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speaking publicly, when legitimating policies to their colleagues or competitive agencies, when speaking to the media or in conversation with an interviewer like myself. There are thus degrees of indirectness across fields of security, guiding actors’ linguistic habitus every day. The difference in language use is also indicative of distinct approaches to CT: federal agencies tended to favour a ‘soft’ approach until the Trump administration, which they call ‘countering violent extremism’, while law enforcement agencies at the local level who operationalise CT on the
‘I am the least racist person,’ Donald Trump declared. This book unpacks how it is possible for various American administrations to impose discriminatory counterterrorism (CT) and countering violent extremism (CVE) measures on Muslim communities and yet declare that ‘Islam is peace’ or that ‘Muslims are our friends’. The book addresses some of the paradoxes of the securitisation by linking discourses about the role of Muslims in the war on terror in the United States with covert forms of racism. The book is concerned with a securitisation that is covertly rather than overtly expressed, which enables securitising actors like Trump to deny plausibility of racism and claim that they are ‘the least racist person’. The book offers a critique of the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ approaches to CT and CVE and advances an alternative way to understand radicalisation and terrorism by introducing a quantum perspective. Lastly, drawing on the affective turn, the book adds body to the analysis by theorising emotions and affect in the securitisation of Islam. The book argues that this covert securitisation constructs white American subjects as innocent, unprejudiced and living in a post-racial society averse to racism, whilst constructing Muslim subjects as potential terrorists and thus as sites of securitisation. This book is a timely analysis of the securitisation of Islam since 9/11 and presents an original study that contributes to debates on Islamophobia, white fragility and white victimhood, which have proliferated since the rise of far-right (populist) parties in Europe and the US.
violence by white perpetrators is excused and normalised as part of everyday life. Countering violent extremism (CVE) programmes are established to counter potential and actual violence by persons of colour, often Muslims and Arab-Americans. Examining US CVE through the lenses of Islamophobia and ‘suspect communities’ opens up discussions of how extremism is racialised, constituting people who appear to be Muslim as dangerous ‘others’ and as ‘suspect communities’. 3 CVE programmes marginalise and stereotype Muslim and Arab-Americans, while making invisible the ongoing
Introduction Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programmes offer an alternative to conventional ‘hard’ approaches to terrorism prevention, focused on community responsibility for radicalisation, and community engagement as a strategy for law enforcement. Indeed, one of the key differences between CVE and counter-terrorism is CVE’s focus on the home as the origination site of the terrorist threat. While counter-terrorism refers to a myriad of practices including the use of military force, CVE programmes have as their hallmark a focus on local-level solutions
argues for recalibrated holistic peacebuilding strategies rooted in indigenous needs and drive from within the country. The BiH countering violent extremism (CVE)/counter-terrorism (CT) strategy The study of CVE and CT has spawned many critical responses that look at the deficiencies of suggested approaches and find the reductionist and often misled efforts to be ‘counterproductive CVE’ ( Aziz, 2017 ). In an effort to address it, one early response by scholars was to approach it as a multi-layered and multifaceted process that could be carried out through the
Nigerian way of defining and combating threat has been expanded (at least nominally) from countering terrorism to countering ideology, i.e., violent extremism, and what purpose this transformation serves. This chapter argues that countering violent extremism (CVE) in Nigeria is a form of mimicry of Western – especially Anglo-American – ways of constructing and dealing with threat, and that this introduction of a ‘softer’ approach to countering terrorism ignores the cultural, political and historical realities of Nigeria. First, the chapter engages with contemporary
Tracing the discursive origins of ‘(violent) extremism’: terrorism, radicalisation and extremism Recently, the terms terrorism , radicalisation and extremism have been utilised interchangeably by scholars, decision makers and policy practitioners to interpret the so-called ‘terrorist threat’. The tendency is to increasingly merge these terms into a sole discursive framework that is perceived to affect the modern epistemological understanding of terrorism and the subsequent practices of countering (violent) extremism in many Western countries ( Richards
international legitimacy to the implementation of this concept and states’ deriving (abusive) practices. Second, the Council not only had a role in the reproduction and legitimisation of the discourse, but it also led its legal standardisation at a global level, what Kundnani and Hayes named ‘the globalisation of countering violent extremism policies’ ( Kundnani and Hayes, 2018 ). In virtue of its international legal powers, the organ imposed on states various binding measures to combat extremism forcing and, at the same time, providing governments with the legitimacy to
countered, or indeed what it is that threatens. As this volume demonstrates, many approaches around the world focus on countering violent extremism (CVE). However, ‘non-violent extremism’ is also, according to some counter-extremism strategies such as Prevent in the UK, something to eradicate. This term is deployed to loosely describe the ideologies of those who hold onto ‘extreme’ beliefs, but who do not pose a direct violent threat. According to the UK’s Prevent strategy, non-violent extremists are a threat in that, it is argued, violent extremists often rely on such
://saferworld-indepth.squarespace.com/counter-terror-in-tunisia-a-road-paved-with-good-intentions/ (accessed 31 May 2019). Amnesty International , 2018 . They Never Tell Me Why. Arbitrary Restrictions on Movement in Tunisia . Amnesty International, London . Available at www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde30/8848/2018/en/ (accessed 4 May 2019). Aning , K. , 2010 . ‘Security, the war on terror, and official development assistance’, Critical Studies on Terrorism , 3 ( 1 ), 7–26 . Attree , L. , 2018 . ‘Shouldn’t you be countering violent extremism?’, Saferworld . Available at https://saferworld-indepth.squarespace.com/shouldnt-you-be-countering-violent-extremism