The conveyor belt theory is a caricature of those who seek to tackle extremism
In discourse around counter-extremism we often hear about the ‘conveyor-belt theory of radicalisation’, widely understood as the idea that non-violent extremism acts as a conveyor belt leading to violent extremism.
Or, in other words, non-violent extremists are heading towards violent extremism in a linear fashion, hence to prevent terrorism we must tackle non-violent extremism.
Critics of those that point to the role of non-violent Islamist groups in the radicalisation process, such as CAGE, keen to rebut this theory, refer to it as ‘discredited’ or suggest there is no evidence to support it.
What seems to have evaded most concerned with this subject area is that the conveyor belt theory actually doesn’t exist. Yes that is correct, there is no conveyor theory of radicalisation and no-one has proposed such a theory.
I would be happy to be proven wrong on this point but my research suggests such a theory was never put forward by anyone and the term ‘conveyor belt theory of radicalisation’ was concocted by those that are now critics of the theory. It is a grand straw man; the mother of all straw men if you like.
When asked about proponents of the fictitious conveyor belt theory, the critics often end up pointing to the Quilliam Foundation. However, no Quilliam spokesperson has ever referenced the conveyor belt theory. According to the Quilliam website:
“One can be a radical without being violent, or advocating violence. However, some who follow an Islamist agenda do use their political/religious beliefs in order to justify acts of violence, including violence that deliberately targets civilians. As such, Islamists often provide a narrative in which Islam as a faith is portrayed as being under attack. Such an interpretation can play into the hands of those who argue that Islam is in need of self-defense, even if it includes attacking civilians, including Muslims. Non-violent Islamists can champion this narrative, providing the mood music to which suicide bombers dance.”
This is a far cry from the conveyor belt theory that critics claim Quilliam posits. It therefore appears that the conveyor belt is nothing more than a caricature of those who seek to tackle non-violent extremism, often because such individuals are non-violent extremists themselves or allied to them. Having exposed this dirty trick, a number of additional points also need to be made.
Firstly, the term ‘non-violent extremism’ is slightly misleading because the organizations and individuals that it refers to (such as Hizb ut Tahrir) are not really non-violent but do not believe in terrorist attacks as a means of achieving political goals. They certainly believe in offensive jihad to conquer territory once their Islamic state has been established and they certainly intend to be violent towards gays, ex-muslims and those that do not conform to their moral norms.
So non-terrorist rather than non-violent would be more accurate.
Secondly, regardless of whether or not it causes terrorism, such non-terrorist extremism is problematic in itself. To have groups of individuals preaching the destruction of the West – as well as the necessity of establishing an Islamic state that implements barbaric capital punishments and kills dissenters – can cause a few problems in society. One of those problems being that it helps create a future support base for such a state when it does emerge, as we are now learning.
Thirdly, where there are non-terrorist extremists, terrorist extremist will eventually emerge just as if racism or homophobia were to proliferate in any society there would eventually be violent racist and homophobic attacks. This is just plain common sense and is borne out by the facts. Throughout the 90s we had Hizb ut Tahrir preaching the importance of defeating the West and establishing an Islamic state. Towards the late-90s, al-Muhajiroun splintered off and eventually began engaging in calls for jihad with many adherents now convicted of terrorism related offences.
Ideology interprets grievances, shapes identity and presents idealistic solutions that ultimately guides behavior. Extremist ideology preached with fervor sets the kettle boiling and eventually some of the water spills over.
Interestingly, those keen to deny the links between violent and non-violent extremists often argue the opposite when it comes to Islamophobia. They are very keen to point out the links between groups like the English Defence League, Britain First and anti-Muslim hate crime. Ideology suddenly becomes key and a precursor to violence when it is right-wing but not when it is Islamist.
We have a bizarre situation in this country whereby few are interested in trying to understand radicalisation yet many appear keen to use it to critique their political opponents. In the eyes of the hard-left, radicalized Muslims are a tool to exploit in a grand strategy to oppose western capitalism. Islamist extremists who preach the importance and necessity of establishing an Islamist state suddenly pretend their efforts are not linked to those seeking to establish their ideology through violent means.
Meanwhile we have sections of the press and academia that have already decided that the real issue is nasty Tory policies like Prevent – rather than extremists advocating religious supremacy.
Amjad Khan is a Muslim writer and commentator
28 Responses to “Extremism and the conveyor-belt fallacy”
Jack
I like how you say “armchair theorising” as if positing an opinion is unacceptable. You yourself are yet to post any studies that relate to anything that I am saying; all you have done is post a link to an article that references some studies that claim to show that membership of certain groups is not a good predictor of membership of another, which in no way refutes my point, or the point made in the article. You can therefore stop the pretence that what you are offering is any more of a critical analysis than what I am offering – neither of us are yet to reference a relevant study, not that doing so gets us any closer to the truth!
Supposing your concept of truth is not entirely reliant on the mere number of “et al”s I can fit into a paragraph, I’ll indulge you.
