulated series of exclusions.