British Jihadism: The Detail and the Denial

Since the early 1990s British Islamists have been fighting, killing and dying in a succession of conflicts across the world, beginning with the Bosnian civil war of 1992-95. A decade later this violence reached the United Kingdom, with a series of deadly attacks on the London transport system in July 2005, the first suicide bombings in Western Europe. This thesis provides a historiography of the involvement of Britons in global and domestic jihadist struggles at home and abroad across three decades. It catalogues and records their actions, and bring into a central document the names and affiliations of both British Islamist combatants, and those from jihadist organisations who have settled in this country. The ever increasing number of Britons travelling to the Islamic State does not come as a surprise when the scale of past involvement in such causes is considered. This thesis deconstructs the religious objectives is intrinsic to these trends, and emphasises that in British Jihadism it is the goal, as much as the message, which is religious. The reluctance of British Muslim representative organisations to address early examples of these developments, the ‘denial’ – is analysed herein. The development of a religious terrorism which often targets women and minority groups may have been expected to face critical examination from academics, in particular from within the critical terrorism studies school. Regrettably such rigour is found to be lacking. Indeed it is within the academy that some the most sustained attempts to deny any religious influences behind contemporary terrorism have been found. Detailed 3 feminist critiques of Islamist practice are deployed to advocate a new approach – one that leads to a critical terrorist studies which critiques not just government responses to terrorism, but terrorist actors also