Social identity, martyrdom and terrorism

In this chapter we report on the same survey study of practising British Muslims discussed in Ansari’s earlier chapter in this volume, which explored attitudes and beliefs about religious martyrdom, terrorism and identity. However, while Ansari adopted a historical approach and focused on the qualitative data, in this chapter our main focus is on the quantitative attitude scale data. Using a social-psychological perspective, we focus in particular on the association between ethnic, religious and national identities, and in turn the degree to which these identities are associated with attitudes towards martyrdom and terrorism. Theoretically, we draw upon previous research on identity and terrorism, particularly using a social identity theory perspective. Our findings suggest the relevance of the concept of threatened identity to understanding public reactions to terrorism, and also offer some evidence that a sense of British national identity may mitigate against support for religiously-motivated acts of violence.

Background

In the aftermath of the World Trade Centre (WTC) attack on September 11, 2001, and the July 7, 2005 bombings in London, questions were raised by the mass media and political commentators about the nature of national identity in today’s multicultural United Kingdom, and shock expressed at how some of the 7/7 bombers were British citizens. After each terrorist event, the mass media in the UK went somewhat ‘poll crazy’, with a large number of surveys commissioned and reported in the broadsheet and tabloid newspapers. For example, the Sunday Times reported a survey conducted outside British mosques in early November 2001, which indicated that amongst the 1170 interviewed, some 76% felt that the UK would be wrong to engage in military action in retaliation to the 9/11 attacks. The mainstream British press also made much of the decision of a small number of British Muslims to leave their homes in the U.K. and fight in Afghanistan on the side of the Taliban. Questions were raised about whether it was possible for some British citizens of an ethnic minority background to reconcile ethnic, religious and British national identities (the aforementioned Sunday Times survey found that 67% of British Muslims interviewed claimed their Muslim identity took precedence over being British, in line with Hutnik’s findings in the 1980s: see Hutnik, 1985). Large-scale surveys of the type commissioned after 9/11 and 7/7 afford an interesting snapshot of attitudes and opinions, but are typically too short to explore the underlying relationship between beliefs and other psychological constructs, such as identity and self. In this paper we report some of the data collected from a modest-sized interview and questionnaire study of practising British Muslims which does attempt to explicitly explore some of the relationships between beliefs about religious martyrdom and terrorism and perceptions of identity. 

It has been claimed that the existing psychological research on terrorism has tended towards focusing on personality and clinical dimensions, and has thus missed the ‘wider picture’ which could have been explored had a more social psychological level of analysis been employed (Silke, 2001). The research reported here attempts to redress this imbalance by looking, not at the psychology of terrorists, but, rather, the social psychological after-effects of an act of terrorism, and, more broadly, related issues about constructing national identity in a multi-ethnic state like the U.K. We also aim to explore the degree to which identification at various levels helps predict attitudinal support for religious martyrs and acts of terrorism. The events surrounding the WTC attack and subsequent military action in Afghanistan have served to bring to a head the issue of ethnic and religious identities in the United Kingdom, raising interesting questions about how these identities intertwine together and affect the construction of national identity. The issue of assimilation of ethnic minority culture and allegiance to one’s nation has also become relevant in the context of the Cantle Report into riots in the UK, which suggests that immigrants should demonstrate a primary loyalty to the UK, possibly by swearing a Canadian style oath of allegiance to the nation. 

These issues are of relevance to both the white majority and to British Muslims, especially as British national identity has, according to commentators, been contested and re-defined many times in the nation’s history (see, for, example, Cinnirella, 2000; Parek, 1989). For the former group, it may raise questions about the very definition of British identity and citizenship, and the outbreak in both England and Scotland of racist attacks on Muslim citizens and their property, post-September 11, is testament to the high levels of emotion such questions can arouse. Neo-fascist groups, for example, continue to argue that ethnic minorities present a threat to the very existence of a British state (a common theme in fascist discourse – see Solomos, 1993, for example). For British Muslims, these events may have made salient the potential challenge when attempting to reconcile three important social identities: ethnic, religious and national. Clearly, some British Muslims feel that there are ways in which these three identities do not sit comfortably together, especially in the face of what some perceive to be an "imperialist war" in some ways targeted more widely at Islam itself (Bodi, 2001). 

