Written evidence submitted by the Centre on Religion & Geopolitics, an initiative of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation

Home Affairs Committee inquiry into the Government’s new five-year strategy into countering extremism

29 October 2015

• Key to the British Government’s counter extremism strategy will be undermining the appeal of the Salafi-jihadi ideology. Understanding the nature of this ideology is essential for informing the UK’s response against this extremism.
• Research into the propaganda of Salafi-jihadi groups finds a coherent and interwoven system of beliefs, but one open to intellectual attack. The ideology is held not just by ISIL, but in an almost identical form by al-Qaeda’s affiliates.
• A distinct difference exists between the ideology of Salafi-jihadism and the Islam practiced by the majority of the world’s Muslims. The Salafi-jihadi ideology distorts Islamic religious principles to produce a single-minded focus on violent jihad.
• In its strategy, the government should ensure it promotes responses that target the foundations of the jihadi ideological framework, creating a simple alternative framework for the application of Islamic values and principles. Governments must provide space and support to grassroots Muslim responses that directly challenge the jihadis’ claims to truthfulness.
• Polling has shown a broader political culture overlapping significantly with some assumptions of the jihadi ideology, without necessarily being extreme or agreeing with its violence. Extremist ideas must be actively challenged before they have the chance to become violent.

1. The Centre on Religion & Geopolitics provides informed analysis on the interaction of religion and conflict globally, offering policy responses to meet the scale of the challenge. The Centre is a project of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. The Foundation’s mission is to provide practical support to counter religious prejudice, conflict and extremism, in order to promote open-minded and stable societies.

2. Across the world, the interaction of religion and conflict is making its effect felt. Political ideologies and events are exposed to the pressures of religion. Policy makers can no longer ignore the threat posed by violent religious ideologies, but if they are to be defeated, they must be understood. Through reports, media commentary, events and policy briefings, the Foundation’s Centre on Religion & Geopolitics (CRG)[1] provides that understanding.

3. On 6 October 2015 the CRG released a report, Inside the Jihadi Mind: Understanding Ideology and Propaganda.[2] The report provides an evidence base for the growing recognition by political leaders, including Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama, that ideology is a vital motivating force for extremist violence. Analysing a cross-section of 114 propaganda sources from three Salafi-jihadi groups (ISIL, Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), released between spring 2013 and summer 2015, the report seeks to identify what this reveals about the groups’ shared ideologies. This analysis will help mainstream Muslims, governments and civil society to develop effective counter narratives.

4. The report found that there is a distinct difference between the ideology of Salafi-jihadism and the Islam practiced by the majority of the world’s Muslims, but that the three groups analysed share fundamentally similar ideologies. The Salafi-jihadi ideology is built upon Islamic religious principles, which it distorts to produce a single-minded focus on violent jihad.

5. Jihadi propaganda has two strands: narrative and ideology. The ideology is a coherent core system of beliefs; the narrative is the application of those beliefs to the current situation. It is analysis of narrative alone that leads to the common suggestion that “ISIL is more extreme than al-Qaeda”. Analysis of ideology shows that the groups are in fact more or less equally ideologically ‘extreme’, but tactically distinct.

6. Data from our report found that in particular, ideological values formed the moral basis of the groups' actions, and were present in 80 per cent of the propaganda sources researched. This included Islamic creedal values in 62 per cent, the values of honour and solidarity with the Muslim community in 68 per cent, and references to the apocalypse in 42 per cent. Our research also showed that the Salafi-jihadi groups make extensive use of Islamic scripture and scholarship with such justifications appearing in 87 per cent of the propaganda, although these references are consistently ‘cherry-picked’ and presented without context.[3]

7. These findings indicate that a successful counter-narrative should: be developed to understand and target the foundations of the jihadi ideological framework, create a simple alternative framework for the application of Islamic values and principles, and undermine the certainty the Salafi-jihadi ideology thrives on by offering easy access to profound answers.

8. If these groups are forced to defend their interpretation of Islamic values, they will find it harder to maintain this narrative. Their ideology can be challenged through the straightforward presentation of Islamic values and principles by credible, mainstream and orthodox religious leaders, to undermine extremist religious justifications.

9. In the current climate the battle of ideas is not being won, as demonstrated by the estimated 31,000 fighters with ISIL, compared with just 300 fighters with al-Qaeda in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. The CRG believes that unless there is an understanding of how the ideology relates to wider beliefs, the problem will not be uprooted. It is not enough to counter violent extremism, the extremism itself must be countered – the soil in which the violence grows.

11. Polls in the last decade have found that over half of Muslims surveyed in nine Muslim majority countries believed that they would live to see the start of the apocalypse; [4] over two-thirds of the populations of three large Muslim-majority countries agreed with the need for a caliphate;[5] three quarters of respondents in four large Muslim-majority countries agreed that there was a need to ‘stand up to America and affirm the dignity of the Islamic people’ – with the inference being that this proportion believes that America is damaging the dignity of Muslims.[6] Holding such beliefs does not in itself make one violent or even extreme. Nevertheless, jihadi groups, which share such sentiments but apply them to violent jihad, play upon these beliefs for their recruitment.

12. Interpretation of religion and understanding ideology is at the core of the challenge. ISIS and others groups are killing in the name of religion, but the vast majority of the victims of terrorism are Muslims themselves.

13. A major source and feeder of jihadi propaganda is online material, disseminated through social media. Technology companies cannot simply remove this material, but by working with religious leaders, experts and governments, mainstream platforms such as YouTube and Twitter could use their widely available resources to share and promote material that rebuts the jihadi message.

14. Developing these skills to prevent radicalisation is vital when government figures show that over 750 UK citizens have travelled to fight with jihadi groups in Syria.[7] These numbers need to come down, and it is on young people where this better understanding of religion needs to be targeted.

15. As global terrorism continues to be dominated by groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Boko Haram, and with other groups swearing allegiance, particularly to ISIS, there is an urgent need to tackle, challenge and rebut the ideologies behind these groups, and to educate society that there is an alternative, peaceful narrative.