Here’s an interesting article, written by one of the foremost scholars on terrorism, which explores how the dichotomy between violent and non-violent extremism is a false one, seeing as religious extremism is inherently violent.
http://www.icct.nl/download/file/ICCT-Schmid-Violent-Non-Violent-Extremism-May-2014.pdf
Of course, that is not a sufficient fact for us to conclude that non-violent groups make it easier for people to become violent extremists because of the general atmosphere that they create (my position, and the position of the author of the article that we’re commenting on). That is quite a difficult thing to prove through empirical analysis – you can’t quantify, or expect an honest answer to, “do you think you would have bought into ISIS’ ideology if there weren’t other groups on your street that, while denouncing ISIS, made it clear that homosexuality, Judaism, Christianity, the Western world etc., were all evils?”
If you are unable to reason anything out without the assistance of studies, I imagine you have quite a hard time getting through your day to day existence. There are plenty of supposedly non-violent groups in this country that we do not allow to operate (not that that is what is being argued for in this article!), to have a platform, or to actively recruit, because doing so would be seen to give their ideas an iota of legitimacy. That is just a reasonable conclusion to come to.
In case you are completely incapable of rationality without the assistance of “et als” (the great arbiters of truth), then here’s a rather thorough study which goes some way to showing that:
“for some people considering violence — either in a cell or not — the credibility and status attached to violent activity motivated them to vocalise their activities and beliefs: there was talk, and it was picked up and argued over at the
community level.”
http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Edge_of_Violence_-_web.pdf
Will that do? Or do you need something to be the last thing on your reading list for it to be right (I assume you are a 1st, maybe 2nd year politics student, based on your inability to comprehend the substance of my argument)? Everyone knows that’s where truth comes from; that’s why Foucault is always last.
Johnny Wong
Poor baby. You really are upset and confused aren’t you?The argument made by Demos was that many of the al qaeda terrorists in Western states have barely passed through a so called radical phase. Most of them have little knowledge of religious scripture and are drawn to violence as a peverse form of counter culture. They have gone directly to a violent phase in a reasonably short space of time and not gone through the whole Quilliam conveyor belt or the whole ‘taking on certain ideas phase’ you describe. The point also made by Demos was that non-violent extremist groups may even represent a space through which people can express dissent without taking on violence and so should be looked upon as useful allies in counter terrorism policy. They argue that dealing with non-violent extremist groups should be addressed through social policies not counterterrorism policies as Quilliam does.
Jack
Please don’t confuse the terse portions of my reply for anger. They were written quite calmly with detached distaste. Believe it or not, but it’s quite possible to reply to someone on the internet without being angry. The lack of tonality that is inherent to comments makes it easy for people, such as yourself, to make it seem like the person they are dealing with is angry when they aren’t. It’s usually a good indication of when someone is feeling insecure about their hitherto unshaken feeling of intellectual superiority.
But, in the spirit of debate, please quote some studies showing that people who write stridently on the internet are usually angry when they do so.
“Most of them have little knowledge of religious scripture” – please explain the relevance of that statement as a reply to my position. I never once claimed that violent Islamist extremists adhered to your definition of what makes a good Muslim. You really will need to grasp the concept of a straw man at some point.
“Point made by Demos was that non-violent extremist groups may even represent a space through which people can express dissent without taking on violence” – Indeed they can. Now please explain why that entails that they cannot ALSO create an environment that makes even more extreme, and crucially violent groups, seem more appealing.
You obviously didn’t read the Schmid article I linked you, because while DEMOS may think non-violent groups can be useful “allies”, he disagrees, as do a number of other social scientists he references. For every study, there’s another that refutes it. I’m afraid that’s the way social science is. You can throw all the et al.s you want at it, but it won’t change a thing (can’t wait for you to straw man that into me saying that scientific endeavour is invalid while you ignore my questions; such is the mind of a pompous 2nd year politics student).
johndowdle
They key point – obscured, as ever – is that western imperialism lies behind almost all the violent actions.
Giving zionists Palestinian lands following the Balfour Declaration in 1917 sowed the seeds of conflict.
Gross intrusions ever since in support of cheap energy for the West has had a similar effect.
Invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Gaza and the West Bank area of former Jordan by the West and its partner in crime Israel all led to a completely understandable sense of resentment among Muslims.
Before we in the West point fingers at Muslims, we need to look at our own contributions to extremism.
Bquad
That is not the key point surrounding this subject whatsoever. The article doesn’t really dispute your claim, as it is not a discussion of the grievances that play a role in the radicalisation process. This is a discussion of the ideology that individuals choose to adopt once grievances are formed, and the implications of them doing so:
“Ideology interprets grievances, shapes identity and presents idealistic solutions that ultimately guides behavior. Extremist ideology preached with fervor sets the kettle boiling and eventually some of the water spills over.”
Your response seems guilty of the notion expressed by the author that people just want to discuss the topic of radicalisation as a political tool rather than treating the arguments presented seriously.