The ‘emotionalization of the “war on terror”’: Counter-terrorism,fear,risk,insecurity and helplessness

Introduction

The relevance of emotions to definitions of crime, the construction of the criminal and the fear of crime have been well documented (Blackburn, 1993; Braithwaite, 1989; Cohen, 2001; De Haan and Loader, 2002; Gray et al., 2008; Karstedt, 2002; Sykes and Matza, 1957; Vaughan, 2007; Zinn, 2006). The inclusion of emotions in criminology has produced some of the most progressive work within the discipline. For example in States of Denial, Cohen (2001) explores human suffering in relation to the emotional impact of acknowledging war, starvation and so on. Similarly, if one examines the concept of ‘moral panic’ and ‘folk devils’, emotions of anxiety/ies and fear permeate through this work (Cohen, 1972). However, even though the ‘fear of crime’ and the ‘culture of fear’ (Furedi, 2002; Hope and Sparks, 2000) are well-established themes within criminology, the intersection of fear with other emotions and more generally an analysis of ‘emotions’ (as opposed to an ‘emotion’) in relation to crime (Farrall et al., 2000; Gray et al., 2008; Walklate and Mythen, 2008) remains under developed (there are some notable exceptions – see Vaughan’s (2007) study on desistance and emotions).

Since 9/11 and the subsequent ‘war on terror’ there has been a renewed academic interest in terrorism and criminology has been quick to discuss, explore and critique various facets of the ‘war on terror’, including the construction of the ‘war on terror’, foreign policy, counter-terrorism legislation and policing (Ahmed, 2014a; Hudson, 2009; Hudson and Walters, 2009; Mythen and Walkate, 2006, 2008; Panthazis and Pemberton, 2009). However, criminology has been slow to explore emotions in relation to the ‘war on terror’, even though the possible avenues of research available through incorporating emotions have been well highlighted within the social sciences with disciplines including psychology, political science and international relations studying the phenomenon of emotions (Frijda et al., 2000; Hochschild, 1983; Petersen, 2010). As Gray et al. (2010: 2) rightly contend ‘these contributions are noteworthy; not least because they offer a conceptual vocabulary that may well have much to offer criminological research’. The lack of criminological attention to emotions in the ‘war on terror’ seems surprising given that as Silke (2001: 2) states ‘terrorism itself is an emotive subject’. As a small step towards addressing this analytical gap, this article explores how the policy measures implemented in the ‘war on terror’ have influenced British Muslims’ emotions. The article identifies emotional patterns among British Muslims by looking at British Muslims’ perceptions of the ‘war on terror’.

The Context: The ‘Emotionalization of the “War on Terror”’

The very meaning and definition of emotions remains contested (Kleinginna and Kleinginna, 1981). When defining emotions Scherer (2005: 706) states that emotions are ‘anger, fear, joy, disgust, sadness, shame, guilt’ and these emotions constitute the common variety of emotions usually studied. Within criminology emotions of ‘pleasure, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, remorse, resentment, shame, and guilt’ have been conceptualized as ‘states of emotional arousal’ (De Haan and Loader, 2002: 243). Given the number of studies involving perceptions and the utilization of emotions in the social sciences, the relationship between emotions and perceptions has been well documented. According to Kleinginna and Kleinginna (1981: 355) emotions ‘generate cognitive processes such as emotionally relevant perceptual effects, appraisals, labelling processes’. Similarly Izard (2007) notes how emotions are an integral part of perception, cognition, judgement and action. ‘Emotions combine with cognition to shape our perceptions, memories and judgments’ (Feigenson, 2003: 959) and according to Tappolet (2005) emotions are perceptions of values. Thus it appears that emotions form part of our perceptions and beliefs because as Frijda et al. (2000) state, emotions can alter, amplify and change beliefs. From a theoretical standpoint, according to appraisal-tendency theory emotions ‘although tailored to help the individual respond to the event that evoked the emotion, persist beyond the eliciting situation – becoming an implicit perceptual lens for interpreting subsequent situations’ (Lerner et al., 2003: 1). The emphasis on eliciting situations denotes how emotions have been studied in relation to external events (Feigenson, 2003; Kleinginna and Kleinginna, 1981; Scherer, 2005). Therefore emotions are a reaction to external eliciting situations and form an integral part of an individuals’ perceptual lens, values and judgements regarding the external eliciting situation. For the purpose of this research, the emotions identified by Scherer (2005: 706) ‘anger, fear, joy, disgust, sadness, shame, guilt’, were the primary focus of the research. The research explored participants’ perceptions of the external ‘war on terror’ in order to examine how the policy measures implemented in the ‘war on terror’ have influenced British Muslims’ emotions. However prior to discussing the dominant themes to emerge from the research, it is worth noting the prevalence of emotions in the ‘war on terror’ (see Ahmed (2014a) for an in depth discussion on the construction of the ‘war on terror’). The ‘war on terror’ and the prominence of risk, fear and suspicion as tools of insecurity serving to secure legitimacy in the expansion of social control mark the ‘emotionalization of the “war on terror”’.

