All my life I have been encouraged to speak the language of intellects. Wishing to stay with the theme of radicalisation, I sat down to write this essay. As a Muslim, my need to consider the idea of radicalisation seems inevitable. After all, mainstream media and various social sites talk of little else[1]. I am encouraged to feel spite towards the global north, for all the wrongdoing they have done to the global south. Defining the wrongdoing is another matter, for some Muslims blame the west for promoting gay rights, while other Muslims blame the west for introducing its ban to many countries in the first place[2]. I am repeatedly told that the answer to this spite must be violence, because my faith, my being, is inherently violent (cite ideas sold by Tommy Robinson or Richard Dawkins). And, while I believe that armed resistance sometimes plays a necessary role in the face of post/neo/colonial oppression, there are dangerous implications to such an attitude. I may end up on the receiving end of security concerns, my activities monitored, my data sold, my words one day used against me, as with so many others[3]. It would be helpful, healthy even, to be allowed to engage in open discussion of such topics, especially from the perspective of a politicised identity. However, I fear there is a lot to lose. I must be the well-behaved brown body, and navigate through western European society fully assimilated. Not a bad bone in my body. No dark thoughts to contend with. I am not permitted to be a walking contradiction. Otherwise, I risk confirming the long-held suspicion of Muslims as barbaric and backward. Except, that there is plenty of immorality in the global north, plenty of violence and hostility, plenty of discrimination and intolerance. Deep down I wonder if that makes me all the more assimilated. Anyway, the short story hinted at a moral in its ending. The well-intentioned protagonist was at risk of inviting evil into their heart. If I’m honest, I agreed with my partner about its simplicity, but as I said before, contradiction and nuance are the dues of the privileged. Like the main character wishing to cut the head of the snake, my obsession with liberation and justice seems (to others at least) always teetering on the edge of an extreme abyss. Once, I got a pair of earrings that had ‘eat the rich’ inscribed on them. Loved ones thought it was hypocritical, since I’d recently found myself in a financially stable place, able to enjoy regular holidays abroad and eat dinners out every few weeks. To me, eating the rich was an analogy for the idea of heavily taxing billionaires and reducing wealth inequality. Perhaps the earrings should have simply stated ‘tax billionaires proportionate to their income and investments’ instead. I do not actually wish a cannibalistic death on the unreasonably wealthy, but if stripping them of excess riches is extreme, then how is it that their lifestyles are not considered so? Many principles, which seem sensible to me and others, have habitually been obliged to tread carefully. I remember last year when most people were afraid to say anything about the plight of Palestinians[4]. Who would have thought that wishing to cease arms sales to occupying militarised states could be so controversial? Heck, some people think that having to remove their shoes to enter someone’s home is rude. One person’s good sense is often another person’s sensitivity. When power imbalance enters the equation, sense seems forced to shrink to the whim of the powerful, be it a government, an employer, a teacher. These examples are partly why I feel brave enough to write this little essay now. Conflict within discourse is sometimes the only realistic catalyst for mutual understanding. My hope is that one day, it will not be so overwhelming to discuss difficult things. I hope it will be acceptable for people to voice their anger and frustration, simplistic as they might seem initially, and reach an opportunity to consider something new. Be it the enraged racist or the rebel socialist. I imagine this kind of dialogue moves at an amateur’s pace. In slow, baby steps, one explores the black and white answers, and then perhaps feels freer to entertain other possibilities, like context, culture, structural power. Too often we are scolded and stigmatised for daydreams and practices that we’d otherwise wish to explore within a safe space. Some of our monsters are not allowed to speak, while others run amok (think of the thousands of people who work themselves to death every year[5]). Either scenario seems excessive, leaving intense emotions with no way to vent, no space to explore. I don’t mean to normalise dehumanisation or any other foul attitude, I merely seek to address our dark thoughts, rather than pretend that they do not exist. A young man, angry with women, confides in a friend. He had been misled by one and so labels the entire sex as manipulative and ungrateful. The friend’s instinct is to scold him, explain that one bad apple does not in fact rot the whole barrel. The inner angry radical in all of us instructs space for rage. So, the friend holds their tongue, and listens instead. It is the kind of listening akin to radical love, another form of extremism so often underestimated in its power. Besides, it is safer for the young man to feel he can vent to an understanding friend, than a stranger with their own agenda. The young man spews more hateful rhetoric on the idea of women, and soon, another story starts to emerge. It is one of loneliness, and patriarchal expectation. It is one of repressed emotions and the importance of honour and reputation above all else. The desire for simplistic solutions and pointless violence requires exploration, not stifling. Equally worth considering is the conduct of the listener; they have significant influence on whether the young man chooses to enact violence or to question systems of power[6]. The desire for change requires challenging, not outright repudiation, nor the justification to commit harm. I suspect that extremism sits just so on the political spectrum; with the potential to unite those of opposing views. I imagine that the authoritarian is just as frustrated as the libertarian, except that they come to different conclusions about the solution. If only our black and white monsters could talk freely with each other, either compassionately or confrontationally, without the condescension of high society telling us that we are being ignorant and naive. Perhaps then we could begin, rather than be cut off and told to start again. [1] Sandberg, L. et al. (2023) ‘The online hostility hypothesis: representations of Muslims in online media’, Social Influence, 18(1). doi: 10.1080/15534510.2023.226623 [2] Han, E. and O’Mahoney, J. (2014) ‘British colonialism and the criminalization of homosexuality’, Cambridge review of international affairs, 27(2), pp. 268–288. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2013.867298. [3] Manzoor-Khan, S. (2022) Tangled in Terror (London: Pluto Press) [4] Robinson, N. (2021) ‘How the Media Cracks Down on Critics of Israel’, Current Affairs [5] Ro, C. (2021) ‘How overwork is literally killing us’, BBC [6] Shafieioun, D. and Haq, H. (2023) ‘Radicalization from a societal perspective’, Frontiers in Psychology, 14:1197282. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1197282 Farrah (she/her) is a writer, poet and late bloomer. She enjoys magical realism, painting and decolonialism. Read more of her work here.
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