9/11 Attacks - Ten years on

I was at my home-town in England’s second-city of Birmingham on that fateful morning of Tuesday 11 September 2001. It was around one pm and I was working on my computer in my study. I was getting ready to go out on a visit arranged by the Home Office in London, my employer at the time, to shadow a field researcher in the neighbouring city of Coventry. It was in an effort to see the data collection process in relation to the Home Office Citizenship Survey, which I was managing at the time. While I was stepping downstairs from my office to eat my freshly prepared cucumber salad sandwich, a newsflash interpreted the general gamut of irrelevant daytime television. Unfolding before my eyes was the ghastly aftermath of what appeared to be a terrible freak accident in New York. Moments later, a second plane hit the second tower of the World Trade Centre. Pictures then emerged from Washington showing the impact of yet another plane flying into a building, this time striking the Pentagon.

I looked in amazement at all of these images and spoke out aloud to myself. “The US is being attacked by Aliens, but no, that’s absurd, Aliens are the stuff of science fiction. Someone has declared war on America, but how could they invade US air space with such ease? No one in the world has the means, the logistical capability or the sheer ‘balls’ to strike out at this sleeping colossus. No, it must be an inside job, how else could it have happened? Surely, no, that’s the stuff of conspiracy theories. It is probably some deranged so-called Muslims carrying out some idea of a suicide-attack on the ‘Great Satan’. This is the least improbable outcome given what is going on in the world right now. If this is the case, Muslims across the globe are now totally screwed”. Many immediate questions were raised by others. The Why question was easy enough to conceive an answer to as any number of countries across the world have gripes against the USA for all sorts of deep grievances thought to have impacted on their peoples, nations and civilisations, and during the last century in particular.  Answers to the How question, which focused on the mechanisms and processes, became apparent in the clear light of day. Aside from these concerns, it was apparent that the impact on one global community in particular would be severe, namely the Muslims. As the days unfolded, it was clear that the USA was angry. A Gung-ho Texan cowboy needed to shoot his pistols at some Indians it seemed. A renegade Saudi billionaire, with a grudge against his own country more than any other, was held up as the chief architect behind the events of 9/11. He was ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’. A ‘war on terror’ with a ‘coalition of the willing’ began operations, almost immediately in Afghanistan and then in Iraq two years later, all in an effort to ‘root out the evildoers’ and to eliminate the so-called Al-Qaeda terror threat to the world; the global enemy number one.

Immediately after the events of 9/11 in the USA, Tony Blair, then as UK Prime Minister, joined forces with George W Bush to impress upon the world the need to react swiftly and expeditiously in relation to seeking out the global threat that was soon identified as Al-Qaida.  Osama bin Laden and his followers, operating out of the mountainous regions of northern Afghanistan, were now seen as the prime targets in an effort to free the ‘free world’ of its most immediate threat; that of an imminent attack on Western targets, orchestrated and organised out of these very hills in one of the most remote parts of the world. Such was the trauma the US and its allies felt, there was little initial resistance from anywhere in the word, including in the UK, all still reeling from the reverberations of the 9/11 attacks. By November 2001, Britain was fully engaged with the ‘war on terror’, sending troops to Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. As populations watched the news media for information or read press stories from eminent journalists in quality newspapers, unfortunately, as the maxim goes, they discovered that the first casualty of war is the truth! Countless innocent victims in a long-war-torn country have perished for little or no reason. Osama bin Laden was not found until May 2011. Today, we hear little of the need to eliminate the threat ‘dead or alive’, but the war in Afghanistan rages on, with more British troops facing death at a greater rate than ever. The Afghans see the British and the other forces as invaders, not liberators, just as they did the Soviets in the 1970s and the British in the 1840s.