The first dimension of the ‘emotionalization of the “war on terror”’ is the global dimension. The heightened anxieties of 9/11 represented the ‘globalization of fear’ (Bosworth et al., 2008) and it was the construction of the ‘war on terror’ in apocalyptic terms which led to military action in Afghanistan and Iraq (Ahmed, 2014a; Aradau and Munster, 2009). Research by De Castella et al. (2009) revealed that emotional appeals, especially in the form of speeches containing fear and anger have been selectively used in relation to counter-terrorism policies and to promote public support for military engagement. Subsequent research demonstrated how ‘in both Bush’s and Blair’s rhetoric, anger and fear appraisal content’ was at its highest levels in the lead-up to the war in Iraq (De Castella and McGarty, 2011: 180). Although anger and fear have become the dominant emotions associated with the ‘war on terror’, Beck (2006) has highlighted the existence of ‘global empathy’ in the ‘war on terror’ to represent perceptions of injustice and suffering which exist beyond the nation state. Through disempowering and otherizing Muslims globally and locally, the ‘war on terror’ has produced reflexive emotions and what Sadiki (2002) calls ‘bad globalization’. Wright-Neville and Smith (2009: 87) note the use of emotional appeals to promote political action in Iraq, Chechnya and Kashmir; they state ‘their skill lies in an ability to tap into emotions such as anger, frustration and humiliation through a narrative that explains these existential phenomena in terms of victimhood and oppression by outsiders’. Within the ‘war on terror’ it has therefore been argued that the ‘diaspora’ now represents similar understandings of religious identity, suffering and injustice (see Hudson, 2008) and in some cases emotions are manipulated to support and indeed induce the radicalization process.

The second dimension of the ‘war on terror’ which marks the intrusion of emotions is the existence of social morality to facilitate the legitimization of the expansion of social control. The construction of the inhumane ‘other’ ensures that anger, vengeance and disgust, which as Karstedt (2002: 299) contends are perceived as ‘valuable barometers of social morality’ are present and thus condition societal perceptions to largely accept measures that deviate from human rights (Hudson, 2003). The introduction of pre-crime counter-terrorism legislation marks the intrusion of the construction of the enemy with anger, disgust, fear and risk (see McCulloch and Pickering, (2009)). As Altheide (2013: 295) contends ‘fear limits our intellectual and moral capacities’ … ‘Claims are made that the “bad situation” can be fixed through more control’. The expansion of social control is a dominant characteristic of the ‘war on terror’ with the expansion of social control representing ‘the normalization of terrorism fear’ (Jackson, 2013: 271).

The final dimension of the ‘war on terror’ which has implications for emotions is the focus of the ‘war on terror’ on Islamic identity. Within the ‘war on terror’, what if any are the implications of the suspect identity being a religious identity? And how does the existence of a religious identity being subject to demonization and scrutiny impact emotions? Mythen and Walklate (2008: 229) contend ‘panoptic operations form part of the wider criminalization and marginalization of the Muslim community’. The existence of ‘panoptic’ methods of control form part of a wider socio-political context that has implications for British Muslims’ understandings, perceptions and expressions of their Islamic identity. Mitchell (2006) and Pedziwiatr (2007) have commented on how an Islamic identity, as any religious identity is a personal identity because it is interpreted and negotiated and thus rejection, suspicion, suffering and fear on the basis of this identity are much more likely to produce negative emotions such as anger, sadness and disgust. Therefore far from being void of emotions, it could be argued that the ‘war on terror’ actually represents a spectrum of emotions including fear, risk, suspicion, empathy, anger and suffering.

