Description
20 years on and the 7/7 London Bombings in 2005 still stands as one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in British history. In addition to creating a new security climate, 7/7 also saw the introduction of unprecedented representations of Muslim terrorist subjects as figures deemed “ordinary”, “normal” and “like us” in British mainstream media. This paper is part of a broader project examining post-7/7 sexualised representations of Muslims as terrorists circulating British mainstream media, showing how sexuality plays an essential role in the Othering of Muslims and its effect on British Muslims and those racialised as such in the everyday. Therefore, through interrogating media discourses on the 7/7 bombers, as well as depictions of terrorists as “enemies within” from TV Dramas such as Sleeper Cell (2005) and Britz (2007) this paper examines the role of sexuality in sustaining representations of terrorists as “unsuspiciously suspicious” Muslims who hide deviance and perversion beneath the veneer of appearing normal and ordinary. It also will discuss how such sexualised representations that entangle perversity and deviance to normality and the ordinary contribute to the targeting of the ordinary in the “everyday”. It will examine how this plays out in both counterterror media campaigns, wherein everyday objects, actions and settings are encouraged to be treated with suspicion, as well as through rise of “false positives” (Heath-Kelly 2012) and the tragic murder of Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005.
