Australian Muslims as radicalized 'other' and their experiences of social exclusion

With the end of the Cold War, Muslim radicalism has emerged both as national and international security concern. This chapter does not contest the existence or the security threat Muslim radicalism poses in Australia and by extension globally. However, it questions the alleged scale and severity of Muslim radicalism and homogenization of Muslim radicals as active actors in the theatre of violence and terrorism. Furthermore, it queries the success of state-administered risk management plan and preventative and protective policies embodied in counter terrorist legislation under the rubric of state securitization. Muslim radicalism and concomitant terrorism is a reaction to a crisis of society. This crisis manifests itself in a combination of local and international Muslim socioeconomic and political malaise including poor governance, ideological challenge, and economic failure in many Muslim countries and alienation, discrimination, and institutional and structural barriers to upward mobility in a variety of Muslim and Western societies. There are Muslims who have experienced the negative effects of the socioeconomic and political order leading to their sense of perceived or real dislocation and alienation which then impacts on their consciousness and evokes a reaction (Hassan 2015). It encourages some to attempt to resolve Muslim struggles and this resolve is radicalism.