From ‘Construction to Perception’: The Impact of the ‘War on Terror’ on British Muslims

This article examines the emotional impact of the ‘war on terror’ on British Muslims through exploring British Muslims’ perceptions of the ‘war on terror’. It therefore explores individuals’ emotions in relation to their perceptions of the world (Wright-Neville and Smith, 2009). The findings discussed below emerged from 32 in depth interviews that were conducted with British Muslims in Birmingham (see Ahmed (2014b) for a more in depth discussion on the research process). Gray et al. (2010: 4) state that as ‘research on public perceptions has advanced we have discovered that lay perceptions are considerably more complex and multi-faceted than previously thought’. In depth interviews represented the best way of allowing such complexity to be captured and documented. In depth interviews were a way of allowing participants to articulate their emotions because as Scherer (2005: 712) contends, there is no objective way of measuring ‘the subjective experience of a person during an emotion episode’ and therefore it is necessary ‘to ask the individual to report on the nature of the experience’ whereby it is accepted that ‘emotions are what people say they are’ (Scherer, 2005: 697). Reisenzein (2007) argues that a definition from which to research emotions can consist of a list of emotions and as stated earlier the list provided by Scherer (2005) formed the list of emotions used in this research.

Participants were contacted through local community centres such as health centres, youth centres and organizations which have events for Muslim communities and all participants were from the Sparkbrook area of Birmingham. Although the sample was stratified according to gender, age and class, depth was favoured over generalizability and further it is beyond the scope of this article to present the finding according to each of the variables of age, class and gender. The sample was stratified according to the following categories with four participants in each category – (1) male under 30 working class, (2) male over 30 working class, (3) male under 30 middle class, (4) male over 30 middle class – and this was replicated for the gender variable. Various locations in Sparkbrook were used to conduct the interviews which included a day care centre, television studios, the university and participants’ homes. Due to each interview taking an approximate time of three hours emphasis was placed on allowing participants to select the location and time most suitable to their needs.

Counter-terrorism research is highly emotive because it reflects the socially constructed binary of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ with researchers having to navigate between these binaries and questions of loyalty and empathy (Casebeer, 2008; Johnson, 2002). Renzetti and Lee (1993) identify sensitive research as being research which delves into personal experience, involves deviance/social control, the exercise of coercion or domination and things sacred to those being studied. The study met the specified criteria because it was based on participants’ personal experiences and perceptions of the ‘war on terror’, which could be conceptualized as involving coercive state action and the study incorporated a sacred part of their identity, their Islamic identity. A snowballing sampling strategy was employed and due to people taking part in the research and then recommending someone, this assisted in breaking down barriers.

A consent form was used which listed the ethical issues pertaining to the research. These included the purpose of the research, a brief explanation of the types of questions that would be asked, an explanation of what the information would be used for, what was expected of participants in terms of time and commitment, the scheduled time and date of the interviews, issues of confidentiality, anonymity and privacy. It was made explicit that participants could withdraw from the research at any point and on completion of the interviews could refuse to let their data be used. Prior to the interviews being transcribed, confidentiality was maintained through ensuring that I was the only person that had access to the data. Once the interviews had been transcribed all names were removed in order to preserve anonymity. Each transcript was given a code to denote the age, class and gender of the participant and no other information was included in the code. All the interviews were audio recorded and then transcribed with the data consisting of the transcribed audio recordings and detailed notes of each interview. The data was coded and analysed via category formation and the constant comparative method allied to grounded theory (Charmaz, 2013). Hunter et al. (2005: 57) argue that grounded theory has evolved and become less rigid in its use, with researchers increasingly adapting grounded theory to ‘suit the nature of the research problem’. I opened up the possibilities of interpretation through deeply questioning the data and started labelling the data. For example, I labelled all data which was about a visible Islamic identity with this label and through the method of constant comparison core themes were established with variations included within each theme. The discussion that follows documents the dominant themes to emerge from the study and the themes identified are evidenced by recourse to data extracts.

