THE 'BRITISH JIHAD' AND THE CURVES OF RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE

Keywords: Al Qaeda, terrorism, Dhiren Barot, Lashkar- Al Qaeda, terrorism, Dhiren Barot, Lashkar-e Tayyiba, Harakat-ul Mujahideen, Jaish

In exploring anti-civilian violence and alleged plots undertaken in the UK by small groups often termed 'salafi-jihadi' and popularly called 'terrorists', the essay attempts to present alternative routes of analysis. The violent events or (alleged) plots seen recently in the UK present a political and sociological form that is different to state-centric or transnational migrant politics, including political Islam and communitarian Muslim identity politics. The discussion of events in the UK extends to an analysis of a systematic pattern of association between small groups in the UK and Pakistani militias operating in Kashmir. The origins and ideologies of the militias are explored and the dynamics of the militia movements in relation to UK events are considered.

waterboarding torture, said he sent to Malaysia and, under Bin Laden's direction, to the US in early 2001 (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks 2004, pp. 150, 514). Barot's treatise about his experiences as a fighter for a militia active in Kashmir is an important document widely circulated in the UK [START_REF] Hindi | The Army of Madinah in Kashmir[END_REF]. The book, written under the kunya of Esa al-Hindi, was published by a Birmingham bookshop, the Maktabah al-Ansar, an important source for the dissemination of so-called 'salafi-jihadi' material in the UK. His book exudes a piercing political sensibility, one occasionally poetic in it flourishes. His language as an operative is quite different:

Even in suicidal missions we might not live long enough to deliver a very highly radioactive RDD [radioactive dispersal device] that uses gamma-emitting sources and is not shielded. If we tried to protect ourselves by shielding the source, the weight of the RDD could significantly increase thereby increasing the difficulty of delivering the device and causing successful dispersion of the radioactive material. 2 The formal register of this operational language is quite different from what is often seen as the irrational fanaticism of 'jihadis'. Barot openly calls his plans terrorist ones, intended to cause terror and chaos in London (unusually for this genre, he also refers to 'suicidal' actions.) The Madrid public transport bombings and the death of 191 commuters were considered by him to be a 'respectable' operation 3 .

As early as 1999, before the invasion of Iraq and the 2001 attacks in New York, Barot was promoting 'flank operations' that were to be undertaken in western countries using great stealth (Al-Hindi 1999, p.116-7). He was proposing this strategy in the late 1990s because of the awesome importance of Mullah Omar's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. For global visionaries who inhabited a specific political-intellectual universe, Taliban Afghanistan had world-historic significance. It was apprehended as a near perfect state and society by many like Barot and Omar Khyam, a central figure in the 2004 'fertiliser' bomb plot. It was also viewed as an ideal base for military training that had to be protected from western interference. Hence, the attention of key western countries had to be deflected away from Afghanistan through operations undertaken on their soil.

Can migrant politics or the politics of migration make sense of Dhiren Barot and the tendencies he represents? This Special Issue is about the political mobilization of migrant groups and the paths through which migrants do or do not become politically 'incorporated', 'integrated' or 'assimilated'. The absence of political 'incorporation' is not equivalent to a path towards political violence (as if the binary of democracy / terror completes all political possibilities, or sets apart two ideas that might be related in some circumstances.) However, it is unclear that nation-focused and state-centric approaches can properly account for non-violent transnational migrant politics, let alone the real and alleged plots to commit violence against formal civilians that we have seen recently.

If the paradigmatic events for migration studies are movements from the rural to the urban and from the 'periphery' to the west, Dhiren Barot's key journeys exemplify the exact opposite. These 'jihadi' journeys make sense because affiliates are 'integrated' and competently 'worlded'. This 'worlding' can be reliant on peripheral urban to peripheral rural migration that bypasses the cosmopolitan metropolitan experience; or it can be based in largely metropolitan settings, and in travel from and through them rather than migration to them 4 ; or it can depend on the social competencies required to characterised as a social movement (e.g Wiktorowicz 2003) or a network (e.g. [START_REF] Castells | The Power of Identity[END_REF], or an hierarchical organization with a clear identity (e.g. [START_REF] Gunaratna | Inside Al Qaeda[END_REF]; or it is a fluid and dynamic entity comprised of socially ephemeral units (e.g. Sageman 2004) but which is nevertheless politically and ideologically rigid and doctrinaire and has enduring parts; or it is an entity hidden within social interstices but can also be manifest -both covert and spectacular; or it is operationally highly competent, patient and sophisticated, or incompetent, amateur and relies on luck and determination; or it is an entity having clearly recognised boundaries; or it is a dispersed, cellular assemblage, both acephalous and polycephalous, locally autonomous and having no recognisable boundaries that distinguish it from the societies, religions or 'civilizations' in which it is manifest; or it has no existence except as a brand ('Al Qaeda') or franchise [START_REF] Bergen | Holy War Inc. Inside the secret world of Osama Bin Laden[END_REF], an ideology [START_REF] Burke | Ethnic and Racial Studies BURKE, JASON 2008 'The Britons who become bombers[END_REF]), a propaganda-media outfit (As-Sahab) or, simply, a metaphor that has causal powers across discontinuous times and spaces.

The inability of current taxonomy to describe convincingly the varieties of politicized religion or contain them within categorical boundaries (on this, see Roy 2004.) Hence, each tendency is considered sui generis (such as Al Qaeda) or compressed into a tripartite taxonomy (reformist, radical, revolutionary; moderate, radical, extremist; Islamist, salafi, salafi-jihadi.) Taxonomic problems proliferate, especially when south Asian political movements enter the analytical fray, and they usually do. Some analytical issues are a consequence of insufficient historical distance and an Al Qaeda-focused analysis starting from 2001 (such that the significant history of religious militias is taken to commence then) and working backwards into the Afghan jihad and the history of the Muslim Brotherhood or Wahhabi salafism from a perspective already settled by the 2001 events. This approach can generate an historical account overdetermined by 'terror, terror, terror' [START_REF] Fisk | The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East[END_REF], one that necessarily solicits a distinctive political, ethical or emotional partiality. Taxonomic issues also reflect difficulties in ascribing ideological boundaries to the phenomena. Thus, much discourse moves fluidly from political Islamists to terrorists, from civilian resistance to military occupation to anti-civilian terrorism, from hijab to human bomb. Boundary issues might be empirically real (a few 'liberal' Brelwi movements also engage in sectarian violence and possess militias engaged in 'jihad'), but also reflect deeply political issues -for example, both Israel and India have developed ferocious military strategies regarding colonized Palestine and Indian-controlled Kashmir as part of the US-led 'global war on terror'.

The dominance of the network analogy and the assumption of organizational consonance. The overwhelming view is that there is a transnational network -a sociologically corrigible 'global terrorist network' which penetrates diasporas in the west. The desire to impute organizational consonance across the network is manifested in the plethora of terms ('the global jihadi movement', 'global terrorism', 'terror networks') that attempt to describe a unitary transnational entity, even if regional discriminations are subsequently elaborated.

The assumption that there exists a global network that demonstrates organizational consonance and ideological familiality can nourish a political view of a tentacular global structure -or a high velocity phantasmatic intensity -that can strike civilians anywhere. It is not obvious that a geosocial topology based on the 'network' is necessarily valid, and its analytical use can displace other sociological dynamics, including non-linear transnational 'sovereignties' and the involvement of shadow states and parastatal militia combines [START_REF] Bhatt | Frontlines and interstices in the global war on terror[END_REF]. Further, the network narrative of 'global terrorism' functions partly because of the absence of data about the current form, capacity, intentions or precise whereabouts of the genuine Al Qaeda. Alternatively, well-described empirical instances are universalized, or very different 'networks', events, histories and regional settings are conflated. The aim is often to demonstrate an association between events or diverse armed groups that are designated by the US, UN, EU or UK as 'terrorist', and said to be 'Al Qaeda-linked' or 'related'. This is not to deny the existence of important transnational links, including ones to operatives who are incontrovertibly associated with Al Qaeda or who seek to accomplish major and horrifying atrocities.

