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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The Global Muslim Brotherhood in Britain A Social Movement? Perry, Damon Lee Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 05. Oct. 2021 The Global Muslim Brotherhood in Britain: A Social Movement? Damon Lee Perry June 2016 Student Number: 1142640 Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Social Science & Public Policy King’s College London The Global Muslim Brotherhood in Britain: A Social Movement? Damon Lee Perry Contents Acknowledgements 1 Abstract 3 Introduction The Global Muslim Brotherhood and ‘Non-Violent Islamist Extremism’ in Britain 4 ‘Non-violent extremism’: a conveyor belt to terrorism? 6 ‘Non-violent Islamism’, social cohesion and entryism 13 The question of a ‘participationist’ Islamist movement in Britain 18 A note on methodology 26 PART I Chapter 1 Conceiving Social Movements: Social Movement Theory and Bourdieu 30 1. The Political Process approach to social movements 32 1.1. The PP approach and ‘rational actor’ model 33 1.2. ‘Cultural framing’ and symbolic struggles 35 1.3. Political process treatments of religious and Islamic movements 38 Zald, Snow and Marshall, and Kurzman: religion sidelined as a tool 38 Wiktorowicz, Tuğal and ‘Islamic activism’ 41 1.4. Some implications for identifying movements 45 2. The New Social Movement approach to social movements 46 2.1. A ‘relational’ concept of social movement 48 Beyond ‘regressive utopias’ and ‘anti-movements’ 51 2.2. Collective identity and solidarity 52 2.3. The habitus and symbolic power 53 2.4. Networks and organisation 56 2.5. Fields of contention 57 2.6. Conflict and the state 59 3. Conceiving and recognising social movements 61 3.1. The dual stakes of movement struggles 62 3.2. The two aspects of authority contested by movements 63 3.3. Social movements and other modes of collective action 64 Chapter 2 Introducing the Global Muslim Brotherhood: Between Political Subversion and 69 Religious Reformism? 1. The global Muslim Brotherhood in the West 71 1.1. Historical origins and contemporary conceptions 71 Revivalist visionaries: al-Banna and Mawdudi 72 ‘Participationist’ and ‘rejectionist’ Islamists 77 An ideological movement or a covert organisation? 79 1.2. The ‘westward expansion’ of the Muslim Brotherhood network 82 2. The global Muslim Brotherhood in Britain 87 2.1. The Mawdudists 89 2.2. The Ikhwanis 95 2.3. Islamism in Britain: two streams, one movement 98 3. Religious reform and ‘post-Islamism’ 101 3.1. The indigenisation of Islam and a transformation in values 102 3.2. The ‘Arab Spring’ and the fragmentation of British Islamism 107 3.3. Doubting political lineages and aspirations 109 4. Assessing the debate for identifying a movement 110 PART II Chapter 3 Organisation and Leadership: Informal Networks and Formal Bodies 119 1. Networking and collaboration 122 1.1. Campaigns and other events 123 1.2. Publications 130 2. Leadership structures 133 2.1. The Muslim Council of Britain 135 2.2. The Coordination Committee of Islamic Organisations 139 2.3. Informal personal connections 143 2.4. Overlapping organisational structures 146 3. Visualising a network of networks 152 Chapter 4 The Basis of the Bonds of Brotherhood: Cultural Solidarity, Habitus and 157 Ideology 1. Communal and territorial classifications 158 1.1. Community: the Muslim umma and humanity 158 1.2. Territory: dar al-Islam and dar al-harb 168 2. Missionary concepts and perceptions 170 2.1. Speaking for Muslims and Islam 171 2.2. Da’wa: the call to Islam 175 2.3. ‘Enjoining the Good and Forbidding the Wrong’ 181 3. Social and political orientations 190 3.1. The Islamic revival and the Islamic movement 190 3.2. Shari’a and the Islamic state 197 Shari’a: from the personal to the political 198 The Islamic state: a reward not an objective 201 Non-compulsion and the matter of majority rule 205 Gradualism and prophecy 207 4. Habitus and ideology 210 Chapter 5 Contentious Politics and Symbolic Struggles: ‘Non-Violent Extremism’ and 212 ‘British Values’ 1. Politics and governance: A conflict of values with the state 215 1.1. Representation and advocacy: MCB and other interlocutors 215 The Muslim Council of Britain 217 A clash of values and government disengagement 217 Contesting the notion