You’re Not One of Us: Britain’s Problem with Returning Foreign Terrorist – Omar Hussein

You’re Not One of Us: Britain’s Problem with Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters

OMAR HUSSEIN

Enshrined in Article 15 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is ‘the right to a nationality’ and protection from being ‘arbitrarily deprived’ of one’s nationality (UN General Assembly 1948). However, the UDHR has always been an aspirational document, not because it is not legally binding (indeed, many of its principles have been formalised in international treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) but because, as Hannah Arendt believed, ‘human rights have never been universal’ (Boucher 2011: 223). History is littered with debates regarding who qualifies as truly human and, consequently, is entitled to human rights. Arendt held the stance that one’s membership in humanity and their claim to possessing human rights is uniquely contingent on their status as a citizen of a political community. Hence, citizenship represents the ‘right to have rights’ (Arendt cited in Boucher 2011: 222). By including an individual in a moral community which stems from the political collective (Dossa 1980: 319), citizenship enters one into the plurality of humanity, thus protecting their rights from desecration. Without the status of citizenship, so to speak, one is only human in the most basic sense: ‘nothing more than a savage’ (Boucher 2011: 222).

Arguably, the deprivation of citizenship designates an individual as external to the political framework which dictates the humane treatment of its members. Arendt argued that the Nuremburg Laws ‘systematically transformed [Jews] from political beings into natural creatures without any legal claims’ and this created the prerequisite conditions for the Holocaust to take place in isolation from ‘moral law and justice’ (Dossa 1980: 320). Whilst Arendt’s emphasis on citizenship as a condition to claiming the possession of human rights is problematic in its implication that those who

have not achieved an arbitrary standard of civilisation are not worthy of said rights, it highlights the significantly intertwined nature of human rights and citizenship. Consequently, if we are to subscribe to the tenets of the UDHR and aspire to create truly universal human rights, we must seriously challenge and scrutinise any nation which seeks to encroach on the human rights of an individual by revoking their citizenship. Indeed, such attention is urgently required in scrutinising the denationalisation policies adopted by Western nations in dealing with returning foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs). Whilst the practise of revoking citizenship has been implemented, to varying degrees, by a number of nations to combat FTFs returning from fi ghting in jihadist conflicts in Syria and Iraq (Braun 2018: 311), this paper will focus specifically on the UK’s approach to the denationalisation of FTFs where there has been a 600% increase in the number of Britons losing their citizenship between 2016 and 2017 (Dearden 2019). Through an analysis of Islamophobia within the UK, I will argue here that anti-Muslim sentiments in the UK have allowed for the government to strip numerous British nationals of their citizenship with impunity and shirk its commitment to human rights and the rule of law. The paper will demonstrate the ways in which the othering of Muslims within Britain has prevented widespread outcry against the policy of denationalisation despite the erosion of human rights in a Western liberal democracy.

Whilst the British government has frequently utilised the power to denationalise citizens in recent years (Dearden 2019), the issue has gained greater prominence following the case of Shamima Begum. Having left the UK for Syria in 2015 to join Islamic State (IS), Begum resurfaced four years later in 2019 pleading to be allowed to return to the UK. Within six days of Begum’s request, the British government revoked her citizenship on the grounds that she is eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship due to her heritage (Ark 2019). Despite the questionable legality of the British government’s response, especially in light of the Bangladeshi government’s insistence that Begum will not be allowed to enter Bangladesh (Ark 2019), there was immense support amongst the British public for the Home Secretary’s decision to strip Begum of her citizenship. Indeed, in a snap poll done by Sky News, 78% of Britons indicated support for the revocation of Begum’s citizenship with 65%

supporting the decision even if it left her stateless (Carr 2019). In light of such decisive support amongst the British public for Begum’s denationalisation, a pertinent question which arises is why is there such overwhelming support in Britain for a policy of denationalisation which violates the sanctity of the citizenship rights of a British-born citizen and shakes the foundations of human rights within the UK?

It is a truism that people will place greater value on that which they feel has the greatest impact on their lives, and the same egocentric and subconscious calculations of value are present in the realm of human rights. David Luban describes the differential allocation of value to different rights depending on those perceived as being the most pertinent to oneself as the ‘Mel Brooks theory of rights’ (Luban 2005: 243). Luban’s theory is named for a statement by American actor and filmmaker Mel Brooks that ‘tragedy is when I break a fingernail, and comedy is when you fall down a manhole and die’ (Luban 2005: 243). In other words, people are willing to allow the violation of human rights if they do not think it will affect them, particularly if they view the violation as increasing their own security (Luban 2005: 243). Examining the denationalisation of FTFs through the lens of the ‘Mel Brooks theory of rights’ in the context of overwhelming public support for the revocation of their citizenship prompts the realisation that the construction of the British identity is not completely inclusive. The fact that the public is not simply indifferent but strongly support this infringement on British Muslims’ citizenship rights leads me to consider that British Muslims’ rights are viewed, informally at least, as separate to the rights of other Britons because it is unlikely the government’s denationalisation policies would be so widely supported if the majority of Britons viewed the policies as encroaching on their rights. In other words, the othering of British Muslims as not truly British has allowed for their rights to be violated with the approval of the wider population.