A definitive ideological lineage and the assumption of ideological familiality. The ubiquitous claim is of a definitive ideological genealogy that explains the phenomenon. The claim rests alongside the desire to attribute ideological familiality to all 'jihadi' phenomena. The ideological lineage is seen to commence from the medieval al-Ghazzali and Ibn Taymiyya and travels via al-Wahhab to Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Abdullah Azzam and finally to Bin Laden via the interpolation of al-Zawahiri and the ideology of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The influences are usually post-1960s salafism, post-1970s Muslim Brotherhood ideology and the Afghan jihad (though the Taliban or Deobandi sects are usually seen to contribute little independent intellectual content.) The influence of 'jihadi' ideology is characteristically imagined in viral, epidemiological terms. It is popularly seen to animate several 'jihadi personalities': the grimly calculating, the frenzied, the deprived, the damaged, the sexually aggravated and the brainwashed. Hence also, the adiaphoric personality transforming instantly into the hostile one manifesting a fanatical haemophilia that has something to do with concupiscence and repression, primordial revenge and death fantasy.

The foregrounding of one type of political violence, usually human bombs that target European and north American formal civilians. The focus on human bombs, martyrology and gross events (such as beheadings in Iraq and Afghanistan) can distance attention from the routine violence of religious armed groups and elide the wide forms of political, Similarly, the common doublet of ideas regarding 'terrorism as tactic' and 'terrorism as spectacle' for a mass mediated global audience, can displace other ways of understanding political violence that are not completed by analytical recourse to either instrumental rationality or fanatical totalitarianism. Anti-civilian political violence need not exemplify a strategy or tactic, but this also does not imply that it is simply the manifestation of a xenocidal ideology. (Additionally, it is not the commitment to a metaphysics of violence that is exceptional -numerous political tendencies, from varieties of neoconservatism to revolutionary Marxism and revolutionary feminism make an ideological pledge to some form of political violence against some formal civilians in some circumstances for the greater good of all humanity, even if the pledge is perpetually deferred.)

ATERRITORIAL PARAMILITIAS

Since the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq and the 2005 London bombings, there have been important transformations in orientations towards political violence among many political Islamists, theological and political salafis and several important 'salafijihadi' clerics who formerly supported wider forms of political violence against civilians but have partially modified some of their former judgements. The latter significantly include major 'salafi-jihadi' clerics, such as the Jordanian Abu Mohammed Asim al-Maqdisi 5 , and the stern London-based Syrian advocate of jihad and takfir, Abu Basir al-Tartusi, who said after the London bombings, though with qualification, that martyrdom operations were closer to suicide, a sin (As Sharq Al-Awsat 27.08.2005; As Sharq Al-Awsat 01.09.2005). 6 Theological salafism has also come under pressure from Saudi Arabia, which has made a concerted global effort to present Wahhabism and salafism as equivalent to peace and contrary to 'terrorism'. However, 'terrorism' and 'innocence' More generally, the relations between 'salafi-jihadi' clerics and operatives has transformed, often substantially and in many detailed ways and some themes can be outlined here. The broadest field of 'salafi-jihadi' theological opinion on legitimate forms of violence (including against Muslim and non-Muslim civilians, against women, children and the elderly, through beheadings and other mutilations, by human bombs and though insurgencies directed against states or formal civilian groups) is readily available.

Opinions are supplemented by a potent philosophical anthropology, now definitive of several forms of salafism and 'salafi-jihadism', in which disavowal, enmity and dissociation constitute the natural human dispensation and xenological solidarity a natural condition (for example, Al- [START_REF] Fawzaan | Calgary Islam[END_REF][START_REF] Qahtani | Al Wala' wa'l Bara' according to the Aqeedah of the Salaf[END_REF]. Even if judgements are abrogated by clerics who initially gave them, the abrogation can be dismissed as resulting from US or Saudi pressure. Operatives also readily make theological opinions: as major respected clerics have receded, the distinction between who is an operative and who a cleric has diminished, as has the difference -if there ever was a clear difference -between a jurisprudential opinion, a political opinion and an operational judgement. Somewhat in parallel, the strategic distinction between small group acts against formal civilians and the incitement of popular violent insurgencies against armed occupiers or other formal civilians is frequently blurred. Hence, committed operatives do not necessarily require further theological legitimation for the 'uncontentious' bulk of operations, including against civilians. While there are strong countervailing trends that continue to appeal to the magical and supernal aspects of jihad (for example, [START_REF] Sahli | As-sahr wa' l-mujahideen' [Magic and the Mujahideen[END_REF]Surur, not dated), the orientation of operatives has shifted from the theological, mystical or miraculous to the rational, strategic and operational, and this can be seen as a declension of the theological. These factors do not mean religious jurisprudence is unimportant, but rather the relevant opinions are commonly understood to legitimise a wide field of operations against formal civilians, despite the prevalence of contrary religious opinions. Except for the most jurisprudentially contentious of acts, the choice between religious opinions is largely about political or strategic judgement rather theology. Strategically, there is a range of evolving ideas, ranging from the imperative to generate insurgencies to autonomous, covert cellular structures or independent lone individuals operating in the west, as suggested by key ideologues such as Abu Musab as-Suri [START_REF] Naji | The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Umma Will Pass[END_REF]; see also Lia 2007), or small groups making use of readily obtainable materials, as advocated by figures like Dhiren Barot.

ONLY CONNECT

These broader changes are relevant to the UK where there has been a string of high profile trials of those accused under expansive UK counter-terrorism legislation. Key trials have followed major police and security service operations. These include the massive Operations Crevice (the 'fertilizer' plot), Overt (the 'transatlantic airline bombing plot'), Rhyme (the group associated with Dhiren Barot), Mazhar (an important Internet has faced from the criminal justice system and the media [START_REF] Barot | Eesa Barot's Letter to the Ummah[END_REF]. Omar Khyam, convicted as the key organizer of the 'fertilizer' plot, has also been attacked, as have other Muslim prisoners.

Of importance is the extent to which suspects, evidence or events in separate trials, including current or pending trials, are reportedly associated (raising a range of ethical issues about research in this area.) Describing sociologically just the British links through terms such as 'social movement', 'network', 'organization' or 'group' is only partially sufficient and the network analogy undersupplies us with an convincing social topology of the UK 'clusters' and their transnational associations. If it is relatively uncomplicated to show a network of 'clusters', it is far less easy to demonstrate the However, the 'clusters' are not necessarily existing socio-political groups but ones made distinct through criminal investigations (the network made visible through forensic, criminal and legal process is not necessarily the same as the geosocial network.) Much of the apparent configuration of UK clusters has resulted from intelligence obtained from (and therefore managed and constrained by the exigencies of) Pakistan's intelligence services, through the confessions of a few key individuals or through confessions obtained through torture.

Other important aspects remain to be described accurately: changing transnational 'jihadi' pathways (especially post-2003), the anthropology of the militia and ideological camps and their substantial variety, the nature of different courses of instruction and training (though some of this is well known), the role of rural guides, instructors and camp amirs, the significance of peripatetic mercenaries, financial exchange, and other dynamics related to inter-militia relations. Virtually unremarked is the dense and sophisticated aesthetic universe created by religious militias. The aesthetic dimensions vary regionally but include consistent themes, motifs, lilt, nasheed, calligraphy, poetry and images. Some information relevant to the UK is necessarily curtailed here and is described using public sources. But it is more accurate to speak of disparate 'operational' and propaganda 'clusters' in the UK, some of which overlap others, some of which show tenuous links with other 'clusters' or individuals, others which are (or currently appear to Another sprawl of associations between primarily propaganda clusters demonstrates an alternative topology. Following Operation Mazhar, Younis Tsouli from Ealing and two associates were convicted in 2007 for inciting others to commit acts of terrorism (Economist 12.07.2007). Tsouli, under the name 'irhabi007' ('irhabi' meaning 'terrorist', '007' referring to a fictional drinking and womanizing secret agent of the British state, an unusual coalescence of ambitions), had been active in numerous online activities. He was also said to be associated with Al Qaeda's military affiliate in Iraq and published al-Zarqawi's propaganda (Guardian 5.07.2007). Tsouli was initially arrested because of phone records obtained during the arrest of a Swedish man in Bosnia and

Herzegovina. An online associate of Tsouli's group was said to have attempted to smuggle plans for a rocket launcher (a Hamas Qassam rocket) into the UK. Other online associates are linked to activities in the US, Canada and elsewhere.