While the war on Afghanistan began unchallenged, circles in Washington were projecting the idea that Saddam Hussain was linked to bin Laden, and that there were ‘weapons of mass destruction’ ready to strike Western targets at a moment’s notice. War was being spun again, and this time Tony Blair had to convince UK parliament of the need to maintain military efforts, now in Iraq, in the hope that these weapons, which could potentially strike British targets within 45 minutes, could be found and destroyed. After a painful process of cajoling and manoeuvring MPs, parliament voted for what was and is seen by many as an illegal war. Baghdad was invaded in March 2003 with ‘shock and awe’. Presently, many American troops remain, no longer in search of these weapons, for none were to be found. They are working to 'modernise' Iraq, with all its natural resources and physical infrastructure in the hands of foreign ownership. The Iraqis are being made to pay for their own reconstruction using their own resources, while profits move to the West. Saddam was effectively publicly executed once found and put on 'trial'. The power base in Iraq has inverted, and it has destabilised the country and region. The conflict has led to the deaths of up to as many as one million innocent Iraqis. Tony Blair, and soon after Gordon Brown, was forced to eventually remove British troops from Iraq after much on-going public and private criticism. The damage, however, had already been done to Iraq, and to Britain’s credibility as a global player. Britain had yet again too closely aligned itself with American foreign policy interests leading to accusation of being a stooge or puppet.

This foreign policy débâcle was making young Muslims in Britain at home angry, upset and agitated. No one was listening to them, least alone their own community leaders, who were being wooed by New Labour to toe the line in return for grace and favour. I could see the problems emerging in the local communities, and I could sense the issues in relation to how media reporting [and misreporting] on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were causing considerable angst.  In the summer of 2001, the UK had experienced its worst inner city ‘race riots’ for over two decades. By the end of that year Britain was at war. If ever there were a sense that urgent history was before us all this was it.  Having worked on the original Runnymede Trust report, Islamophobia: a challenge for us all, published in 1997, it became clear that matters were become worse for various racial and ethnic groups, who were now being viewed as religious and cultural groups, especially the British Muslims. In 2001, the ‘race riots’ demonstrated that young second and third generation British Muslims were bitter and resentful of the racism, intolerance, bigotry, exclusion and discrimination they faced in their local communities, and this rage literally exploded on the streets in five locations that summer; Bradford, Oldham, Leeds, Stoke and Burnley, with significant violence and physical destruction found in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley.  Since I was working in the area of policing and crime reduction, these issues were right at the top of the agenda, and in meetings held all over the Home Office in London, the concern was “what are we doing to do about BOB?”.  Given that two years before The MacPherson Report branded the Metropolitan Police Service as ‘institutionally racist’, it was almost as if some senior police officers and other parts of the criminal justice system felt the opportunity for ‘payback’. The young Muslims who threw stones at the police as first-time offenders, turned in by fathers and uncles after their photographs were blasted all over local newspapers, received up to five years imprisonment. This made many local Muslim communities further resentful of the policing services. David Blunket, the incumbent authoritarian Home Secretary, ordered a commission to look at the problems in late 2001. After limited reporting, the solution was presented as ‘communities lacking cohesion’. This was in many ways a total denial of the real issues, and an opportunity for authoritarian regressive types to return to an assimilationist ideal promulgated three decades previously. A concentration on values, identities and behaviours at the expense of a focus on institutional racism, discrimination and the need to rebuild physical infrastructure became the dominant paradigm. The Muslims of the north of England received a very raw deal. Their plight was never really addressed.

As these tired and backward-looking domestic policies came into effect, and the illegal war on Iraq took hold, matters on the ground were becoming even more hostile. I became disillusioned with central government by mid-2003 and after a conversation with a leading West Midlands University, I eventually took up the opportunity to found a new research Centre looking at the issues of ethnicity and culture, one that specifically focused on British Muslims in contemporary society. I myself became increasingly concerned about the question of radicalisation of young Muslims in inner city areas. There was huge intergenerational disconnect and a crisis of masculinity, with young Muslims realising their elders were not listening. Imams were out of touch, the media were biased, government was intent on war and external interests, and the elites in the Muslim world were asleep or took a blind eye to it all. What began to emerge was a problem of young British-born Muslim seeking a violent political solution within a wholly peaceful humanistic religion. Using the internet, private study circles and limited Islamic literature in English, some of these disillusioned, disenfranchised and isolated Muslims became the new radicals. As the experiences of the Madrid train bombings in March 2004 and the assassination of Theo van Gogh in November 2004 palpably demonstrated, some second-generation Muslims were prepared to engage in self-annihilation in the process of what they regarded as achieving political outcomes. The question was would it happen in the UK? It was clear that some young Muslims were prepared to carry out ‘martyrdom missions’, as the April 2003 Tel Aviv Mike’s Place bombing by two second-generation British Muslims highlighted. Through my work at the Centre and with the media I kept on saying that as a nation we must be careful about what we are doing in the Islamic world in relation to foreign policy, and to Muslims at home in relation to domestic policy. We were not being sensitive enough and we needed to think about the impact our policies and actions were having on groups in societies that have been experiencing decades of intolerance, bigotry, violence, discrimination and racism towards them.