We report in this chapter on a survey and interview study of practising Muslims living in the UK, with data collected between 2002 and 2003 (hence prior to the July 7, 2005 London bombings). In another chapter in this work, Humayun Ansari reports on the same study but from a historical perspective, and focusing on the qualitative data. In contrast, our focus in this chapter is to explore the quantitative (and some of the qualitative) data from the study using social-psychological theory as a lens through which we can make sense of them.  Our primary aim is to enhance understanding of some of the psychological factors linked to attitudes towards political and religious martyrs in the United Kingdom, with a particular focus on the events of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath. A further aim is to enhance understanding of how such attitudes are affected by relevant social identities, with a particular focus on religious, ethnic and national, all of which we do with British Muslim participants. 

In addressing these issues of perceptions about terrorism, we also aim to contribute to theory within social psychology by further elucidating the manner in which individuals and social groups attempt to ‘manage’ multiple social identifications in multicultural settings (part of Brown’s proposal for a future research agenda for social identity theory – see Brown, 2000). By examining constructions by our participants of their ethnic, national and religious identities, and their relationship with other variables in the study, we hope to contribute to the ongoing debate in social psychology about the optimal way of reconciling multiple identities (see, for example, Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999, and Berry’s model of acculturation as, for example, outlined in Berry et al., 1989). Additionally, we aim to further develop understanding of the social psychological after-effects of acts of terrorism, especially in relation to intergroup perceptions and associated social identities. This remains an under-researched area (Silke, 2001, 2003). Why is there a need for this kind of social research at the moment? There is little published social psychological work at present using established models of social identity to understand the simultaneous interplay between national, ethnic and religious identities in the U.K. Established research has tended to focus on one, or at the most, two, of these social identities (e.g. Hutnik, 1985; see also examples in Hewstone & Brown, 1986), and has typically not employed a social psychological level of analysis (although there are excellent theoretical treatises from outside social psychology, exploring all three, such as Smith, 1991). Existing work has also neglected an explicit consideration of the perceived psychological relations between these identities. Existing research exploring Muslim groups in the U.K. and their construction of religious and national identities suggests that, for at least a significant minority of British Muslims, it can be difficult to reconcile these two identities, with a Muslim identity often emerging as more important (see, for example, Hutnik, 1985, 1991). Similarly, in the literature on the psychology of religion, there remains an under-utilisation of social identity theory as an explanatory framework for understanding that part of the self-concept tied to religious affiliations, despite some commentators arguing that SIT is highly relevant in this domain (see, for example, Loewenthal, 2000). The content dimension (represented by attitudes, norms and stereotypes) of these three identities is likely to be changeable, and an assumption made here is that for Muslims living in Britain, the events of September 11 and subsequent military action may have affected elements of these identities, making it important to understand the nature of any such changes. There is already a small but growing body of social psychological research demonstrating the impact of terrorism upon intergroup perceptions (e.g. Cairns, Lewis, Mumcu & Waddell, 1998), and some of this work suggests a generalisation of negative stereotyping beyond just a targeting of the group responsible for the attacks (see, for example, Bar- Tal & Labin, 2001). We hope to build on this foundation of research on ‘social remembering’ (Cairns & Lewis, 1999) and develop further understanding of how the psychological fallout from acts of terrorism intertwines with social identification, and is thus manifested in the self-concept and associated attitudes. 