One association leads to At-Tibyan, an important (if intriguing) online publisher of English language translations of key 'salafi-jihadi' texts. At-Tibyan's theopolitical material provides a wide field of 'salafi-jihadi' judgements of the kind described earlier (though it has so far avoided publicising the more visceral judgements.) Another group of UK individuals has been associated with At-Tibyan in a legal case. At-Tibyan has also published material which was formerly to be published by Azzam.com, a website run by Babar Ahmed (among others) who is facing extradition to the US. Babar Ahmed's case relates to connections that range from the US to Chechnya (USA v. Babar Ahmad 2004, p.9). Since its closure, Azzam.com's material has been published by the Maktabah al-Ansar bookshop in Birmingham, which also published Dhiren Barot's book on Kashmir. The bookshop was reportedly co-owned by Moazzam Begg, who contemplated Taliban Afghanistan as a desirable holiday destination for his family, was held captive at Guantanamo Bay and later released. An individual who worked at the bookshop was arrested and later released without charge in relation to the 2007 Birmingham 'Muslim soldier beheading' plot. This latter plot reportedly links to militias operating in Kashmir; it also relates to the shipping of equipment to Afghanistan, a theme in several cases. These connections can be expanded much further in several directions and from various 'nodes', generating a sprawl of assemblages for which the network or the movement analytic seem like overdescriptions.

A third series of associations can be considered, starting with the 'transatlantic airline liquid bomb' plot in 2006. The arrest of Rashid Rauf in Pakistan led to the UK arrests, enormous alarm across the Atlantic and the creation of new hand-luggage rules concerning liquid products (Independent 19.08.2006). Of significance in this (and several other) plots were the numerous 'martyrdom' videos that individuals had produced. The language of political retribution and reprisal permeates these videos, as it does those of the July 2005 bombers, and this requires an explanation that moves beyond primitive vengeance. This plot also led to associations with militias in Pakistan and Afghanistan, including the important Jaish-e Mohammed militia operating in Kashmir.

Significantly, the connections vanish into the fug of military-militia dynamics in Pakistan. For example, Rashid Rauf was initially characterised in Pakistan as a key 'Al Qaeda figure' and allegedly associated with various UK plots. However, he managed to walk free from police custody (Dawn (Karachi), 18.12.2007) though he is now thought to have been killed in a US drone airstrike in North Waziristan. Similarly, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, a complex 'key Al Qaeda' figure from Pakistan, whose arrest led to

THE PAKISTANI 'MILITIA SWARM'

While 'Al Qaeda' and the 'resurgent Taliban' remain in that order the key symbols in the demonology associated with religion, a third 'actor', the Pakistani religious militia swarm, has been largely evaded in analyses outside south Asia [START_REF] Mir | The True Face of Jehadis[END_REF][START_REF] Abou Zahab | Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection[END_REF][START_REF] Abbas | Pakistan's Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America's War on Terror[END_REF][START_REF] Rana | The A-Z of Jehadi Organizations in Pakistan[END_REF]Swami 2007; Hussain 2007.) Also significant is the impact that alliances between militias might have regionally and internationally. Sometimes, the militias merge or work together as militia combines such that it is unclear whether they (HuJI). This was formed in 1980 by the Jamiat Ulama-e Islami (JUI), a national federation of Deobandi clerics (a faction of which created the Taliban movement), and the Tablighi Jamaat, the transnational missionary organization misleadingly considered apolitical and quietist (Mir 2004, p. 117;[START_REF] Sikand | The Tablighi Jamaat and Politics[END_REF]. A major offshoot of HuJI was the Harakat-ul Mujahideen (HuM), formed in 1985, which is also associated with Tablighi sections. In the early 1990s, HuJI, HuM and another militia merged under the name Harakat-ul Ansar (HuA). One of its key leaders and a formidable ideologue was Masood Azhar. His publications, tapes and CDs circulated widely in the UK during the 1990s and he visited the UK on several speaking and fundraising tours. Azhar's writings and speeches, including Zaad-e Mujahid (Khubaib Sahib not dated) an ideological book for mujahideen on preparation for 'jihad', written while in jail in India, and his The Virtues of Jihad (Azhar not dated) are widely available in Britain (possession of the former was important in a further conviction emerging from the July 7 bombings.) Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British public schoolboy and LSE student, while on a 'convoy of mercy' to Bosnia in the early 1990s, become involved with the Harakatul Ansar (Mir 2004, pp.56-66). Masood Azhar of the HuA was arrested in Indiancontrolled Kashmir in 1994 and Omar Saeed Sheikh was later arrested in India for plotting to kidnap westerners in order to force the Indian government to release Azhar.

Following the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight in 1999, supposedly by an 'HuA' front group, Masood Azhar and Omar Saeed Sheikh were released and returned to Pakistan. One of the hijackers was Amjad Farooqi who became a key figure in the Lashkar-e Jhangvi (LeJ), the militia offshoot of Sipah-e Sahaba (SSP), an extremely violent sectarian organization in Pakistan that turned to massacring Shia leaders in Kashmir (Abbas 2005, p. 208.) In a very important sense, the SSP's violence established a key precedent for many of the tendencies described in this essay. On release, Masood Azhar announced the formation of the Jaish-e Mohammed (JeM). Like the LeT, the Jaish-e Mohammed is a massive social, political and militia movement. Omar Saeed Sheikh was convicted for the kidnapping and murder by beheading in 2002 of the Washington Post journalist, Daniel Pearl, who was investigating the involvement of Richard Reid, the failed UK shoebomber, with these militias and with the Tablighis (Guardian 23.02.2005;USA versus Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh 2002;Mariane Pearl versus Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh and others 2007). Amjad Farooqi, now dead, was named as involved in the murder, and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed said that he beheaded Daniel Pearl. The various tendencies that culminated in this murder show, perhaps emblematically, the early involvement of individuals from the UK, the convergence of several ideological and sectarian groups, the presence of militias independent of Al Qaeda and individuals from the latter.

The militias are politically rather than just militarily definitive: several Deobandi groups during and in the aftermath of the Afghan jihad had developed a powerful 'global' ideology. For example, the Jaish-e Mohammed's motto is 'jihad against the infidels and struggle against infidelity to faith [i.e. against other Muslims]' (Azhar, quoted in Rana 2005, p.225.) In this curt statement, Azhar's ideology illustrates two key dynamics: firstly, the tripartite struggle -locally in Indian-controlled Kashmir, against India itself (to 'reclaim' it as 'Muslim territory' that was once part of the 'Caliphate'), and planet-wide to establish God's justice and truth everywhere; secondly the need to discipline Muslims 'internally' while fighting unbelief 'externally'. These south Asian 'global' ideologies cannot be viewed as unsystematic and disorganised in comparison Ideologically, the LeT makes little distinction between its desire to plant 'the flag of Islam' in Delhi, London and Washington and its struggle in Kashmir. India, but also Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists are key symbols in its demonology. Similarly, the idea that killing Americans, 'looting their wealth' and 'enslaving their women' was permissible, since they were infidels warring against Islam and Muslims, was well-established among Ahl-e Hadis or Deobandi militias by the early 1990s and did not require Al Qaeda's interpolation.

During the 1990s, religious militias in south Asia spoke not just of the Afghan, Kashmir, Chechnyan or Bosnian jihad but the idea of jihad in an abstract sense, one linked to a planetary struggle against kufr and kaffir, or to a cosmic struggle to establish God's truth and justice worldwide and to save the entire humanity from kufr. The political language inverts the order of priorities: the Kashmir jihad becomes important because of the anterior necessity of 'global jihad'. There is therefore an interesting set of dialectics between the territory of the planet, all the lesser 'Caliphate territory' conceived to be historically 'Muslim' and apparently having borne the law and footprint of the believer (Roy 2004, p.112), and the regional struggle against military occupation. The Kashmir jihad is coextensive with the jihad to 'reclaim' all of India, which is equivalent to the jihad to establish planetary peace under God's law.