Denial of Human Rights and Policing: Profiling ‘Criminals’ and Producing Vulnerable ‘Victims’

The ‘war on terror’ is perceived to have introduced mechanisms of control which have made risk a much more dominant feature of the criminal justice system, undermining the values of society and indeed the state’s commitment against repression (Hudson, 2003; McCulloch and Pickering, 2009). Counter-terrorism legislation was perceived as constituting discrimination with participants relating the lack of human rights in this legislation to feelings of helplessness and fear, as Mohammed, Sasha and Younis explain:

The police act on suspicion but this suspicion has led them to make too many mistakes and these mistakes impact people’s lives and can damage their whole future.

I think people’s eyes have opened as to how much power the police have and just how they can use this power to hurt Muslims and take their human rights away.

Because of these new laws you can be suspected and taken in, I could be kept in for days on end and I haven’t even done anything, if they haven’t given me a job, fair enough I can go and find another one.

Participants’ concerns regarding counter-terrorism legislation were linked to the deprivation of human rights and liberty which transcended into a type of fear that participants described as previously not having experienced.

Participants referred to how their Islamic identity has been constructed with fear and there was an association with the constructed level of fear participants thought the police think they represent and the level of fear participants then perceived from the police. Fear was therefore conceptualized as a reflexive entity leading to perceptions of religious profiling as Mazar and Tariq highlight:

No other groups of people are treated as Muslims are and the way Muslims are being treated involves a violation of human rights and procedures that in the past would have never been accepted and tolerated.

I believe the policies which now inform the police of their priorities have gone some way in making the police act racist and this racism is more about religion and religious profiling.

Research conducted by Wellar et al. (2001) found that individuals experience vulnerability when they are involved in the criminal justice system. The increase in police powers, perceptions of targeting and differential treatment and the introduction of procedures which violate human rights were found to exacerbate participants’ perceptions of vulnerability. The existence of pre-emptive measures further heightened vulnerability, contributing to a deep sense of insecurity and suspicion of the police, as Ashra, Shafiq and Zabida explain:

I think there is a huge difference now, when the police patrol the streets in this area, you no longer know whether they are doing it because they want us to feel safe or they are doing it as spies.

I find that at times I really struggle to respect anything the police are doing, at the best of times I look at the police with suspicion. Are they there to calm the community about fears of general crime or are they there to attack you because as a Muslim you might be a terrorist.

My confidence in the police because of what I have witnessed firsthand has left me bewildered and scared to death because my kids are out every day and I say don’t go out stay at home.

The data concurred with Klausen’s (2009) argument that although efforts have been made by the police to build trust with Muslim communities, with the emphasis being on collaboration between the police and Muslim organizations, the sense of trust established fails to filter down to the general Muslim public. Perceptions of being profiled, constructed as ‘criminals’ and the lack of due process in counter-terrorism policing led participants to experience emotions of helplessness, vulnerability and fear, leading participants to describe themselves as ‘victims’ in the ‘war on terror’.

‘What If?’, Pre-Emption and the Regulation of Freedom, Security and Association

When commenting on the pre-emptive focus of counter-terrorism legislation, Mythen and Walklate (2008: 234) state the new focus on risk ‘does not assess the future by focusing on the past – “What was?” – nor indeed the present – “What is?”’. Instead, security assessments are directed by the question: ‘what if?’ The ‘what if?’ question is essentially utilitarian, it prioritizes the safety of the masses, ‘the civilians’, over the safety and legal rights of ‘the civilian’. Through reducing humans to any other entity whereby two is worth more than one, the ‘what if?’ question involves the commodification of humans. It was this very process, where in the drive to protect the future it is justified to strip an individual of humanity that led participants to change their perceptions from those of security to insecurity, as Musarat and Zabida explain:

When I was younger and I would walk down the street and see a policeman, you would say hello Mr Policeman … And he would walk with you and I was only nine years old, and you had the lovely image of the bobby and that’s all gone now, now you see the policeman and you say cor, blimey let’s run before he decides to stop and search you, arrest you and decides to research your background to see if you’re a terrorist.