In the aftermath of the WTC and other terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 11, 2001, social psychologists in North America began to apply ideas from their discipline, derived from research on intergroup relations, attitudes, prejudice, social beliefs, justice and violence, to the topic of support for terrorism. Although there had been a good deal of such work prior to 9/11, focusing on such topics as the conflict in Northern Ireland and Arab-Israeli relations in the Middle East, the events of 9/11 acted as a catalyst for new social-psychological research in the U.S. on Islamic terrorism. Oddly, European social psychologists did not respond as quickly or in as great a number to the challenge of understanding how such acts of terrorism could come about. From the work emerging out of the U.S., Marsella (2004) identified five root causes of Islamic terrorism: Poverty (perceived injustice and disparity); Racism/Prejudice (e.g. perceived discrimination); Oppression (resistance can bring hope and empowerment); the Palestinian question (perceptions of); and unstable nations (so-called ‘rogue states’). It is striking how all of these, and especially the first four causes, are essentially psychological in their nature, connecting with social-psychological phenomena such as social attitudes, identity and prejudice, and this led Marsella to conclude that psychology can prove invaluable in helping us understand how collectives might come to support acts of terrorism conducted in their name. It is Marsella’s rallying call to social psychologists that motivates the research reported in this chapter, and our aim of demonstrating the vital role social psychology can play in understanding the bases of support for terrorism.

As a starting point for understanding some of the social-psychological bases for supporting Islamic terrorism, it is wise to consider the cultural context. It has been argued that US and Western nations can be perceived as a threat to Arab and Islamic cultures, in part due to the clash between Western materialism and Islamic spiritualism and religious values (Marsella, 2004; Moghaddam, 2004). It is sometimes argued that in the Islamic world, religion often takes precedence over nations and nationalism, epitomised by the notion in Islam of one global community (Ummah; see Roy, 2004). Western nations can be perceived as symbolising change, secularisation, and a threat to the past/tradition (i.e. threats to multiple dimensions of identity). Already, we may apply ideas from social psychology to these issues. There is an established literature within social identity theory (SIT) which argues that groups form a key part of our self-concept, leading us to view our own ‘in-groups’ as superior and different to groups that we do not belong to (‘out-groups’; see Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Research on how individuals react to threats to their valued social identities (i.e. group memberships) makes it clear that those who strongly identify with a group (for example, with being of Muslim faith), will react strongly to perceived threats to that group. One common reaction is to become more prejudiced towards an outgroup that is perceived to be the cause of the threat (see, for example, Branscombe & Wann, 1994). Thus, it makes perfect sense, from a social-psychological perspective, for Muslims to feel negative towards ‘the West’ or particular Western nations such as the U.S. and U.K., if they feel that those nations pose a threat to their religion. This is an issue we will explore throughout this chapter, and it is interesting to note that recent research by Fair and Shepherd (2005) suggests that one factor predicting support for terrorism among Muslims is a perception that Islam is under threat. 

One additional theory of note from social psychology is that of relative deprivation, which has shown how feelings of injustice are felt about the way one’s groups are treated, not just about how one is treated individually. Research on so-called ‘fraternalistic relative deprivation’ shows that individuals can react with powerful motivations to undo perceived injustice when they feel that their group is hard done by, in comparison to other groups (Runciman, 1966). This desire to defend one’s groups against perceived injustice makes good sense when considering Tajfel and Turner’s argument that social groups come to form a part of our self-concept – defending against perceived injustices faced by our groups is thus, ultimately, defending injustice that affects ourselves (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Considered in the context of the notion of a global community of Muslims (Umma), this can mean that some Muslims will feel the injustice voiced by Muslims in the Middle East and Chechnya, for example, as if it were their own, and feel motivated to help their fellow Muslims undo such injustice. This is another issue we will explore with our data set.

What context is afforded by existing research on identity amongst British Muslims (especially of South Asian background)? It soon emerges that different commentators have elucidated some widely varying observations about Muslim and ethnic identity in the U.K. According to Glynn (2002), for young British Muslims from deprived communities “Islamic brotherhood is a potent antidote to alienation”. Modood (1994ab, 2000, 2003) makes a broader claim that for many Muslims, to be Muslim is a ‘core’ identity, but this does not mean that it is always central or primary, but rather that all other identities must be seen to be compatible with it. This issue of whether multiple identities are perceived to be compatible – for example, religious, ethnic and national – is central to issues such as those we are currently tasked with addressing, yet little social-psychological work has sought to address such topics in the context of exploring beliefs about terrorism. 