CONCLUSION

The 'geographical' movement from a north-west London suburb to Pakistani militia movements operating in Kashmir highlights elements of a sociological process and a political form that governs those who aspire to become involved with aterritorial religious absolutist paramilitias. The novel connections between British youths and Pakistani militias operating in Kashmir and Afghanistan reflect a militarized political association between very small groups in the 'diaspora', militias abroad, and elements of the shadow state. Through their travels, a small group of young British men have enabled a range of associations between youths in the UK and militias abroad. Their movements have engendered new associations between international military and security apparatuses, groups in the 'diaspora' and a variety of states and parastatal bodies, associations that will spawn new political dynamics long after the 'global war on terror' is over. This situation adds an altogether different dimension to the 'politics of the diaspora', since militias largely created and partially managed by the Pakistani secret state have trained British youths who want to undertake anti-civilian operations in the UK. It is a highly contentious but moot point whether Al Qaeda's agency was necessary for the major plots or operations in the UK. As the new US administration, with British assistance, undertakes more intensive and direct military assaults within Pakistan's It has become possible for many to apprehend 'salafi-jihadi' politics solely through the perspective of resistance to military occupation or the exigencies of a war situation. But consider these words of Masood Azhar, leader of the Jaish-e Mohammed:

...it is to express to the unbelievers that all Muslims are like one body, so to touch or cause harm to any part of the body is like challenging the whole body.

Similarly, to lift the hand against a Muslim's life, wealth or honour is similar to challenging the whole nation of the Muslims. (Azhar not dated,p. 132.) This philosophy of unconstrained spatial and temporal consequentialism may converge with that of Al Qaeda but is also independent of it. It takes each individual on the planet as in principle embodying responsibility for actions and consequences anywhere and anywhen. Rather than the dehumanization of the enemy that 'salafi-jihadis' are regularly accused of, it is a recognition of fully human political capacity. It is not that concerns about genuine military occupations are removed from this latter political form, but that they are intended to make sense only in that form. This is quite different from the formalities of political Islamist or communitarian Muslim identity politics in the UK. It demonstrates instead a desire by a small virtuous group to usurp the law of humanity and settle upon a precise identification between cosmos and nomos [START_REF] Arendt | The Origins of Totalitarianism[END_REF]. Key ideas about virtue (the 'character of character') and approbation (akin to the honouring of moral character) recur in 'salafi-jihadi' discourse. A politics of virtue and character can exist relatively unbridled by the impersonal rule-imperative forms of 'the political' that are otherwise hosted by modernity. These ideas of virtue and approbation have

  Qaeda, either by showing a direct link, or by showing the involvement of a

  have motile meanings. Hence, this Saudi effort routinely backfires because of the highly sectarian xenologies of many Saudi Arabian and other Gulf clerics, as well as their regularly ambiguous qualifications about different kinds of political violence.

  group), Overamp (a group from London, with connections to individuals from the failed 21 July 2005 London public transport bombings), Vivace (the latter failed bombings), Baguette (a Manchester group), Bivalve (an arrest at Luton airport) among numerous others. In 2007, there were 257 arrests related to terrorism legislation or associated offences, of which 126 individuals were released without charge (Carlile 2008, p.67.) From 11 September 2001 to 31 March 2007, there were 1,228 arrests related to terrorism legislation or related offences, of which 669 individuals were released without charge. 7 In Page 12 of 34 a few years, there may be up to a thousand such prisoners and their already evident political mobilization as 'prisoners of war' -the war being the 'global war on terror'will become important. Alongside are vocal demands from some prisoners regarding racism, anti-Muslim prejudice, human rights and the physical attacks upon them by other inmates. One might foresee something approaching the shape of the 'H-Block' campaigns of the Provisional IRA during the 1970s and 1980s, if the currently small prisoner campaigns gain symbolic momentum. Comparisons have been made with 'gang structures', including those of sectarian Republican and Loyalist prisoners. Political demands have not just arisen from the prisoners themselves: Shehzad Tanweer, one of the July 2005 bombers, in a predictably slick video released in July 2006 by As-Sahab, Al Qaeda's media wing, threatens an intensifying series of attacks in Britain unless it pulls its troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, stops military and financial support to the US and Israel, and releases all Muslim prisoners from Belmarsh and 'your other concentration camps' (As-Sahab, 2006). Dhiren Barot has been attacked in prison with boiling oil and water and has complained bitterly about what he sees as the racism and Islamophobia he

  genuine significance of 'the network', coherence within it, systematic organization across it, or the relevance of key personalities in animating it. Personal and familial bonds, organizational associations, and co-presence at events, militia training camps, cities and villages are evident in various cases. Online associations are regularly demonstrated.

  at common events in the UK (though the latter regularly lead to an overemphasis on Al Muhajiroun and the Supporters of Sharia.) Several key clusters demonstrate associations with each other via (the mediation of) Pakistani militias operating in Kashmir. Direct associations with 'Al Qaeda' have been either shown or regularly alleged, as in the 2005 bombings and the 'fertiliser', the 2006 transatlantic airline, the 2007 Birmingham 'Muslim soldier beheading' plots and the 2007 Glasgow airport attack. However, what is meant by 'Al Qaeda' can be a figure from a militia operating in Kashmir. Some clusters are small and tight, others sprawling and unbounded, vanishing into quotidian sociality. If one can speak of a prominent ideological shape, it includes the importance attached to Kashmir (and symbolically, Palestine), the attacks on Afghanistan, the 2002 Gujarat carnage, and the ideologies of Pakistani militias. Of key significance are ideological groups organised around (now former) key bookshops in the UK. In addition to the symbolic standing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden, the late al-Zarqawi and the late Ibn al-Khattab (today's Che Guevara), key inspirational figures include Abdullah Azzam, Masood Azhar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, Mohammed al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada, but there is a very wide range of other figures exemplifying a diverse ideological universe. Some political and highly technical material is ubiquitous. The diversity of the UK clusters, their relative unboundedness and the nature of their international associations are illustrated by briefly considering three real or alleged plots though, as we see, one plot quickly segues into others. Some of those arrested during Operation Crevice (the 'fertilizer' plot) have been associated with the 7 July 2005 bombers and with two others later arrested and charged in relation to the latter. These associations between the July 2005 bombings and the fertilizer plot focus on Mohammed Shehzad Tanweer's associations with some of the Crevice plotters in the UK. Individuals associated with the London bombings were also at camps in Mansehra or Malakand reportedly at the same time as individuals associated with the Crevice plot. Mohammed Siddique Khan of the 7 July London bombings and Mukhtar Said Ibrahim of the failed 21 July 2005 bombings were also associated via a training camp abroad, and the latter was also associated with another recently convicted UK-based group. Members of the 21 July failed plot were also reportedly associated with others in south London. Hence, both through the Crevice group and the '7/7' bombers, the associations expand in many disparate directions. Characteristically, as shown in the Crevice trial, online communications involved dummy Yahoo accounts and draft email documents were used for communication.Both the '7/7' and Crevice clusters relate to religious militias operating in Kashmir. It is important to register the political potency of Kashmir for UK citizens whose parents or grandparents may have come from south Asia. Kashmir's 'liberation' is comprehensively entwined with secular Pakistani nationalism and regional Muslim religious absolutism. Kashmir is similarly prominent in secular Indian and Hindu religious nationalism. If 'Kashmir' bears symbolic power of considerable magnitude, this can intensify communal dynamics among south Asians in the UK. It can also lead to the view that partaking of armed 'jihad' in Kashmir is a noble venture, irrespective of whether the venture is religious or secular. Omar Khyam, whose immediate family is secular, was said by him to have held a celebration for him because of his involvement with groups active in Kashmir (his extended family in Pakistan included staff in the military and intelligence services who found him at a camp and brought him home.) Dhiren Barot's book is about his experiences in Kashmir and eulogises the Lashkar-e Tayyiba (LeT), the most powerful militia operating in Kashmir. Barot's book also speaks Harakat-ul Ansar, Harakat-ul Mujahideen (HuM) and Al-Badr, militias operating in Kashmir that range from Deobandi to Islamist.