Gone are the days when you thought you could see the bobby as your friend and talk to when there was trouble, now I would see them as your enemy, and they are out there to get you.

Coupled with the future-orientated focus of the ‘war on terror’ is the expansive governmentality agenda which as Mythen and Walklate (2006: 379) contend, involves ‘the intensification of a wider culture of surveillance and control’. The study demonstrated how the cumulative impact of the ‘what if?’/governmentality approach, with the expansion of methods of social control which are based on the discursive categorization of risk and threat (see Ahmed (2014a) for the discursive categorization of risk and threat in the ‘war on terror’) had left participants feeling controlled and as having their freedom restricted as Mazar and Mohammed explain:

If I wanted to open a charity or help someone who is an orphan in a village back home you know I didn’t have a problem, I could do that. But you know since September 11th you can’t even do that, without some MI6 officer knocking at your door. Let’s put it this way, a friend of mine tried to send £1000 to his mother, the second time he tried they said you have to wait a certain time period before you can send some money again. So your mother has to live with the bare essentials because the government in this country decides how much money you send your mother back home, these are things that we have to face now and we didn’t have to before.

I was at an airport when the security made me wait around so they could run a background check and I ended up missing my flight. I asked why everything was taking so long and they just said it was routine.

The study revealed that many participants had experienced some of the regulations that have been implemented as part of the ‘what if?’/governmentality approach and therefore the ‘war on terror’ with its methods of social control was part of Muslims’ daily lives. The ‘war on terror’ was perceived through a holistic perspective leaving participants feeling like they are living in a police state which in turn led to feelings of vulnerability and anger, as Mohammed and Kossaur explain:

In the airport I felt embarrassed because people were looking at me and some people were looking at me with fear in their eyes, also angry but there was nothing I could do because if I got angry and didn’t co-operate then they would have arrested me. So I guess I was also a bit scared.

You can’t stand there and argue with these people because they are emotionally hurt, you know they need to lash out on somebody and I believe that when something like that has happened people are emotionally affected.

According to Deutsch (2006: 24) a victim of injustice may be outraged by his/her experience and challenge the victimizer, however if the ‘victimizer is more powerful and has the support of the legal and other institutions of the society, the victim will realize that it would be dangerous to act on his outrage or even to express it’. Experiences like the one just described produce a sense of helplessness and powerlessness because participants must accept the fact that they are likely to be searched, allow such procedures to take place so that suspicion can be eradicated and thus accept the discursive construction of threat and risk through co-operating. Participants described their values and socialization as being based on an evidence-based criminal justice system whereby to apprehend an individual on the basis of anything other than evidence, just cause or reasonable suspicion constituted an abuse of power. The majority of participants spoke about the difficulty of having to suppress their own feelings of anger at being subjected to measures that were based on personal characteristics and how having to accept such measures produced an overwhelming sense of injustice and feelings of helplessness.

Association offences are part of the ‘what if?’ preventative counter-terrorism framework. They have expanded the net of criminalization in an attempt to isolate those deemed ‘dangerous and risky’ and those in contact with ‘suspects’ also become ‘suspects’ meaning that those subjected to counter-terrorism measures suffer long-term isolation and marginalization, as Matloob and Maria explain:

The 17th of June last year in the early morning the police raided my office, this one where I am standing. When I had my interviews, I said … When I return from here what are you going to do? You can’t return my name in the community because lots of people saw you.

A couple of doors down we did actually have one of the guys who was arrested for terrorism, they actually ripped the furniture and cut it up and everything and they took the old lady’s passport and she’s so old. And even if he was doing it she wouldn’t know that he was doing it and she wanted to go hajj and she couldn’t go because they wouldn’t release her passport and years have gone by and I don’t know if they have released it.

