The Islamic State in Britain

For over two decades Muslim religious extremism in the UK was most often associated with the notorious Al-Muhajiroun group which was founded by Omar Bakri Mohammed, the former leader of the radical transnational Islamist movement Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) in the UK, until he resigned in 1996. Al-Muhajiroun was a shortened version of Jama[at al-Muhajiroon, a front name for HT created by Bakri in 1983 while living in Saudi Arabia. Al-Muhajiroun became infamous for its goal of wanting to establish a caliphate in the UK and its high profile confrontational protests and support for violent jihadist movements abroad. British Muslims were particularly frustrated by the amount of media attention it received, and the ability of its leaders to evade prosecution for most of its history – a fact which prompted many to question its relationship with the state security services. Despite the departure of its leader in 2005 and various setbacks, the group continued to operate and expand its network, even establishing cells in some European cities. The organisation was associated with various bomb plots and the decision to give allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2014 encouraged the emigration of some of its activists to ISIS controlled territory in Iraq and Syria and cement the group’s violent extremist credentials.

This study builds on a similar examination of the group Radical Islam Ris- ing: Muslim Extremism in the West by Quintan Wiktorowicz (2005). The author of this book also using a social science approach applies a combination of ethnography and network analysis to explain why some young Muslims joined the group, how they become radicalized, why most eventually left, and how it operated for so long. The first chapter offers a ‘thin’ network analysis with ‘thick’ ethnographic description that draw on news reports, interviews, and participant observation. This section of the book is the most theoretical and is illustrated with various statistical tables and graphs which try to account for the group’s development from a centralised “scale-free-like” network focused around the leadership of Bakri to a shrunken, more decentralised, “small-world-like” network. The author argues that the creation of its close knit, invitation-only “study circles,” is one of the reasons why it was able to survive a hostile law enforcement environment for so many years.