  figures like Dhiren Barot. One argument is that operations shifted to the UK after 2001

  fighting during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was the Harakat-ul Jihad-ul Islami

  with the lineage of violent salafism arising from Saudi Arabia and Egypt from the 1970s, nor are the former a simple consequence of the latter. (Distinctively, they contain the idea of a Hindu-Zionist-Crusader alliance encircling and threatening Muslims globally.) This argument also applies in the case of the most powerful Pakistani militia, the Lashkar-e Tayyiba (LeT), an offshoot of one sect of the Ahl-e Hadis movement in Pakistan and so ideologically closer to Wahhabism. The LeT was created by Hafiz Saeed in 1990 as the military wing of the Markaz-ud Dawa wal Irshad founded by him and the late Abdullah Azzam, a Muslim Brotherhood figure who is usually portrayed as bin Laden's political mentor. Like HuJI, the progenitor Deobandi militia, the LeT from its inception was operating beyond Kashmir, Afghanistan and Pakistan. LeT members have been found in Chechnya, China, India 8 , Bosnia, south-east Asia and recently in Iraq (Mir 2004, pp.104-5; Rana 2005, p.334). LeT fundraisers have been active in the UK for many years. Allegations have been made that LeT and JeM activists in the UK formed an important first step in the 'jihadi corridor' to Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan, and the LeT has been directly implicated in the training of individuals from the UK.

  other potent communal dynamics, converging with secular-nationalist ones, will proliferate.

  dangerous supplement' as well as the heady companion to normative modern political forms based on abstract judgement and impersonal procedure. They equally show considerable distance from domestic and transnational 'migrant' politics typically based on rights, distribution and recognition: if the secular father was arrested for making petrol bombs in anticipation of an attack by neo-Nazis or racist police in the midst of violent urban events occurring nationally, the anti-secular son is arrested for wanting to cause explosions among civilians for reasons that are at once secular and are a product of a political religion, one in which the worlds of the living have become mixed up with the worlds of the dead.

  DEFENSE 2007 'Verbatim Transcript of Combatant Status Tribunal Review Hearing for ISN 10024', 10 March, Author redacted.

'Rough presentation for Gas Limos project', chapter 4, page 16. Document attributed to Dhiren Barot

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for its support in allowing me to undertake research that informed this article. I would also like to thank Celia Lury, Suresh Grover, Gita Sahgal, Mohammed Ilyas, Ansar Ahmed Ullah, Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, Karima Bennoune and anonymous others for various discussions, and referees for useful comments.

were ones that Barot had undertaken


Therese O'toole
email: therese.otoole@bristol.ac.uk

Richard Gale
email: r.t.gale@bham.ac.uk

CONTEMPORARY GRAMMARS OF POLITICAL ACTION AMONG ETHNIC MINORITY YOUNG ACTIVISTS

Keywords: Political Participation, Activism, Social Movements, Youth, globalism, religious identities Political participation, Activism, Social Movements, Youth, Globalism, Religious Identities

INTRODUCTION

Ethnic minority young people's political engagement has featured in public debates in recent times in a range of ways, often connected with concerns about disengagement, disaffection or extremism. Analyses of falling electoral turnouts have drawn attention to low levels of voter registration and turnout among ethnic 2 minority groups generally, and it is suggested that this is particularly the case among ethnic minority younger people (Purdam et al 2002;Electoral Commission 2005). It should be noted that falling levels of electoral engagement are evident among the electorate more generally, and such trends are neither recent nor peculiar to the UK (Giddens 1994;Hay 2007), nor are such concerns confined to ethnic minority young people, as young people's electoral and party participation generally has been declining at a faster rate and across different states (Norris 2003).

Nevertheless, some groups of ethnic minority young people have become particular objects of public anxiety in relation to their civic and political participation. Significantly such concerns have undergone a discursive shift from a primary concern with ethnicity to a focus on religion, with particular emphasis on Muslims Advisory Group to advise Government Ministers; 1 as well as numerous local PVE-funded projects aimed at engaging with young Muslims in order to promote community cohesion and combat extremism.

Despite such concerns expressed in public and media debates, there are major gaps within the existing research literature. Whilst there have been several quantitative studies of ethnic minority electoral participation (Fieldhouse and Cutts 2007), only exceptionally has there been any attempt within these studies to consider the effects of age (Electoral Commission, 2005). The result is that the issues of youth participation on the one hand and minority ethnic participation on the other have developed as largely distinct areas of concern. Substantively, then, we know relatively little, empirically or conceptually, about ethnic minority young people's political engagement.

Similarly, the qualitative literature on youth political participation contains little focused research on the participation of ethnic minority young people. There are some excellent studies of ethnic minority political mobilizations in relation to the local state (Solomos and Back 1995) and focused on strategies of mobilization and leadership across different ethnic groups (Werbner and Anwar 1992), but aside from Eade and Garbin's work on political action among young Bangladeshis (2002; 2006), there has been little consideration of whether there are distinctive forms of political action emerging among ethnic minority young people in the present period. The purpose of this article is to consider this question by presenting findings on forms of political activism among ethnic minority young people, based on qualitative research with twelve groups of ethnic minority young political participants/activists in Birmingham and Bradford, carried out over the period Our research also engages with literatures on 'new ethnicities' and the increasing significance of religious identities among young people of minority ethnic heritage (Jabobsen 1997;Mushaben 2008;Bouzar 2001), and in this article we pay particular attention to the ways in which religious identities shape political activity among our respondents.

Whilst much of our data point to the significance of emergent political subjectivities, new grammars of action and changing forms of socio-political identification, we conclude that these do not entirely displace older forms of action, but can co-exist with them -although in reworked ways. In this respect, we conclude that there is a need to take account of a more complex relation between old and new grammars of political action.

THE STUDY

Our study is based on work with ethnic minority young participants/activists in Birmingham and Bradford. As many youth studies researchers have argued (Eden and Roker 2000), current crisis narratives about youth political apathy have tended to displace attention from forms of political participation in which young people do engage. Our study set out to address this issue by exploring modes, targets and repertoires of political action among ethnic minority young participants/activists.

To do this, we worked with a broad conception of political participation that included different levels of engagement (from participation to activism) in formal, We carried out 12 focus groups (6 in each city) and 50 individual in-depth interviews, involving a total of 76 respondents (39 in Birmingham and 37 in Bradford). Our respondents were aged 16 to 25, with slightly more men than women in the sample. The self-ascribed ethnicity of respondents included: 'Pakistani', 'Kashmiri', 'Mirpuri', 'Yemeni', 'Afro-Caribbean', 'Black British', 'Somali', 'Indian', 'Black African' and 'Mixed Race'.

The focus groups consisted of a group discussion with between 4-12 individuals, focusing on the group's activities, membership, experiences and reflections, and their perspectives on political institutions, processes and issues.

These were followed by individual in-depth interviews with the focus group members. A key aspect of these interviews was discussion of people's personal political biographies, which explored how and why individuals became politically active, the range of activities in which they participated, their views of their local areas, the range of issues that concerned them and how they saw their future political interests and participation. Our rationale for including a 'political biographical' perspective was driven by our concern to understand not just the dynamics of a range of groups and their collective experiences, but to consider also , including 'everyday' and 'subpolitical' action (Giddens 1994;Beck 1997). These interviews were supplemented by interviews with youth workers and local authority and youth services personnel.

CHANGING PATTERNS OF PARTICIPATION

There is an emerging literature suggesting that patterns of political participation in many democracies are changing (Zukin 2006;Giddens 1994). Norris (2002), for example, argues that political participation is changing in terms of its: targets (to a wider range of institutions beyond the nation state); agencies (where declining party, trade union or formal interest group membership should be viewed in relation to the rise of social movements, more fluid networked political organizations and single-issue campaigns); and repertoires (to include everyday, lifestyle choices or political consumption). More recently, there has been increasing interest in the role of new technologies in facilitating or even transforming political action (Bennett 2003). Seen from this viewpoint, declining participation in key institutions of representative democracy is not evidence of political apathy per se, but potentially indicative of wider social and political changes that have been occurring in the contemporary period, such as the emergence of 'de-traditionalization', 'reflexive individualization ' and 'postmaterialist values' (Giddens 1994;Beck 1995;Inglehart 1997;Dalton 2004).

