The Muslims Are Coming!
Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Powerful critique of UK and US surveillance and repression of Muslims and prosecution of homegrown terrorism
The new front in the War on Terror is the “homegrown enemy,” domestic terrorists who have become the focus of sprawling counterterrorism structures of policing and surveillance in the United States and across Europe. Domestic surveillance has mushroomed—at least 100,000 Muslims in America have been secretly under scrutiny. British police compiled a secret suspect list of more than 8,000 al-Qaeda “sympathizers,” and in another operation included almost 300 children fifteen and under among the potential extremists investigated. MI5 doubled in size in just five years.
Based on several years of research and reportage, in locations as disperate as Texas, New York and Yorkshire, and written in engrossing, precise prose, this is the first comprehensive critique of counterradicalization strategies. The new policy and policing campaigns have been backed by an industry of freshly minted experts and liberal commentators. The Muslims Are Coming! looks at the way these debates have been transformed by the embrace of a narrowly configured and ill-conceived anti-extremism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following the 9/11 attacks, America shifted its focus in the War on Terror towards homegrown terrorism, which intensified after the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Using global sources, Kundnani, a visiting fellow at Leiden University (Netherlands), sees the same counter-terror tactics developed by the Bush Administration now employed by his successor, monitoring Muslim citizens and residents, and using informants and double agents to keep tabs on those who might share an ideology with jihadists. Noting several European terror triumphs, Kundnani aptly examines the four stages of evolution towards jihadism "preradicalization, identification, indoctrination, and action" now monitored by big-budgeted international security agencies watching lone wolves and sleeper cells before any eruption. In America and England, Kundnani identifies bands of young Muslims rethinking their identities in the wake of society revoking "their social white card": being treated like blacks, suffering hate crimes, and losing civil liberties. He also analyzes similarly critical topics, such as police entrapment, state surveillance, dissent and extremism, fear and suspicion in Muslim communities, and the right to assembly. Measuring his ideas against global terror experts, Kundnani offers hard alternatives to international security agencies, policing trends, and options for reasonable dissent in his thoughtful, rational plea to curb the War on Terror.
