Like the hardcore pornography test, it is often said of extremism that while “we know it when we see it”, many of us struggle to provide a definition — even those of us working in the field (countering-extremism, not pornography).
It is almost certainly true that we know the far-right when we see it. Their racism and bigotry can barely conceal itself at the best of times, let alone when it is coming from the frothing mouths of skinheads marching through our town centres.
Yet it seems our collective imagination can only conceive of Islamist extremism when it is gunning people down in those same town centres while yelling “Allahu Akbar”. But terrorism is only one tactic of one small component of the overall challenge posed by global Islamism.
Eighteen years ago, the violent vanguard of this challenge revealed itself to the entire world with the murder of 3,000 innocent people on live television, but the ideological foundation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks goes much deeper. It emerged from a global movement which has been metastasising for decades, and which continues to grow and gain influence even as its jihadi offshoots come and go.
One of the most influential figures in the formation of Osama Bin Laden’s worldview was Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb, who authored the Islamist answer to Mein Kampf, Milestones, from an Egyptian prison.
While the Muslim Brotherhood is a non-violent Islamist political party with its origins in Egypt, it has also become a global ideological movement active across the Muslim world and the West, giving rise to Hamas and inspiring al-Qaeda.
Over half a century since Qutb’s imprisonment, the Muslim Brotherhood and its ideological cousins are arguably the most influential Islamist movement in the world today, especially following a post-Arab Spring resurgence across the Middle East.
Beyond the Arab world, the Muslim Brotherhood and their South Asian and Turkish equivalents, Jamaat-e-Islami and Millî Görüş, possess influence from the top to the very grassroots of society.
In the West, their fronts are elevated by media and governments desperate for Muslim “representatives”, and they are energised by the freedoms of liberal democracy.
They are able to exercise this influence because the modus operandi of non-jihadi Islamists is so poorly understood compared to extremists of other stripes. When Britain First launch ‘Sharia patrols’, we know we are looking not only at monumental stupidity, but at sheer bigotry and poisonous hatred.
How to recognise and call out Islamist entryism, the erosion of democratic institutions and the tapestry of front organisations masquerading as NGOs and charities dotted around the West presents an uncomfortable challenge; largely thanks to the success of a deliberate strategy to conflate political Islam with normative religious belief in the eyes of lay Westerners.
Although their strategy for achieving it differs wildly, Islamist movements seek almost the same endgame as the likes of al-Qaeda and Isis: the creation of a global Islamic caliphate.
Surely then, it would be unthinkable for mainstream news, police and government to engage with and amplify such nefarious movements? Yet this is exactly what happens.
In its first iterations, the government counter-terrorism Prevent Strategy even funded some Islamist groups in the belief that they would serve as a bulwark against the violent jihadi versions of the very same ideology.
Even now, some hardliners are taking their seats back at the table. We cannot afford for our memories to be so short.
More recently, mainstream newspapers and NGOs have demonstrated their blind sport for non-violent Islamism, with both the Guardian and the Independent uncritically parroting the talking points of the Islamic far-right, presented as human rights defenders in coalition with “liberal” NGOs.
Across the Atlantic, several organisations which claim to be representative of American Muslims were originally founded by Islamists and continue to push a highly politicised version of Islam.
Like their counterparts in Europe, their cocktail of identity politics, victimhood and grievance narratives weaken harm cohesion but find a receptive audience on the left. Again, the result is disproportionate, outsized influence and high profile allies in Congress.
Islamists in the West do not make it easy for us, unlike their far-right counterparts with their slogans, flags and tattoos. There is no central leadership and they know better than to pick “scary” names for their organisations.
They play a Jekyll and Hyde game as they talk in language of faith, unity and community while simultaneously driving a wedge between Muslim communities and the rest of the population.
Understanding Islamist strategy makes it easier to spot their fingerprints. Those include attacks on lonely liberal Muslim voices while hoisting the extremists and their charities as authentic representatives of Western Muslims.
Ironically for groups often claiming to combat Islamophobia, ensuring that only hardliners remain in the public eye is actively feeding the far-right narrative that all Muslims are somehow extremist.
This throttling of public discourse extends to the courts, where lawfare is the resort for dealing with unfavourable news reports — often resulting in eye-watering payouts.
Not only is a carefully manufactured narrative of Islam and Western Muslims being curated for public consumption, the lawfare thugs are undermining press freedom and forcing the gaze of editors and diligent reporters away from their subversive agenda.
Islamism is more than simply Salafi-Jihadist groups like Isis and al-Qaeda. Islamism was here before 9/11 and it will be here long after the collapse of Islamic State’s bloodthirsty experiment.
As they continue to spin a totalitarian political agenda as normative Islamic belief, it is imperative that we overcome our discomfort and force the insidious Islamist threat to democracy out into the open for all to see.
Liam Duffy is the director of a counter-extremism educational charity and a member of the Counter-Terrorism Policing Advisory Network
