Muslim Communities and Counter-Terror Responses: “Hard” Approaches to Community Engagement in the UK and Australia

This paper focusses upon the issue of “community engagement” with Muslims in relation to domestic counter-terrorism responses in the UK and in Australia. It is argued that in both countries, counter-terrorism strategies are underpinned by the viewpoint that Muslim communities, by working with the state authorities, can play a significant role in helping to combat extremism. However, engagement in this context is problematic, as it is often led by the imperatives of government. It seems that both the British and Australian governments operate according to a binary opposition of Legitimate and Illegitimate Muslim, where those individuals considered to be radical are automatically linked with extremism and thereby consigned to the category of the Illegitimate, thus preventing their participation as active citizens. This paper suggests that a more socially inclusive approach should underpin “harder” approaches to engagement, so that partnership work with a broader range of Muslim communities might be encouraged. Such approaches would acknowledge and value the richness and multiplicity of Muslim identities in western societies so that radicalisation would not be automatically linked to extremism.