At the International Sociological Association annual conference in Stockholm, on the morning of 7 July 2005, I was speaking on the subject of British Muslim experiences after 9/11.  After my panel ended, while roaming the books stalls late in the afternoon, a colleague walked up to me, and questioned, “the terror attacks in London, they’re such a tragedy, aren’t they?” “Terror attacks. What terror attacks?”, I replied in astonishment. It transpired that that morning London had been simultaneously attacked, as it turned out, by four second-generation Muslims from the northern towns, one as young as 18. I returned to my hotel room to the pictures of BBC News and the images of the carnage. Initial analysis and punditry all pointed to the idea that it was young British-born Muslims at work. I felt deeply troubled as a Briton and as a Muslim – for me, there was no separation, but now I felt as if I had personally been sliced into two! Early July in Sweden is an odd time as the sun does not set until the small hours of the morning. I recall trying to sleep thinking of the scenes in London desperately wishing the light would disappear, and it simply would not.

I returned to the UK a few days later to a barrage of media and community calls. What is going on? How do we explain it all? What are we going to do? These were were just some of the questions asked. Muslims and non-Muslims, colleagues in the academy, communitarian groups and government departments alike were all in a state of disbelief. The immediate reaction was to revile the events and to suggest that this was a terrible act, but a few days later certain outspoken people, such as Lord Nazir Ahmed, dared to publicly say what was on everyone’s lips; that this was ‘Blair’s blowback’. Most, however, resisted the temptation to lambaste government policy when 52 innocent people had died and as many as 700 were injured, some maimed for life. I spoke on SKY News days after the event and agreed this was a truly shocking moment in the history of Muslims in Britain, but that we needed to remain sensitive to potentially over-reacting or blaming the Muslims alone for these issues. This was a societal concern in my view, and in many senses these young men were a product of society in relation to the political resistance strategies they sought to expedite. Using a narrow prism through which to view political Islamism was their justification and mechanism. It was not because of Islam or Islamism. It grew from a deeply historical set of issues that required careful unpacking and understanding. Many, unfortunately, were quick to point the finger at Islam and Muslims per se. Because government was not engaged with young Muslims, directly or indirectly through the main umbrella group it had made closest relations with, namely the MCB (Muslim Council of Britain, established in 1996), the disconnect grew. Opportunistic Muslims were quickly running to government to provide the view that they were the experts and they would help to solve the problem. It all added to considerable policy paralysis and a polarising of perspectives in relation to what the real problems were and what the genuine solutions might be.

Invariably, politicians and various media outlets formed an unholy alliance around these concerns.  Muslims with points to score in relation to other Muslims were fast to blame these very Muslims. Wahabis, Deobandis and Jamat-e-Islamis were all pilloried; the Brewlvis and the Tabligis were attacked by the right-wing Islamists; secularist Muslims attacked all other conservative Muslims; while the Brewlvis were the majority but most disconnected from the political process. The Wahabis, Deobandis and the Jamat-e-Islamis were the most connected with government through their links with the MCB, for example. Ultimately, the government response in 2007 was a small gesture of around £140m to spend on localised Muslim capacity-building projects over a period of three years. It, however, led to a self-serving ‘Islam Industry’ with ‘Professional Muslims’ vying for access to power and privilege [the policing, security and intelligence services received around £2bn during the same period]. The incorporation of certain Muslim civil servants employed by New Labour as special advisers exacerbated the problems of ensuring robust neutral advice.  I was keen to continue to make an impact through my work at the Centre, and from 2005-2007, there were regular conferences, talks and seminars on the subject of ethnicity, culture, religion and politics presented by senior civil servants, House of Lords peers, senior diplomats, parliamentarians, local councillors, senior public officials, leading public intellectuals and the most prominent of academics in the country. Debate and discussion was robust and meaningful, and they attracted growing audiences. I was also asked to help advise all sorts of groups, including government, communitarian groups, mosque groups, media, and they operated on local, national and international levels.