A slightly different message comes from Ansari (2004) and Halliday (1999) who argue that for Muslims living in Britain, Muslim identity may only be truly dominant in the self-concept when it is perceived to be threatened. But since Ansari argues that Britain is an “undoubtedly Islamophobic” environment (Ansari, 2004, p.394), perhaps this means that Muslim identity is frequently seen as under threat by Muslims living in the U.K.? Finally, according to some commentators, the nature of Muslim identity in British South Asians is something of a moving target, being strategically contested and constructed (Hall, 1996; Kahani-Hopkins & Hopkins, 2002). This raises the danger of social scientists ‘essentialising’ ethnic and religious identities by painting them as more concrete, homogeneous and static than they truly are. However, our argument here is that by combining qualitative (in the chapter here authored by Ansari) and quantitative data collection and analysis we can capture aspects of the dynamic nature of these identities, and avoid artificially essentialising them, even if the ‘snapshot’ nature of a social survey does provide a picture of attitudes and identity that is, in a way, frozen in time, and as such, not as dynamic as a study of conversation, discourse or rhetoric. 

In summary, our aims in this chapter are to explore the attitudes, beliefs and identities of British South Asian Muslims, with a particular focus on religious martyrdom and terrorism. While not wishing to essentialise these identities, at the same time we wish to explore, as best we can given the limitations of a one-shot survey, their interactions and in particular, whether they link to attitudes, thus raising the question: is there a link between religious and national identities and beliefs about religious martyrdom and terrorism? In exploring this question through the lens of social psychology we believe we are making a relatively novel contribution to the existing literature on terrorism, which has often favoured individual and clinical psychology and aimed to explore the individual psychologies of particular terrorists, rather than the broader question of community perceptions of terrorism which we address here. In terms of specific questions, we hope to explore whether the strength of Muslim identity predicts beliefs about martyrdom and terrorism, and also look to see whether a degree of British national identity might act as a barrier or buffer against support for terrorism – we believe neither of these questions have been addressed before with a British sample.

Design of the study

The nature of the sample used in the study reported here has already been described by Ansari in his chapter, however, to summarise, the sample consisted of 78 practising Muslims who completed a self-completion questionnaire containing a mixture of open and closed format questions. Participants were recruited from mosques in south-east England between 2002 and 2003, and out of the 78 questionnaire respondents, 27 also agreed to be interviewed. Some 78% of participants fell in the age range 16-44, and there were an equal number of men and women in the sample. 41 (53%) were born in the UK, and ethnic background was as follows: Pakistani (65%), Bangladeshi (11%), Indian (4%), other (20%). The majority of our participants scored high on self-report measures of religious activity (e.g. frequency of prayer). In-group researchers were used for recruitment and interviewing.

The questionnaire contained fixed-response response and open-ended modules exploring: 

–British, Muslim and ethnic identity

–Religious beliefs and practices

–Attitudes towards religious martyrdom 

–Attitudes towards terrorism 

All questions were constructed in-house following qualitative interview pilot work.

Selected Findings

The first set of findings, summarised in Table One below, show participants’ scores on two Likert-type scale measures of identity. For each of British, ethnic and Muslim identities, we asked two questions, one about the importance of the identity to the participant (essentially a measure of strength and salience) and the other about whether the participant felt a sense of pride in the identity (a measure of affect). In all cases, the scale had 5 points, with a higher score indicating a stronger or more positive response. 

British identityEthnic identityMuslim identityImportance item (salience)Mean=3.08 

Mode=4 (“Important”)

Mean=4.00 

Mode=5

(“Very important”)Mean=4.78

Mode=5

(“Very important”)

Pride item (affect)Mean=2.76 

Mode=1

(“N/A”)Mean=3.95 

Mode=5

 “Very proud”

Mean=4.85 

Mode=5

(“very proud”)