of ‘British values’ 219 Contesting the notion of ‘extremism’ 221 Contesting the symbolic authority to speak for Islam 223 Contesting the symbolic authority to represent Muslims 226 Other revivalist interlocutors 228 The Muslim Educational Trust 228 The Association of Muslim Schools UK 230 The Association of Muslim Lawyers 233 The Muslim Safety Forum 236 The National Association of Muslim Police 237 1.2. Local government: the Islamic Forum of Europe 240 2. Education and arbitration: A clash of values within Muslim communities 247 2.1. Muslim schools: influencing Muslim minds 248 The Trojan Horse Affair 249 The Islamisation of knowledge 258 2.2. Shari’a councils 263 3. Political and cultural conflict 270 Conclusion The Global Muslim Brotherhood in Britain: A Cultural and Political Movement 281 Re-thinking ideology and the ‘battle of ideas’ 284 Mischaracterising ‘Islamism’ 286 Beyond ideas: a conflict of culture 287 Political and cultural subversion 292 A gradual recognition of cultural subversion 293 Some considerations for the future 297 Tables and Figures Table 1: Modes of collective action 67 Figure 1: Diagram of Islamic revivalist network in Britain 154 Table 2: Symbolic and practical dimensions of authority contested by the 216 revivalist movement within the Muslim umma and across mainstream society. Bibliography 303 Appendices Appendix 1: Brief biographies of interviewees 321 Appendix 2: Data for network diagram produced in Gephi 324 Table 3. Key to individuals and organisations 324 A) Individuals 324 B) Organisations 326 Table 4. Relationships between organisations and individuals 327 Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, John Bew, whose interest in my research project made it possible for me to embark upon this doctorate at King’s College. His valuable and constructive advice throughout the process of research and writing helped me to plot a clear course to completion and gave me the confidence required to bring this thesis to fruition. I am also grateful to Michael Rainsborough and Brooke Rogers at King’s for giving me useful feedback during my upgrade process, which helped shape the thesis in its final form. Outside King’s, I would like to thank a number of inspiring and generous people who gave their time providing advice or academic resources. I am particularly grateful to Lorenzo Vidino, who saw the potential value of an in-depth study of the global Muslim Brotherhood in Britain. Lorenzo encouraged me to do the PhD and provided valuable feedback on an early thesis plan. I would also like to thank Patrick Sookhdeo for first putting the idea of doing a PhD in my head, and for opening the doors of the Barnabus Fund library in the beautiful village of Pewsey. Innes Bowen kindly shared some of her notes from an interview she conducted in the course of writing her book on Islam in Britain, for which I am grateful. A special thanks is owed to all of my interviewees, whose full names and biographies are provided in Appendix 1. This thesis would not have been possible without their agreement to meet me and their willingness to speak openly about matters of great personal and political importance to them. I owe particular thanks to Irshad Bacqui at the Islamic Foundation in Markfield, who provided access to the Foundation’s library on several occasions. A number of academics that I approached for access to certain journal articles were incredibly kind and prompt in replying with the materials and answering questions. For this, I would like to thank Nick Crossley, Barry Markovsky, David Snow and Loïc Wacquant. Cihan Tuğal, whose work on Islamism in Turkey I benefitted greatly from, was kind enough to field numerous questions by email and for this I am very grateful. During the course of conducting the preliminary research for this thesis, I was fortunate to benefit from feedback on some of my writing, also via 1 email, from two great (but unrelated) scholars of Islam based in the United States, David Cook and Michael Cook. At this time, I was also lucky to receive an unpublished paper on Islamism in the West by Jeffrey Bale. I would like to thank each of them for their generosity and insights. The support of several friends cannot be overlooked whilst thanking those that have been of help to me over the past five or more years.