Countering violent extremism, governmentality and Australian Muslim youth as 'becoming terrorist'

Randa Abdel-Fattah*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    29 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This article explores how a ‘regime of truth’ about Muslim youth has been historically produced through the underlying logic of Australia’s counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE) policies and practices. The article is divided into three parts. I first look at how the pre-emptive logic of countering the ‘becoming terrorist’ constitutes young Australian Muslims. I then interrogate the way CVE has constituted Australian Muslims as a self-contained space, a governmental population divided between ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’. Lastly, I discuss how CVE operates as a technique of governmentality in the way that it deploys grants programs to foster the ‘conduct of conduct’ of Muslim subjects within this self-contained racialised space. I argue that the central organising logic of community partnership has been the targeting of the conditions of emergence of ‘extremist’ Muslim subjects, thereby guaranteeing the racialisation of Muslim youth as always at-risk, marked with the ‘potential’ of ‘becoming terrorist’.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)372-387
    Number of pages16
    JournalJournal of Sociology
    Volume56
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2020

    Keywords

    • countering violent extremism
    • Foucault
    • Islamophobia
    • Muslims
    • radicalisation

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