This context, it is suggested, has given rise to new political subjectivities or 'grammars' of action (McDonald 2006) that are characterized by a turn towards more reflexive, 'DIY', everyday, fluid and expressive forms of political engagement (Beck 1995;Giddens 1994;Bang 2003). Such characterizations underpin Wieviorka's ( 2005 of contemporary social movements, where 'Each individual wishes to be able to choose his or her struggle, involvement and collective identity; but people also wish to manage their participation in action in their own way, at their own rhythm and be able to stop if they so desire ' (2005, 11). Thus contemporary movements are much less ideological than previously, founded on an ethos of action rather than programmes or sloganeering, and express a commitment 'to living differently now, as opposed to programmatic or linear attempts to shape the future' (McDonald 2006, 64).

It is often speculated that such shifts in grammars of action are particularly relevant to the young (Norris 2003), who are more likely to be politically engaged in activities outside mainstream electoral or party politics. It is also suggested that ethnic minority groups are much more likely to be engaged in alternative rather than conventional forms of participation, and within social movements, as a consequence of exclusionary norms and practices within mainstream political arenas (Gilroy 1987;Black Public Sphere Collective 1995;Solomos et al 2003).

Lower levels of electoral engagement among these groups should not then be interpreted as evidence of political apathy (Marsh et al 2007;Bousetta 2001). Furthermore, participation in social movements by ethnic minority groups has led to recognition of the role of identity and race in shaping social inequalities in addition to class (Gilroy 1987;Solomos and Back 1995), whilst mobilizations based on religious and cultural identities have in turn re-shaped the character of identity politics (Modood 2006). We identify a need, however, for more detailed research to specify how youth and ethnicity intersect in the understanding of these patterns of participation, in terms of both the issues that animate ethnic minority young people's political engagement and the modes through which this In line with the literature alluded to above, our research found that the high levels of political interest and engagement among the activists we met were not matched by identification with representative political institutions. Indeed, a constant feature of activists' political engagement was their scepticism with regard to representative politics and institutions: relatively few were actively involved in organizations associated with representative democracy. Although most were likely to be voters, almost none cited affiliation to any particular party as a reason for voting: instead reasons were often local (to block the BNP) or global (to register opposition to the war on Iraq). Among our sample, there were few party members, and even where there was activism on behalf of a party, it was qualified (as we discuss later). What characterized our respondents' activism was a tendency to prefer direct involvement in horizontal, informal networks or movements, or ad hoc involvement with particular initiatives, rather than membership of formal, centrally organised political organizations.

Even respondents who were members of a local youth parliament were ambivalent about its status as a representative institution, and in one focus group there was extensive discussion of whether 'parliament' was an appropriate term for As is clear from the work of Solomos and Back (1995: 130-170), the motivations underlying the party engagements of ethnic minority activists have long been multiple and complex, often deriving from other sources than commitment to the ideological premises of any particular party. However, the activists discussed in Solomos and Back's work were nevertheless full members of political parties (most commonly the Labour Party), since operating from within the machinery of party politics was seen to afford greater opportunities for realizing these activists' political objectives (Solomos and Back 1995: 130-70). In contrast, the MJM can be seen to operate externally to party politics, withholding full commitment but mobilizing in consort with party initiatives where this offered scope to achieve their particular goals. This stance was also replicated in their relationships with mosque and other campaign organizations, which were based on hands-on involvement rather than formal membership or affiliation. This tends to substantiate McDonald's contention that activists avoid subsuming their identities into that of formal political organizations. it was the war on Palestine and everything, but [...] we'd start off from sorting out everything in our little communities because they reckon that the government is not doing anything. So, if it's just like, a woman that just needs her shopping done, we'll just get it done for her. We'll go to shops and, like, if she hasn't got transport we'll help her out. It's just, it started off with little things like that, that was the idea and that is still the idea. That internet media sources, but also as producers of media communications -through blogging and website construction -as a form of direct action that allowed them to circumvent conventional mediated forms of politics.

GLOCAL POLITICAL ACTION

ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES

The political subjectivities among the activists in our study were intimately connected with questions of identity, but the forms these took suggest that identity politics for young people has become somewhat different to the forms that characterized earlier ethnic minority mobilizations, particularly in the significance of the local and global and with the emergence of religious, as distinct from ethnic, identities. In relation to the latter, our research concurs with the emerging research on the identities of young Muslims across Europe which points to the decoupling of ethnic and religious identities among many young Muslims, with religious identities forming a more focal reference for identity and political engagement (Jacobsen 1997;Bouzar 2001;Mushaben 2008) …obviously, if I wanted they encouraged me […] it's more me now telling them, rather than them telling me. 'Cause again there's, like, kind of typical story of them coming from Pakistan, they weren't exactly religious, but their kids turned out more religious than they are.

Mushaben's study of young German Muslims' engagement with the 'Pop-Islam' movement suggests that young Muslims' rediscovery of Islam expresses a demand for recognition that is rooted in a desire for participation with equal rights within the structures of both the state and society (2008: 512). 'Pop-Islam' is a popular Islamic movement in Germany led by a charismatic preacher (Khaled), whose appeal lies in providing young Muslims with guidance for: 'do-it-yourself integration processes, rooted in a (re)discovery of Islam ' (2008: 508). Mushaben asserts that 'Young, devout and trendy, Muslim youth want the umma -a universal community of believers -to pull them out of the swamp of 'failed integration'.

They read the Qur'an looking for real-life guidance, not for instructions on bombbuilding.' (Mushaben 2008: 513) For many of our respondents, the emphasis they placed on faith as something standing apart from more immediate ties of family and ethnicity was closely entwined with their political engagements. One young Muslim man, active in a wide variety of anti-war campaign work, expressed a similar contrast between his own religiosity and that of his parents, indicating clearly that his faith was a major source of motivation behind his political engagement: My religion has given me more freedom than anything […] I mean parents they bring up their kids more culturally, especially Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshis. It's quite, I don't know, when they read islamically it's, it's, it gives them more freedom the way I see it, and it's given me more freedom to do things, and more freedom to speak out. It's like when my parents say to me, "Don't go to a protest, they're gonna arrest you", but Islamically it tells me to, yeah, go to a protest and I see the word of God greater than my dad's any day… Importantly though, this sense of a relationship between personal piety and politicization was not simply expressed as a commitment to the interests of a global Muslim 'public', but also countenanced the mobilization of personal religious ethics in response to much broader understandings of social justice. As one respondent commented: But [...] we don't believe that because we are against the war, then we're not being patriotic. We believe that, we probably, yeah [we are] patriotic. We're doing it because of things like, how Islam teaches us to stand up against any injustice that is happening around the world. It doesn't matter whether it's happening to a non Muslim or a Muslim.

NEW AND OLD GRAMMARS OF ACTION

Whilst our data resonate with the literature on changing political subjectivities and new grammars of action, it is important not to overstate the transformations in political action in the contemporary period. It is clear for many of our respondents that, whilst their relationships to collective political organizations, their global and local concerns and the place of religion in their lives have altered their political engagement, issues relating to inequalities, racism and exclusion still figure very strongly in their everyday experiences and political engagements. In this respect, For example, as we saw in the example of Muslim respondents who had canvassed for the Respect Party without themselves becoming party members, it is evident that they have re-appropriated what McDonald describes as 'civic/industrial' grammars of action albeit to achieve alternative goals to those for which they have tended to be used historically.

Eade and Garbin's research found that newly significant religious orientations among young Bangladeshis were often overlaid with long-standing political concerns. Thus the shift towards identification with Islam among their respondents did express a new politics concerned with authenticity and belonging among second and third generations, but this was also conditioned by their experiences of longer-standing forms of discrimination:

For those who defined themselves first and foremost as Muslim, the traditional form of Islam in the subcontinent based on syncretic practices and the cult of holy men (pirs) seemed irrelevant to their present economic and political environment. The issues of discrimination and social exclusion were far more important to them. Furthermore, the fight against Islamophobia replaced the older anti-racist campaigns. (2002,145) Whilst their young respondents were turning away from the ethnically and culturally oriented politics of their parents, they suggested that the riots in Bradford and Oldham echoed the struggles that occurred in Tower Hamlets in the late 1970s, in terms of concerns about segregation, racism, community self-defence and unequal distribution of resources. Our own data point to the continued salience of these issues, and a sense that these shaped the political terrain on which young we don't choose to be political but we're forced to be so to try and address any of the inequalities. So I guess in that respect, we are.