Table One: Measures of British (national), ethnic and Muslim identities

Looking at the data presented in Table One, it can be seen that for our participants, in general, sense of Muslim identity was stronger and associated with more positive emotion than sense of ethnic identity, which in turn was stronger than sense of British identity (all comparisons were statistically significant at p<.001, 2-tailed, with pairwise comparisons in ANOVA using Bonferoni-adjusted t-tests; ANOVA on total identity scores created by summing the two measures for each identity was also significant, with Muslim > ethnic > British identity: F (2,73) = 64.65, p<.001). Of particular note is how the modal responses on the pride item were “very proud” for both ethnic and religious identities, but “not applicable” for British national identity. This illustrates both a quantitative and qualitative difference between ethnic and religious identities, compared to British national identity, for our participants. Whereas European Union Eurobarometer surveys consistently show that on the whole, British samples tend to manifest quite high levels of national pride, in our study this is clearly not the case, with pride only being shown in ethnic and religious identities. This finding is compatible with some previous work attempting to explore national, ethnic and religious identities amongst British participants (see, for example, Hutnik, 1985, 1991). Jacobson (1998) suggests that a sense of religious identity is often central to British Muslims because what it offers is more universal, and provides guiding principles and values that transcend national boundaries. Our findings also partly support those reported by Farver et al (2002) with a US sample – they reported that Indian migrants in the US manifested high religiosity and a ‘separated’ acculturation style in which a distinction between ‘home’ and ‘host’ cultures and identities was emphasised and maintained. Finally, what we report here resonates with Mirza, Senthilkumaran and Ja'farand’s observation of “greater consciousness of difference amongst Muslims so that they increasingly think of themselves at odds with wider society” (Mirza, Senthilkumaran & Ja'farand, 2007). Yet some opinion polls seem to paint a different picture, of Muslims living in Britain embracing both their religion and a sense of Britishness (see, for example, ETHNOS, 2005). How can these findings be reconciled? It could be that our sample are un-representative of the majority of Muslims (for example because our sample was recruited at mosques), or, more likely in our view, different question wordings in surveys can produce strikingly different outcomes. While, for example, we asked about pride in being British, a common measure of the emotion associated with an identity, this question is seldom asked in national surveys, which prefer to ask less emotional and more factual questions about “feeling British” or “considering oneself to be British”. This re-iterates the importance of separating out different aspects of identification with the nation, as our data demonstrate.

We also explored the degree to which participants’ scores on the identity measures were correlated with each other. This provides an insight into whether the three identities are related, at a psychological level. Ignoring correlations between items measuring the same identity, only two of the remaining Pearson correlations were significant: Pride in ethnic identity correlated positively with pride in British national identity (r=.380, p=.001, 2-tailed); and pride in ethnic identity correlated positively with the importance of British national identity (r=.298, p=.009, 2-tailed). This pattern of findings firstly suggests no straightforward relationship between the two measures of Muslim identity and our measures of ethnic and national identity, in keeping with previous commentators’ assertions that there is something that sets Muslim identity apart from other social identities in a person’s repertoire. The moderate magnitude positive correlations between ethnic and British national identity manifested by our participants point to a basic compatibility in the minds of our participants, between their ethnic and national sense of identification, suggesting what Berry (Berry et al., 1989) has called an ‘integrated’ mode of acculturation, at least as far as identity goes (Berry’s model focuses more on values and cultural attitudes).

Table Two: Correlations between identity measures and importance of Jihad

Next, we turn to an exploration of some of the social attitude questions in the survey, and their relationship with participants’ scores on the identity measures. One question we asked was “How important is Jihad to you?”, to which the modal response on the scale was five, indicating ‘very important’. Table two reports the Pearson correlations between the Likert scale question about importance of Jihad and the identity measures for British and Muslim identity (correlations for ethnic identity are not reported as none were statistically significant). There is a medium-strength positive correlation between both Muslim identity measures and the perceived importance of Jihad to participants (both significant at p=.01, 2-tailed). In contrast, the two measures of British national identity correlate negatively and significantly, with importance of Jihad, so that the higher British identity, the lower the perceived importance of Jihad for participants. In sum then, for our participants, Jihad was more important the stronger their sense of Muslim identity, and less important the stronger their sense of British identity, although we should remember from Ansari’s chapter reporting the qualitative data from this study, that our participants’ definitions of the term Jihad showed marked heterogeneity, with by no means all participants feeling the term meant some kind of holy war. Although speculative post-hoc interpretation is fraught with risks, it is still interesting to consider the possible ramifications of these findings. They may suggest, for example, that British Muslims who, as well as identifying with Islam, also have a sense of British national identity (rather like Berry’s concept of an ‘integration’ strategy of acculturation – see Berry, 1989), may view jihad as less important than British Muslims who have a lower or absent sense of British identity. Of course, it is not our place to suggest whether viewing jihad as important is a good or a bad thing, and in any case our participants manifested quite differing interpretations of this concept, as highlighted earlier. However, it seems reasonably un-controversial to argue that feeling that war and violence of any kind are important is, ultimately, undesirable, and since some of our participants did associate jihad with such meanings, then we can at least say that it is interesting to note that having a sense of British identity seems to help mitigate against such beliefs, to some extent.

