Tuesday 12 May 2026 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Seminar Room, Sociology, Free School Ln Sociology Seminar Room
A guest talk by Professor Tahir Abbas on the extremism caused by the isolation and humiliation of security measures intended to prevent that very extremism.
About
Across North-Western Europe, governments have built massive security architectures on a single premise: that Muslim identity is a risk requiring perpetual surveillance. Yet the largest comparative study of its kind, spanning four nations, nineteen cities, and over five thousand lives, reveals this premise to be not merely mistaken, but dangerously inverted. Muslim identity does not drive radicalisation; it protects against it. The real danger lies in the policies themselves. Our research uncovers a troubling paradox. When Muslims experience the humiliation and exclusion that often precede extremism, those with strong religious identities and community ties consistently reject violence, drawing on faith traditions that emphasise patience and collective dignity. Conversely, those disconnected from such networks, alienated by the very surveillance meant to keep them safe, face a void where extremist narratives offering belonging and agency become dangerously attractive.
This is the architecture of pedagogical Islamophobia: the teaching of conditional citizenship through routine encounters with suspicion. When a child is questioned for using the word “eco-terrorism” in an essay, or when professionals are repeatedly stopped at airports, these are not security measures but lessons in subordinate belonging. They manufacture a chronic anxiety, hyper-vigilance, self-silencing, and eroded trust, that destroys the community resilience actually preventing violence. Yet this story is not uniform. In some cities, Muslim communities thrive; in others, they face profound isolation. Local institutional contexts, whether governments recognise religious organisations or treat them as threats, determine whether identity becomes a bridge or a barrier. The evidence demands we abandon the iatrogenic policies that poison the patient while claiming to cure them, recognising that true security emerges not from suspicion, but from dismantling the structural racisms that render communities disposable.
Speaker biography
Tahir Abbas is Professor of Criminology and Global Justice and Director of the Centre on Radicalisation, Inclusion, and Social Equity at Aston University.
He is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work combines political sociology and critical theory, with a focus on radicalisation, Islamophobia, ethnic relations, and global security policy. Over nearly three decades, he has held senior academic posts at institutions including Leiden University, Istanbul University, and the University of Birmingham, as well as roles in UK government research.
His recent leadership includes major EU-funded projects such as DRIVE (2021–2024) and PROTONE (2023–2025), focusing on radicalisation prevention and the protection of religious spaces in Europe. He is the author and editor of numerous influential works on counterterrorism, decolonial approaches to security, and social inclusion.
He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Society of Arts.