Within our data, similarly, it is clear that whilst ethnic minority young people are oriented towards global sets of concerns, these are often linked to engagement with local ethnic minority community issues that include challenging continuing patterns of spatial marginalization -for example one group of activists campaigned against a proposal to site a casino in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in Birmingham (Alum Rock) with few other regeneration schemes, which they linked to broader issues of global poverty and conflict.

Whilst many groups with whom we worked were concerned with creating a political space for the articulation of new/hybrid ethnicities among young people, they also expressed an awareness of the struggle they faced in challenging representations of black youth or Muslim women: as one 'Young Disciple' from

CONCLUSION

In this article, in highlighting the lack of focused research on ethnic minority young people's political engagement, we point to the significance of 'new grammars of action', glocal political engagements and identity shifts in shaping ethnic minority young people's politics. We suggest that the literatures characterizing contemporary patterns of political engagement in terms of a move towards more personal, interpersonal, reflexive, DIY and more informal political action help us to understand the fluid and often ad hoc engagement that many activists had with conventional political organizations and institutions. This was evident even among the young parliamentarians and those who had engaged in party work in our sample. Similarly, we argue that there are some distinctive 'glocal' connections being made by many of our respondents, which inform their everyday political action, and that these are somewhat different to transnational and diasporic connections noted in other studies of ethnic minority mobilizations (Eade and Garbin 2002). Significantly, these are made possible by young people's reception of a wide range of media and communication sources enabled by new technologies, and these permit activists to engage in global issues directly through blogging, ecampaigns and website production.

We suggest that earlier new social movement style mobilizations on the basis of ethnic identities are not viewed in quite the same way by our respondents, although Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 137-49 EADE, JOHN and GARBIN, DAVID 2006 'Competing visions of identity and space: Bangladeshi Muslims in Britain' in Contemporary South Asia, vol. 15, no. 2, 181-93 EDEN, KAREN and ROKER, DEBI 'You've Gotta Do

  young Muslims. Thus, the disturbances of 2001 in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham and the bombings in London on 7 th July 2005 sparked intense public debate over the disengagement of young Muslims from mainstream political and civic life. The official reports on the circumstances around the disturbances of 2001 identified the disengagement of young people from local democratic processes as a key factor contributing to the events (Cantle 2001); whilst a Working Group set up by the Home Office in August 2005 to consider ways of engaging Muslim youth following the London bombings noted that 'Participation by young Muslims in civic and political activity is lower than the national average', attributing this to their lack of confidence in mainstream Muslim organizations, as well as to low levels of political efficacy in relation to UK political and civic institutions (Home Office 2005, 14). Subsequently young people's participation in local democratic structures has featured in the Government's 'Commmunity Cohesion' and and consultations, the establishment of a national Young

  set within the context of broader shifts presently occurring in citizens' political participation. Recent literature points to the emergence and proliferation of new forms of political participation (Norris 2002). Indeed many argue that we are witnessing a refashioning of the political, with traditional forms of participation focused on representative democracy being eclipsed by forms that are increasingly focused on the terrain of culture (Nash 2001), and which express new types of political subjectivity and different perspectives on the relationship between citizens and the state. Whilst the rise of new social movements, and the identity politics that these expressed, greatly altered the political terrain on which citizens, and particularly minority groups, have mobilized, it is suggested that contemporary movements have somewhat different relationships to culture and identity politics and distinctive patterns of engagement -expressed in more personalized, ad hoc and 'DIY' activism (Wieviorka 2005; McDonald 2006). Our data suggest that these subjectivities are expressed among the activists with whom we worked, and these shape their perspectives on both representative and identity politics. A further feature of much of the literature on contemporary forms of political and social action has been concerned with the impact of globalization, and the information-communication technologies that underpin globalization, in transforming the modes (Wieviorka 2005; McDonald 2006), targets and repertoires of political action (Norris 2002; Bennett 2003). Fundamental to this has been the significance of the local in the ways in which global issues, organizations and movements are expressed -captured in the notion of the 'glocal' (Eade and Garbin 2002). Our data reveal highly glocal concerns among young activists, which are more than simply a refashioning of existing transnational and diasporic indicative of a more profound shift in how local spaces are conceived in relation to awareness of global political issues, and this has been enabled through access to international media outlets and active engagement in internet-based publics.

  , community, neighbourhood, gender and campaign politics. We worked with a range of groups in the two cities, including:-two groups of Members of the Youth Parliament (MYPs) from the Bradford Keighley Youth Parliament (BKYP) and the Birmingham Young People's Parliament; a women's group in Birmingham, comprising significantly Pakistani, Yemeni and Indian women, established to provide women with a 'space of their own' and to challenge community and local state responses to women's concerns; an organisation in Bradford providing a range of educational, social and recreational provision for predominantly Muslim young women in a 'women-only' environment; a youth group based in Birmingham, focused on addressing experiences of African Caribbean young men and women, organising to inform 'the public and government agencies on gang culture' and to challenge 'the boundaries of local and governmental action'. Following the 2005 disturbances, the group has begun to work with young Bangladeshis to address common issues facing young people in the city; a youth group in Bradford engaged in youth, community, self-help and neighbourhood renewal projects; working primarily with Pakistani young men, the group has recently set out to include in its activities young Slovenian men newly migrated to the local area; four local youth groups in Birmingham and Bradford focused on increasing opportunities working with Pakistani, Yemeni, Somali and white young people; a Bradford-based youth group, working with Pakistani, African Caribbean and white young people to 'encourage positive identities' and 'celebrate young people's achievements'; -A Birmingham-based anti-war, 'Muslim justice movement', organised and led by young Muslim men.

  into those groups and the range of repertoires of action in which they engaged

  Birmingham and Bradford have significant (young) ethnic minority populations, and somewhat different demographic profiles, economic development and histories of political mobilization. Ethnic minority groups comprise 29.6 per cent of the population in Birmingham, and 21.7 per cent in Bradford, with ethnic minority young people constituting 38 per cent of the 16-24 cohort in Birmingham and 34 per cent in Bradford (Census 2001). Both cities were formerly industrial centres that have witnessed major deindustrialization and are currently engaged in strategies for regeneration: whilst Birmingham is currently reinventing itself as a 'global city' with burgeoning financial, service and cultural sectors, Bradford's local economy has experienced much less growth. In both cities, there are marked patterns of geographical concentrations of ethnic groups, giving rise to some distinctive patterns of political mobilization and local community politics (Garbaye 2005). In both cities ethnic minority young people have assumed a political visibility as a consequence of disturbances (occurring in 2001 in Bradford and in 2005 in the Lozells area in Birmingham), concerns about community cohesion, educational attainment, gang culture, and political extremism. Nevertheless, the groups with whom we were in contact expressed concerns regarding the mechanisms for addressing the experiences of ethnic minority young people within local democratic structures. These contextual issues certainly had an impact on the issues and policy agendas that pertained in each city as well as young people's engagement in their local areas (O'Toole and Gale, forthcoming).