Table Three: Correlations between identity measures and importance of martyrdom

In Table three we report Pearson correlations between an attitude item asking abut the importance of martyrdom to participants, and measures of Muslim and British identity (once again, ethnic identity did not correlate significantly with this attitude item). The modal response on our five-point scale was 5 (‘very important’), and on inspection of the table it can be noted that exactly the same pattern of correlations as was reported in Table Two is again present. Thus, overall, the stronger Muslim identity, the more important is the concept of martyrdom, but the stronger British identity, the lower the perceived importance of martyrdom.

Next, we analysed responses to a question asking: “Are acts of violence against non-Muslims ever justified in Islam?”, with respondents able to choose one of three response options: ‘No’, ‘Yes’, or ‘Possibly’. This question has implications for our understanding of beliefs about, and support for, acts of terrorism. In keeping with our focus on the relationship between social identity and attitudes, we report here an analysis which explores the relationship between responses to this question and scores on ethnic, British and Muslim identity. Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA) is a multivariate statistical technique which allows the exploration of relationships between categorical criterion variables (in this case, the ‘No’ (47% of respondents chose this answer), ‘Yes’ (chosen by 26%) or ‘Possibly’ (chosen by 19%) responses) and interval scale scores (in our case measures of identity) entered to determine the variables best able to discriminate between response categories of the criterion variable. We entered each identity question (importance and pride, for ethnic, British and Muslim identities) into the DFA and used a stepwise selection method which attempts to identify the set of variables best able to discriminate between participants scoring differently on the criterion variable. It emerged that the identity variable best able to classify respondents was the perceived importance of being British (52.8% of cases were correctly classified, which in DFA is somewhat low, so findings should be seen as suggestive of a relationship, but future research would be needed to confirm this result; chi-square test of the canonical discriminant function indicates chi-square = 22.26, p<.001). Thus, the DFA suggests there may be a relationship in our data set such that those participants who felt violence against non-Muslims was justifiable in Islam, rated the importance of being British significantly lower than those who felt it was not justifiable in Islam. This finding again suggests, as previous findings do, that having a sense of British identity might serve to lower support for acts of religious martyrdom, violence, and, ultimately, terrorism. It should be made clear at this point that we are not suggesting a sense of British identity should be fostered above all other identities. On the contrary, what our findings suggest is the ‘protective’ quality of having a sense of national identity, regardless of which other identities might be held, and to what extent. 

We ran the same set of analyses again, but this time on the question “Is there ever a justification in Islam for suicide bombings against civilian targets” (‘No’, ‘Yes’, or ‘Possibly’). Once again, out of all of the identity measures, the variable best able to classify participants was the perceived importance of British identity (69.4% of cases correctly classified; chi-square on canonical discriminant function indicates chi-square = 17.45, p<.001). Participants who felt there was justification in Islam for suicide bombings rated being British as significantly less important than those who felt there was no justification in Islam. Thus, again, we have evidence that a sense of British national identity might mitigate against support for acts of martyrdom, violence, and in this case, suicide terrorism.