For all participants the existence of such measures were not perceived as leading to a minimal number of false arrests but as representing powers that all Muslims could be wrongly subjected to. Interestingly because the ‘what if?’ scenario is based on protecting the future, it was found to produce a reflexive form of anxiety and fear because participants knew the preoccupation with the future is at the expense of civil liberties. The above example demonstrates the long-term impact and damage of the ‘what if?’ scenario because according to this standpoint it is justified to take the passport and conduct the raid as both preventative measures are based on producing a safe future. However, in this case these preventive actions were perceived very differently because for Muslims a pilgrimage to hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam, it is an obligation that practising Muslims believe should be carried out at least once in their life-time. Therefore through the police taking the older woman’s passport they have restricted her from fulfilling what she believes is her Islamic duty. The study revealed how the future-orientated ‘what if’ framework leads to emotions of helplessness and powerlessness in the first instance and in the long term causes marginalization and isolation from the community, and in some instances actually prevents ‘suspects’ from practising their religion and fulfilling their Islamic duties which leads to anger and suffering.

The Geopolitics of the ‘War on Terror’: The Transient and Reflexive Fear and Risk

Beck (2006: 5) highlights the reflexive nature of the ‘war on terror’ in commenting on how the invasion of Iraq was responded to through global protests and ‘driven by what one might call the “globalization of emotions”’. The study revealed how geopolitics and acts of foreign terrorism, although global were perceived to impact everyday experiences of suffering, as Bilal and Safiq suggest (see Pain (2009) for a discussion on geopolitics):

Mr Blair is doing his own thing regardless of whether it is right or wrong. In fact because of his stupidity and backing of America an entire community is suffering because of him.

The bloodshed is forbidden in Islam, when some people take the law into their own hands to get the upper hand, it’s damaging and affects Muslims the world over.

Findlay (2007) links trust to legitimacy commenting on how the interpretation of truth determines the existence of legitimacy. The study highlighted how actions within the ‘war on terror’ were perceived as being illegitimate, as contested versions of the ‘truth’ and due to the geopolitical level impacting the local level, participants’ faith and trust in the state were negatively impacted, as Adam and Imran explain:

The government acted against what the majority wanted and this is not democracy, there should have been a vote on Iraq and we should have had the right to decide. How can people now have belief in politics and trust after this?

I think part of this has been done purposely and that is because the government knew that such a construction could then be used to justify things like the Iraq was, or at least that is what they had hoped.

The global construction of the terrorist and what Mythen and Walklate (2006: 388) call ‘a politics of fear and vengeance’ was perceived as facilitating the existence of localized Islamophobia, as Asghar and Jarrar suggest:

It has increased a great deal, the risk is something which is fragile and can go up and down and it has nothing to do with the Muslims who live in this country, well not the majority of us.

I think people want Muslims to come into the mainstream. I think the government is trying to put this set of ideas, ideals and values on us that they would like us to abide by so we have these statements on Sharia law by this nice acting and speaking David Cameron, and it’s really making people afraid.

These perceptions denoted a sense of helplessness because participants spoke about how the discourse associated with their Islamic identity has become increasingly defined by geopolitics. In this way participants felt active in terms of suffering the marginalization that is a product of the ‘war on terror’ discourse but inactive in terms of constructing the discourse. The study therefore revealed how emotions are reflexive, transient and fluid because participants perceived emotions including anger, suffering, risk, fear and helplessness as being globalized and localized.

The Muslim ‘Other’: Fear from ‘Outside and Inside’ the Binary

Perceptions of marginalization, suffering and isolation lead to long term consequences because as Mythen et al. (2009) argue, the construction of British Muslims as a risk and danger is radicalizing British Muslims and therefore endangering national security. Interestingly, participants highlighted the role of differential treatment from outside the Muslim community – the binary and how this was contributing to radicalization and they also spoke of how British Muslims – those inside the binary were also facilitating the process of radicalization as Nasrin, Mohammed and Shamka explain:

We have now been singled out and I appreciate that they must fight terrorism but by treating all Muslims as suspects, taking all their human rights away and continuing with the same foreign policy, there is no way this will do any good and it is likely to help in radicalizing Muslims.

