Description
Examining the July 7, 2005 London Bombing as an ontologically destabilising event for the British Muslim communities, this paper will examine the way in which British Muslim groups have constructed an identity in response to the development of the securitization process post 7/7. The paper argues that this securitization process relies on discourses and practices of Britishness whose racialized structures and roots lie in the Empire and historical narratives of Islam as the Other. As part of creating an identity in response to the securitization process the Empire has become a polysemic signifier to which different Muslim organisations relate themselves in order to create a new ontological security. This paper will draw on Caterina Kinvall’s work to examine how the concepts of ‘chosen trauma’ and ‘chosen glories’ can be used to contrast the ways in which different Muslim organisations resist or accept the securitization process. Drawing on the public discourse of Muslim organisations, this paper will further examine how the groups’ discursive strategies rely on these historical narratives to situate themselves as either citizens of the Empire, and therefore rooted within constructs of Britishness, or as victimised colonial subjects othered by discourses of ontological security centred in sanitised histories of imperial glory.
