While a constant buzzword for media publications, since the Boston Bombings we've seen a renewed preoccupation with the term 'radicalization.' The curious case of the Tsarnaev brothers, especially the younger, “more American” Dzhokhar, has incensed a conversation about how seemingly well-integrated/assimilated youth could become 'radicalized'. Speculation proved a cure to the ailment of curiosity as many in the US media jumped to blame mosques, ubiquitous ‘Jihadi’ videos on YouTube and the lingering aftershocks of the life and preachings of Anwar al-Awlaki. Others were equally quick to point the finger towards the Muslim community itself, accusing over two million Americans of failing to 'do enough' to 'stop radicalization' (and thus, naturally, acts of mass violence).
Here's the kicker though: is so-called 'radicalization' actually a problem?
According to a recent article at the Rolling Stone: Everything You’ve Been Told About Radicalization is Wrong. This week's article that hit's the mark makes an important case for rethinking and retracting our obsession with the term 'radicalization' and the belief that radicalization is only a “simple linear path toward an ultimate violent conclusion.”
Writer John Knefel argues that the term and culture behind the accusation of radicalization is, in fact, “reductive and simplistic at best, and at worst is a thin justification for racial profiling of Muslims.”
For our purposes of highlighting the depiction of Islamic law in US media, it is worth considering that many media characterizations of how 'radicalization' is manifested are done so through pointing out presumably increased religious practice, drawing a link (implicitly or explicitly) between increased religious practice and the propensity for violence. Such characterizations, unfortunately and unsurprisingly, create the ever-effervescent Good and Bad Muslims as well as, equally if not more dangerously, Good and Bad Islam.
To read a summary of the article as well as some key excerpts, check it out in last week’s featured news round up.