When I started to get comments I just felt bitter and the comments you get from your own community are just as annoying, when they tell you to conform and how you should be. You will have opportunistic Mullahs who have their own agendas saying that we must have our own areas, we must have separate this and separate that.

The government has no sympathy for the real situation and this is that Muslims are caught between two evils, one being the harsh dictatorship and authoritarian attitude of the government and the other is the Muslims who are in fact not Muslims, but who manipulate the Quran, the ignorant and then commit terrorism.

Although the constructed ‘war on terror’ is based on the use of binaries of humane/inhumane, good/evil, a few participants also expressed perceptions of these boundaries, as Shafquat, Safiq and Razia explain:

Like there’s this war looming with Iran, they’ve got their base set in Iraq, it’s like a stepping stone to spread democracy and then go into the Middle East and it’s been their aim for god knows how long, because it’s one region in the world where Islam rule still exists.

I think they want to dominate the Islamic world. Thousands are dying every day and being targeted by the Israelis in the West bank, thousands have died in Afghanistan and Iraq and there is no cry for these innocent people, there is no recognition of the bloodshed of Muslims.

I feel angry that all the Muslim countries are sitting there and doing nothing about it and I feel that if all the Muslim countries got together and united then we would be stronger than America and England but it’s because we are not united and that’s why we are struggling.

Just as these binaries represent a danger in the constructed ‘war on terror’ discourse through creating British Muslims as a separate entity to be feared, they also represent a danger when they are reinforced and acted upon by British Muslims. The acceptance of such binaries by British Muslims, as is the case with non-British Muslims not only dismisses commonality but in some cases leads to a belief that the world exists according to an Islamic/western divide where Islam is under attack and the only way to protect its existence is to commit acts of violence against what are perceived to be western interests. Thus within the ‘war on terror’, anger and perceptions of injustice feed into religious identity being a core definer of binaries and geopolitical issues, such as the Middle East conflict become perceived signifiers of the existence of a form of suffering that can only be eradicated through ensuring the suffering of those outside the binary.

Conclusion: Understanding the ‘Emotionalization of the “War on Terror”’ from Construction to Perception

This article has explored how there are particular areas of the ‘war on terror’ where emotions are intensified and therefore formed part of participants’ perceptions of the ‘war on terror’. Discussions around the lack of human rights in counter-terrorism legislation were found to exacerbate feelings of fear, insecurity, vulnerability and helplessness. These feelings transcended to perceptions of the police with participants believing that counter-terrorism policing incorporates religious profiling and therefore the placement of British Muslims within the constructed binary of ‘criminal’ as opposed to ‘victim’. Within this context participants framed themselves as vulnerable ‘victims’ and this was due to their perceptions of injustice, vulnerability and powerlessness.

The preoccupation with preventing future harms produced a reflexive fear of the future and in particular a fear over the police use of expansive control measures and association offences as avenues of criminalization. The existence of such measures was a point of strain and tension for participants because many participants experienced great difficulty in negotiating measures they believe are wrong and constitute injustice. The ‘war on terror’ marks the intersection of the global with the local and the points at which the ‘war on terror’ was perceived to intersect at these levels was shown to produce a sense of powerlessness and helplessness. In particular, the construction of terrorism with fear and risk was perceived to bring fluidity between the levels leading to a reflexive sense of suffering and fear. Further, feelings of helplessness were exacerbated through a belief that the local level was now being shaped through the global level and this suggests that the global dynamics of the ‘war on terror’ are actually perceived as a form of disempowerment due to their capacity and power to negatively impact Muslims’ daily lives.

Fear and risk were found to be two concepts that actually shaped participants’ understanding of those that share the same religious identity. Perhaps more worryingly there was evidence to demonstrate how the ‘war on terror’ actually leads to a belief that Islam is under attack and therefore that the world is split according to the constructed Islamic/non-Islamic binary. The internalization and enactment of this dichotomy in its extreme interpretation within geopolitics is evident through the actions of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL also known as ISIS ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’). ISIL represent the embodiment of such an extremist interpretation of this binary, and they offer disillusioned British Muslims the opportunity to join such an organization with the promise that acts of terror will eradicate the suffering, pain and injustices of Muslims around the world. Emotions are therefore used to lure vulnerable individuals and emotions of anger and vengeance form prominent mechanisms of motivation leading to acts of terrorism.