Statistically, the othering of British Muslims from mainstream society is prevalent, considering that 35% of people in the UK ‘believe that Islam is a threat to the British way of life’ (Perraudin 2019). The oppositional construction of Islam and British culture as irreconcilable legitimises the exclusion of British Muslims from the wider British national identity. How

can those who adhere to a faith that threatens ‘the British way of life’ be fully recognised members of the very identity they seek to undermine? The perception of Islam in Britain as ‘separate and other’ from other cultures due to a lack of shared ‘aims or values’ and the view of Islam as ‘threatening’ have been identified as factors which engender a negative view of Islam, thus contributing to the formulation of Islamophobic narratives within the UK (Runnymede Trust 1997). Consequently, these Islamophobic narratives of Muslims as not only incompatible with, but dangerous to British society play a significant role in casting doubt on the validity of a British Muslim identity as Islamophobic sentiments within the UK construct the constituent parts of this double-barrelled identity as mutually exclusive. Thus, it becomes clear that legitimacy of an individual’s claim to the British identity is not only determined by their passport or where they were born or where their parents are from, but also by the faith they adhere to. In fact, another feature of Islamophobia stemming from anti-Muslim prejudice in the UK, identified by the Runnymede Trust, was that ‘hostility towards Islam [is] used to justify… [the] exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society’ (Runnymede Trust 1997). To put it differently, Islamophobic narratives and beliefs set the frames of who truly qualifies as British. These frames which are delineated by Islamophobia can be understood more profoundly through the lens of Judith Butler’s ‘frames of recognition’ (Butler 2009: 5). In her book, Frames of War¸ Butler argues that the value which is allocated to a life is dependent on our ability to recognise that life as grievable. The recognition of the grievability of any life is dependent on ‘norms of recognition’ which are the constructed socio-historical normative understandings of life through which life becomes recognisable as worth protecting (Butler 2009: 4-6). As a result, we can infer that those who are perceived as aberrant from the normative understanding of who qualifies as British lack grievability which leads to their dehumanisation and the devaluing of their rights. Specifically, Islamophobia’s framing of the Muslim and British identities as mutually exclusive is profoundly related to a myriad of social and political realities in the UK which form the prerequisite normative context for the othering of British Muslims from mainstream society. For instance, following the 9/11 attacks and the 7/7 bombings in

London, the British government has maintained a ‘high level of perceived threat’ from ‘Islamist terror’ in order to legitimise their ‘intrusive policies of surveillance’ and ‘the general assault on civil liberties in the name of protecting the citizenry’ (Alam and Husband 2013: 246). This prevalent depiction of the dangers of Islamist terror within the UK as real and imminent reinforces the notion that British Muslims are ‘inherently alien’ to the UK (Alam and Husband 2013: 247). Thus, Islamophobia constitutes a frame which prevents Muslims from being recognised as members of the political and moral community which Arendt believed was the source of ‘human status’ (Dossa 1980: 319). Not only that, indeed if we understand the value of a life as contingent upon a person’s complete membership of a political community which can protect that life, then we realise that Islamophobia renders Muslims as un-grievable, ultimately dehumanising them and permitting the violation of their rights.

With this in mind, we can begin to understand that the denationalisation of FTFs does not only cause them to be dehumanised, rendering them beyond the protection of the ‘civilised polis’ by ‘tear[ing] away the cloak of humanity’ (Boucher 2011: 221), but it is the concrete and overt manifestation of the dehumanisation of Muslims within Britain resulting from anti-Muslim prejudices. Arguably, as long as an individual possesses citizenship, at least nominally, even if others don’t fully recognise them as a member of their community they have ‘all the rights and obligations it [citizenship] entails’ (Boucher 2011: 221). However, policies which allow for denationalisation (like the policies being pursued by the UK government with regard to the revocation of FTFs’ citizenships) imply that the citizenship of Muslims is conditional upon their good behaviour. This leads me to consider that if citizenship is conditional, then it can be constructed as more of a privilege which has been given to British Muslims and can be taken away as opposed to an inalienable right. Casting doubt on the inviolability of British Muslims’ citizenship blatantly challenges the legitimacy of their claims to not only a British national identity, but to their membership in humanity which is contingent on them being recognised as political beings. Thus, the revocation of citizenship represents an official exile from one’s political, social and

moral community which places an individual beyond the pale of humanity – dehumanising them in the most absolute sense.

Undeniably, the return of FTFs to Britain poses a present and serious predicament. It is notoriously difficult to prosecute those returning from IS territories. Indeed, of the more than 400 FTFs that have come back to the UK, only 40 have actually been prosecuted, and other approaches to managing the threat of returning FTFs, such as permanent surveillance, are impractical (“British Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters” 2019). Thus, one could quite reasonably argue that the revocation of the citizenship of these jihadists is a necessary evil to deal pragmatically with an impossible situation. However, populist policies which dehumanise British Muslims are not the solution. Policies which appeal to anti-Muslim prejudices in the UK and cast doubt on the validity of the British identity of Muslim Britons further reinforce Islamophobic narratives which exclude British Muslims from mainstream society and can lead to greater division within society. In order to create a truly inclusive and pluralistic society, we cannot give credibility to the Islamophobic prejudices which propagate the narrative that Muslims are not truly British. Whilst there already exists some scholarship on how the government’s approach to anti-radicalisation and counter-terrorism has actually exacerbated the othering of Muslims in the UK, it is necessary to investigate this further as ultimately the government has a responsibility to protect the rights of all its citizens and it cannot provide that protection at the expense of minorities. Being truly committed to human rights entails a commitment to the rights of all humans but especially those of a nation’s own citizens regardless of religion.

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