Ten years after 9/11 and five years after 7/7, I now live and work in the city of Istanbul teaching, researching and writing in areas relating to global Islamism, cohesion, diasporas and civil society organisations. Istanbul is the ‘bridge of civilisations’ where there is a cohesive balance between Islam in public life and its interactions with modernity, citizenship and nationhood.

Turkey is 99 per cent Muslim and yet it is a secular nationalist republic. Since 2002, the country has had nine years of unprecedented economic growth, political stability, rising wages, increasing consumerism, improving living standards, a remarkable health service, a growing higher education sector and a geopolitical confidence that sees it flexing its muscles in relation to both the West but also the East, not just the Muslim Middle East, but as far as India and China. Underneath the growing regional certainty there remain many tensions, however. Secularist nationalist fundamentalists still hold sway in senior ranks of the media and the academy [with the military and the judiciary already moderated to a greater extent]. Majority Turkish society is moving towards a centre ground where the Islamists are embracing democracy and citizenship, squeezing out the hard-liner secularists, republicans, nationalists and 'Islamo-  fascists'. The AK Party under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have won a third general election in 2011, having won the 2002 and 2007 elections, as well as two local elections and two European referenda with relative ease, there is a growing sense that a persuasive political, social and cultural project is bearing many fruits. So much so that Western Europe may well look towards Turkey as a positive partner in relation to the integration of its own Muslim minorities, which are now close to 20m, as well it being opportunities for a young and talented workforce in a set of beleaguered Western European economies feeling the effects of ageing populations and low birth rates.

The East is potentially looking to Turkey in relation to broadening Muslim attitudes toward democracy, citizenship, tolerance, cohesion and economic stability. Turkey certainly has a great deal to offer to the world, and the next five years will remain an important period in its recent political history. There remains much to develop here in Turkey during the many changes to the national psyche after the Kemalist secularisation process of the early twentieth century, but it has come a long way in a very short period of time. In Britain, however, the situation could not be so converse. There is a real risk of a double-dip recession as economic growth is low, inflation is high, wages have frozen, young unemployment continues to rise, business confidence is low and people are genuinelt worried about their jobs and livelihood in general. There is also a feral beast in the form of the EDL (the English Defence Leagues) which claims some authority to an English-ism that has perhaps been lacking in the public sphere or eroded in the face of the challenges of multiculturalism and violent Islamic radicalism among a few young Muslims. The growth of the fascist far-right is also found in a number of other Western European countries right now, but at present, with a political vacuum for a beleaguered white working class cementing in Whitehall and a Con-Dem coalition entrenched in London and out of touch with the rest of the nation, the challenges remain significant. Invariably, tensions, conflicts and prejudice will grow during a period of an economic downturn, and this is unlikely to change in the next five years or so. In the meantime, divisions widen and the extremes of society clash further. One thing is for sure. While Turkey goes forward with confidence, Britain will remain trundling along, with its own deep-seated problems of class, elitism, bourgeois racism and a concept of English-ness that is perhaps outmoded and even dysfunctional in the current period. Perhaps there are some lessons to be learnt from the Turkish experience, and in other parts of the Muslim world. It is my role to work out precisely what they might be in relation to the theory and  practice of radicalism, Islamism, cohesion and civil society responses over the next months and years. Watch this space!

Dr Abbas is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at Fatih University in Istanbul, Turkey. His most recent book is Islamic Radicalism and Multicultural Politics: The British Experience (Routledge, 2011).