In the final section of our analysis, we briefly focus on some of the open-ended responses from the questionnaire and interview data. Whereas Ansari, in his chapter, does this from the viewpoint of a historian, and in more detail, we adopt here the perspective of social psychology. Our quantitative analysis has already indicated that both Muslim and British identities appear to be associated with beliefs about religious martyrdom, violence and terrorism, and our focus in this last part of the analysis is again on exploring the relevance of these identities, but this time to participants when they conveyed their open-ended opinions about martyrdom and terrorism. As Ansari reports in his chapter, some of our participants talked of increased levels of anti-Islamic prejudice post-9/11, and this observation is mirrored in the research findings of, for example, Sheridan (2006) who reports how British Muslims perceive significantly higher levels of prejudice and discrimination since 9/11. The sample was also asked if their feelings about being British have changed since the events of September 11th and 64% stated they had not changed. Of the 32% whose feelings about being British had changed, 10% said they had changed ‘very much’ and 15% said they had changed ‘moderately’. As one of our participants reports: “I’m upset that people have become so negative towards Muslims – I used to feel really safe in Britain but not any more.” The link between terrorist acts and increased prejudice towards groups perceived to be associated with the perpetrators, is fairly well established in the social science literature (see, for example, Argyrides & Downey, 2004; Huddy, Khatib & Capelos, 2002). It may also be the case that more ethnic-centred conceptions of national identity and citizenship have become salient since 9/11. These forces serve, potentially, to act as a barrier for Muslims living in Britain to internalise and develop a strong sense of British national identity, a fact not lost on one of our participants:- “People make us feel that we can’t be British and Muslim, so I have chosen my religion”. This is a key issue, because much of the social-psychological research on acculturation suggests that immigrant populations are happiest when able to foster an ‘integrated’ attachment to culture and identity involving a sense of identity with both the new host culture and the original home one (Berry, 1989). If British Muslims feel that they face a choice of being Muslim or British, but not both, due to endemic prejudice and discrimination in British society, then obviously this is problematic, potentially leading to feelings of detachment and alienation, and in the context of the current discussion, preventing the very sense of national identity that might mitigate against sympathy towards acts of violence. Such processes may already be taking place: in a U.K. survey by GfK (2006), it was recently found that 62% of participants felt that nationality and religion were mutually exclusive and that they could only be either British or Muslim, but not both. Similar issues have been identified in the U.S. in the post-9/11 context (Clemetson and Naughton, 2001).

Conclusion

The findings we have reported above are more complex than they might at first appear, and should be interpreted cautiously. Our analysis and survey design do not, for example, allow us to make causal conclusions. Thus, although we have reported evidence that the higher British national identity, the lower support for such things as suicide bombing, at the same time there are possible intervening and uncontrolled variables that might explain such a finding. It might be the case, for example, that higher levels of British national identity are associated with higher levels of education or socio-economic status, both of which might in turn predict a more liberal political outlook that steers participants away from supporting acts of religious martyrdom and terrorism. Higher levels of British national identity might also be manifested by older participants, or by participants who feel they have invested more time and effort into living in the UK and thus feel a sense of commitment. All of these might be factors partially explaining the lower levels of support for martyrdom and terrorism amongst those high in national identity. However, given the large body of evidence in social psychology suggesting that social identities become internalised as a part of the self-concept and thus come to influence attitudes and behaviour (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), it is nevertheless likely that identity will play a direct causal role in determining these attitudes and beliefs, even if it is one causal mechanism out of many. As such, we argue that our findings deserve further investigation and that a focus on the possible influence of social identities on attitudes towards religious martyrdom and terrorism is a valuable contribution to the study of terrorism.  

In his chapter in this work, Ansari reports on the qualitative data from open-ended interview and questionnaire responses in this survey study. He identifies a large degree of heterogeneity in the views of our participants on such issues as the 9/11 events, religious martyrdom, suicide and terrorism. He also rightly emphasises the danger posed by merely asking such questions of Muslims – that the researcher becomes sucked into the daily practice of some of the British media to assume some kind of de facto link between Islam and terrorism. As researchers we must remain vigilant against such risks and remind ourselves and those reading about our research that globally, more casualties have occurred from acts of terrorism conducted in the name of other religions, compared to those apparently committed by Muslim terrorists. It is also noteworthy that large-scale opinion surveys conducted in the UK repeatedly demonstrate that only a very small minority of British Muslims surveyed ever demonstrate any significant level of sympathy towards acts of terrorism: for example, in a YouGov poll carried out after the 7/7 attacks, only 6% thought they were justifiable (YOUGOV, 2005). A year later, in a POPULUS survey in June 2006, only 7% believed that suicide attacks on civilians in the UK were ever justified (POPULUS, 2006). Of course, this does not mean that it is not worth studying why a very small proportion of British Muslims do sometimes sympathise with acts of Islamic terrorism – what is important though, is a sense of perspective, so that any such research retains an awareness of the minority nature of such support.