The facets of the ‘war on terror’ that signify the greatest area of emotions are victimization and radicalization. Karstedt (2002: 312) states ‘violations of self-esteem, humiliation and stigmatization cause shame as well as anger’ with Muncie (2000: 6) arguing that ‘harm can signify a host of material and emotive negativities – from notions of pain to fear, insecurity, violation, grief, powerlessness, dispute and transgression’. Thus if one considers the emotions associated with the facets of the ‘war on terror’ already identified and the heightened concern and stress over possible victimization, the ‘war on terror’ incorporates the vast array of emotions identified by Karstedt (2002) and Muncie (2000).

When one analyses the vicious cycle that the ‘war on terror’ represents, the cycle incorporates construction and the response to that construction. The cycle consists of the following characteristics – terrorist attack, state construction and framing of the attack – feeds into terrorism discourse, expansion of state control (possible introduction of new measures), negative societal impact of state terrorism discourse with the counter-terrorism framework reinforcing the threat/risk of terrorism and the constructed terrorist, British Muslims feeling increasingly marginalized, some British Muslim being vulnerable to radicalization, potential for more terrorist attacks. It is the presence of negative emotions which are fundamental in the process of radicalization with Turner (2007: 305) noting how ‘emotions build in intensity and become transmuted into new kinds of negative emotions’. There exists a need to understand how for some British Muslims this reflexive side incorporates negative emotions such as fear, insecurity, helplessness, sadness, anger and suffering that are not acted upon whereas for other British Muslims the negative emotions are acted upon through the individual being radicalized. This is not to suggest that the process of radicalization is a simplistic one but rather to acknowledge the role of marginalization, victimization, suffering and negative emotions as being part of the more complex process of radicalization.

However, as an alternative to the vicious cycle of the ‘war on terror’ as De Castella and McGarty (2013: 103) rightly contend the very construction of terrorism could be altered, ‘talking about terrorism squarely as a crime rather than, as a war would … create opportunities for new and creative counter terrorism approaches, reducing the focus on military intervention’. Such an alternative conceptualization would in fact decrease the existence of the negative emotions that as has been demonstrated are a product of geopolitical strategies of intervention and the curtailment of civil liberties. However, until such a time when the terrorism problem is firmly placed within the nexus of crime, it is essential that ways of understanding radicalization are pursued.

With the recent terrorist attack on an army run school in Peshawar in which 152 people, including 133 children were killed and the terrorist attack in Paris, in which 12 people were killed, terrorism continues to be a global concern. However as the attacks in Peshawar demonstrate, fear from outside the binary also exists from inside the binary with groups like the Taliban and ISIL causing mass victimization to those that share the same religious identity. Terrorism continues to evolve in its complexity and its ability to disturb the binaries of the constructed ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’ and is contributing to a harmful future through involving mass murder, leading to the curtailment of civil liberties, and the rise of new racisms and forms of otherizations.

In this brief article it has only been possible to explore the surface of this complicated subject, and further research is required in order to develop a more coherent understanding and empirically based ‘emotionalization of the “war on terror”’. The data gathered and the exploration of how emotions are prevalent in the ‘war on terror’ have been an attempt to offer a contribution in the right direction and to inspire future academic enquiry into this important research area. Therefore this article is a small step in the direction of developing an understanding of how the ‘war on terror’ represents what Karstedt (2002) calls the ‘emotionality of law’. It is through understanding perceptions and experiences in relation to emotions of fear, insecurity, helplessness, sadness and loss that we can begin to appreciate how feelings such as these lead individuals to feel so powerless and such a sense of injustice that they believe committing an act of terrorism is the only solution. Criminology with its long history and tradition of exploring fear, anxiety and risk and its commitment to producing a less harmful future is perfectly positioned to pursue such avenues of enquiry and if the cycle is to be stopped, then it is important that British Muslims’ perceptions and experiences are not only documented but space is also provided to understanding their emotions.