Description
Studies from the U.K. have highlighted that, in the interest of pre-empting ‘radicalization,’ counter-radicalization (CR) policies have encroached social and cultural domains of society (Qurashi, 2018; Ragazzi, 2016). To achieve their ends, CR policies rely on community partnerships; Muslim civil society organizations (CSOs) become interlocutors connecting state institutions to Muslim communities. Yet, little is understood about how Muslim CSOs balance (often competing) demands from state institutions and the Muslim communities they serve. Using theories of organizational institutionalism, this paper analyzes how Muslim CSOs in the U.K. and Canada develop responses to CR policies. I use a case-oriented, comparative approach across the two countries that share liberal welfare regimes and have sizeable share of Muslim minorities but have taken divergent approaches to CR. Data for the study are drawn from qualitative interviews with leaders of Muslim CSOs. In the U.K., Prevent and the recent counter-extremism strategy are sites of governance of British Muslims based on risk and racial othering (Ali, 2020; Martin, 2020). Canada formalized a national CR strategy in 2018, but CR has been rolled into national security policing practices that have “Muslimized” the problem of radicalization (Ahmad, 2020; Nagra & Monaghan, 2020). I find that the responses of Muslim CSOs to CR policies are impacted by discourses about the riskiness of Muslims.
