Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

We implement extremist policies at home and abroad. We support extremist regimes. We support an extremist super-power. We engage in extremist wars. We sell extremist weapons. We support an extremist genocidal regime. We normalise extremist salaries, extremist wealth, extremist financial sector …  As you know, it's all right to treat ’extremists’ extremely. It's the desire to normalise one’s extremism that makes regimes like the UK’s call their enemies ’extremists’ . When the next violent attack takes place in a Western city they will as usual tell us about ‘terrorism’ re-mobilising their massive media – public and private – to hide their massive state violence in its different forms and shapes – mainly their economic and military violence.

A long interview with Beydoun , author of  American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear  and   The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims. My selection: “ We live in the United States of Amnesia, and we forget the explosion of bigotry, hostility, nationalism, and militarism that happened instantaneously.” “The neoconservative government which presided over the Bush administration had catapulted the likes of Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis. The best way to think about them is these are Neo-Orientalists who believe that the West is sort of this monolithic, aligned, geographic/civilizational entity, and as a consequence of 9/11—even before 9/11— was on this predictable path towards perpetual war with the Muslim world…  I think there were always Muslim boogeymen before 9/11. What’s really troubling about the response with the War on Terror is that it conflated an entire faith group or an entire global population of 1.7 billion people with the very h

The Cabinet Office secretary, David Lidington,  speaking  on behalf of now ex-prime minister Theresa May, recently told parliament that “there is no legal obligation” on the government to establish an inquiry to assess the extent of Britain’s complicity in war crimes, including abduction (“rendition”), false imprisonment and torture.  Why is Sajid Javid so rattled by Cage?

Terrorism: a history of violence

A colleague  of mine at Oxford was asked to see an undergraduate who was falling behind in her work. The student – a Muslim – explained that she had been suffering from depression and was being treated for it by her GP. My colleague believed the student’s explanation placed her under an obligation to ask the student whether she was being radicalised. A young colleague, an Arab, told me that when he tried to book a room for a seminar, he was informed that this was no longer permitted on security grounds: he had to get a ‘senior’ academic to confirm the real purpose of the meeting. Another young colleague was told that she had to carry out a security ‘risk assessment’ for a feminist seminar she was convening; she refused, and was repeatedly pressured to comply. A librarian was asked for a reference by another university: ‘Are you completely satisfied,’ they wanted to know, ‘that the applicant is not involved in “extremism” (being vocal or active opposition to fundamental British