There is something of a bitter irony in the results we report here, their implications, and the current context of increased levels of Islamophobic prejudice (both in the UK and more globally; see Sheridan, 2006). On the one hand, we have provided some evidence to suggest a link between lowered levels of support for religious martyrdom and violence when British identity is strong, yet on the other, open-ended responses suggested that our participants were only too well aware of the increased prejudice towards Muslims post 9/11, with some participants feeling, as one put it, that “[They] hate Muslims”. Thus, while a sense of British identity might act to mitigate against support for terrorism, at the same time British Muslims could, quite justifiably, feel that such a sense of identity is challenging for them to adopt with any passion, if they feel that many white British citizens, along with much of the mainstream media, label Muslims as potential terrorists and do not accept them as fully British. Similar concerns were aired, for example, by Ahmad’s participants, and are echoed in content-analytic studies of the British media coverage of 9/11 and Islamic terrorism (Ahmad, 2006; Poole, 2002). 

On top of this is the level of connection clearly felt by some of our respondents to the perceived oppression suffered by fellow Muslims around the world, but especially in the Middle East. This links to the social-psychological concept of relative deprivation mentioned earlier, as well as the research on threats to social identity, both of which predict strong reactions from individuals who feel people who share their identity are being unfairly treated or are under threat. There is so much psychological investment in that part of our identity associated with our religion, that it is not surprising that this combination of circumstances can lead to support for acts of terrorism, where such acts are viewed as defending fellow in-group members from injustice and threats to their very existence. As one of our participants put it:-

 “There’s a war going on in Palestine but the rules of engagement are different. But to me certainly acts of violence, for example what happened on September 11th, what’s happened in Bali, are totally unacceptable and there’s no rhyme or reason behind it. What’s happening in Palestine is a different matter and I view that differently and I think there is a war there, I believe there’s a war and the people who are oppressed there are fighting it the best way they can given that they have very little resources.” 

This comment highlights the power of a shared sense of identity, leading to one person feeling the oppression experienced by others of the same group. It also illustrates the complexity of beliefs in this domain, because clearly the participant condemns acts of terrorism such as 9/11 and the Bali bombings, but is not condemning of acts of violence committed by Palestinians, since they are seen as acts of self-defence. This last observation highlights the old adage that ‘one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter’. It also, once again, highlights the power of a sense of shared identity.

In conclusion, although Ansari’s chapter in this volume clearly demonstrates a heterogeneity in the beliefs about martyrdom and terrorism espoused by British Muslims, our social-psychological analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from our modest survey study suggests some intriguing new avenues that future research on support for religious violence and terrorism might explore. In particular, the key ‘message’ from this analysis appears to be the possibility that, for British Muslims, a sense of (British) national identity might reduce the tendency to view acts of religiously-motivated violence and terrorism as important and justifiable. At present we can not rule out the possibility that this relationship is due to un-measured variables (such as age), but there is sufficient evidence here, backed up by established social-psychological phenomena, to warrant further empirical investigation of this potentially interesting link. Furthermore, the potential for mining the rich vein of social-psychological research exploring reactions to threatened social identity should be further explored. The latter offers crucial insights into the potential consequences of the kind of beliefs recently reported by a large-scale opinion poll conducted in the UK after 7/7 (POPULUS, 2006), which indicated that:

56% of Muslims surveyed believed the so-called ‘war on terror’ was in fact a war against Islam

36% of Muslims surveyed believed that “Modern British values are a threat to the Islamic way of life”.

Thus, we propose a research agenda which (a) ascribes the study of the interplay between Muslim and national identity high importance; and (b) explores further how social-psychological work on reactions to threatened social identity might offer insights into the ramifications of some Muslims’ beliefs that Islam is under threat. We believe that in exploring these two over-arching themes, social psychology can make a useful contribution to the literature on support for (Islamic) terrorism.