  ) andMcDonald's (2006) accounts of the political subjectivities expressed within contemporary social movements, which they suggest differ to those that underpinned 'new social movements'. McDonald suggests that recent years have given rise to new, more personal and interpersonal, networked grammars of political action, which are distinct from earlier 'civicindustrial grammars of action' expressed through hierarchical, mediated and organisation. This resonates with Wieviorka's characterization

  the Birmingham Young People's Parliament. As one Member of the Youth Parliament (MYP) argued: You're branding yourself with this, this -and why?[...] [Impassioned] Clearly people are not involved, participating in that kind of democracy to begin with, why are you giving yourself that label deliberately? [...] It's amazing the number of people you can speak to, both adults and young people, who will say that Westminster no longer actually changes a great of policy. And to have that same kind of connotation with a young people's forum, you know, nothing'll ever change. [...] And that's you know, that's actually a much bigger problem, that people are disaffected in that way… Indeed, this MYP expressed frustration with national politics and the party political system, in a way that speaks to McDonald's contention that contemporary grammars of action privilege a personal politics of self-actualization:In terms of national politics, I would be sorely tempted to deface my ballot and just express my sheer, you know, sort of discontent if you like. Extreme discontent with the way the machine works at the moment, and I think that's part of what we were talking about earlier, with Westminster being more of the machinery, than politics in the broader sense. Many other respondents shared this ambivalence towards 'machine politics', and placed an emphasis on a variety of forms of direct, personal action. As one women's group activist discussed: Respondent: I've been on like you know marches and things for campaigns that I think are really important but, I don't think I'm that political. [...] I want to spend my energies on doing the work I'm doing, as opposed to kind of making change within the Government, or sitting on even a local level as a Councillor. I don't see that as productive for me. Interviewer: OK, so you'd see yourself more at grass roots? Respondent: Yeah. As just more of a doer. I think you get really kind ofheld up in a system, and I don't really want to be a cog really… Many activists were oriented towards DIY action in relation to local spaces, or specific social issues, or web-based action (such as blogging or web-site As a women's group activist commented of her organization's approach: Whether they're a housewife, whether they're a career professional, it doesn't matter to us as long as they're always questioning and not accepting the status quo. [...] So if they've got a community problem or whatever else hopefully they've got enough you know, confidence in themselves, or see a positive example, they'll be like "Yeah you know what? I'm gonna go do something about that because it's wrong". The contention that new grammars of action are expressed in a politics of personalized action, in which individuals do not subsume their identities within that of the group (McDonald 2006) sheds light on the highly contingent relationship some activists forged with party engagement. This was most obviously expressed in the case of the 'Muslim Justice Movement', an informal, self-organised group based in Birmingham, who were ambivalent towards (although not entirely rejecting of) established forms of political engagement. The MJM had been to antiwar meetings hosted by the Socialist Worker Party and various mosques across the city, participated in marches and petitions against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had been active in grass-roots campaigning for the Respect Party in Sparkbrook, canvassing door to door in the run up to the 2005 General Election. 3Their relationship with these organizations was qualified, however, and they did not strongly identify with Respect, despite the fact that they campaigned on the ground for them, as one activist explained: it's not that I have any affiliation with Respect in terms of its ideology, or anything, 'cause I'm still trying to unravel that myself. I know that they're a coalition of various different groups and [...] I'm still trying to look for some kind of coherent aim, some agenda […] And, I'm just flirting with . [...] I'll never join any of them. They've all asked us, because they would do, but I've never joined any of them.

  It is often argued that contemporary forms of action are increasingly concerned with glocal issues, particularly facilitated by new technologies(Castells 2004) and that these have fundamentally altered the character of political and social movements(Wieviorka 2005; McDonald 2006).Eade and Garbin's (2002) study of young Bangladeshis' political activism makes clear that global connections are shaped by local contexts and our data show that activists in our sample continually made such connections. The global concerns among our activists, however, were through transnational links between localities, homelands and diasporas, but were manifested through a more profound engagement with global politics and campaigns. In this sense, our data reinforces arguments made by McDonald and others that globalization has opened up novel modes of action, which both draw upon and extend globalized forms of communication and networking, and are different not only in scale but also in kind from earlier modes of action. An important aspect of this development is the scope for networking and consciousness-raising afforded by globalized communication systems. For McDonald, globalization (albeit in highly uneven ways) creates a space of flows, facilitated by network logics that engage with personal experiences linking individuals across space (although not uniformly) (2006, 32). Such changes in apprehensions of space potentially create very different ways of engaging politically. The suggestion that representative politics no longer capture the imagination of citizens who are more likely to be oriented towards global and local issues, was evident across our respondents. As one women's group activist elaborated: Interviewer: What does 'politics' mean to you? Respondent: What does it mean? [...] middle aged men in suits, talking endlessly, and not really doing anything constructive! It's got quite a negative [...] impact on me. But I think that's due to you know, all of these individuals not really making it accessible, on a real kind of basic level and so there's more barriers up again, with people who aren't able to overcome them. [...] there aren't kind of those dreams go[ing] across. [...] on the flip side of that, it's something that I'd like to change. You know, [politics] does kind of grab me as well. How do we function internationally and how I feel about all of that, that's more interesting to me than nationally.

  , global concerns ran alongside and were often made concrete through local connections. Thus anti-war activists drew clear links between their concerns with global issues and those within their local communities -expressed in highly 'glocal terms' -as one activist explained:

  we'll start off and when they need us for a protest, Anti War Coalition, what Anti War Coalition do is they call us up and then we'd go down with them in their coaches... Such responses seem highly suggestive to us of the linking of spaces that has been made possible by global information networks, and for these activists this was facilitated by their consumption of, and critical engagement with, a wide range of media sources that made the connections between their own and other global spaces possible and vivid (and see Gale and O'Toole 2009). They were very aware of, and politicized by, the highly uneven nature of global information flows, and particularly the role of the media in creating differential responses to humanitarian crises and conflicts in different regions and communities. For some groups, such activism was pursued through everyday life politics, demonstrations, campaigns or e-activism. This was particularly evident in the practices of Muslim Justice Movement (MJM) activists in Birmingham, who were critically engaged with a range of media, not only through consumption of a global range of broadcast and

  . Many young Muslim men and women expressed a strong commitment to personal piety, which they explicitly differentiated from the 'ethnic' heritage of their parents' generation. As a young Muslim man in Birmingham commented: I think [...] the youngsters are more attached to Islam [...] that's more of their identity, of Muslims, British Muslims, and they don't paint themselves as [...] Pakistanis as much, [...] they know that they've got some connection with Pakistan [...] but I think [...] they've come to the conclusion that they're more British Muslim. And, [...] I don't think the two clash, one's where you're born, the other thing is what you believe in. He went on to explain: t like [my parents] forced me how to pray or something, [...]It's kind of left down to me, if you know what I mean, that if I wanna do it you do it.

  findings point us towards the co-existence of grammars of action.

  As one women's group activist commented:

  Birmingham commented:we're living with it, day in and day out, you know, these Asians kids are this, these black kids are that. So we've got to live with it[...]. Now, when someone throws that at you, and you're already living with it, you're thinking, 'Well, what is the point of me trying to be civilised about this? Why am I being discriminated? Why am I being targeted?' […] If I do defend myself, they gonna call the police. Or if [...] I don't defend myself, you know, I'm still gonna get trampled on. So what do I do? [...] either way I'm gonna get trampled on, or they gonna call the police, and the police are gonna come out and say, 'Oh, arrogant black people' […] so there's no is just no point at all. Such representations were very clearly felt as exercising particular constraints on the range of possibilities for political expression. Thus, even where we see strong evidence of personal piety and identification with Islam underpinning political engagement, this ran alongside a consciousness of how the political terrain on which young people engaged has been altered by 9-11 and the 7 th July bombings: The Muslims, yeah, the Muslim youths, [...] they've always been talked about, the Muslim youth and this and that [...] and we're like, "Are we?" [laughter] I don't think we are, you know what I mean? [...] some of them are like, 'that doesn't represent my views', [...] on the news, for example, somebody saying that 'they're getting all extreme or radical' and [...] I can't even know about all these kind of situations. [...] but definitely it's now from that group where [...] they're being forced almost to get an opinion on the [...] situations that are going on at random... Similar sentiments were also expressed by young Muslim women in our sample several of whom voiced a keen sense of the need to respond to stereotypically gendered constructions of Islam. As one woman MYP from Bradford stated: I think now like as a Muslim women, [...] coming from a [...] black background, it feels more important [...] that we are seen to be out there and being active, because […] they're always thinking about the Muslim community secluding itself from everyone else, and isolating itself, and especially Muslim women being oppressed and being subjected to their fathers and tied to [...] their religion. Whatever the nonsense they have said . I think that there are a lot of assumptions made about me and people like myself and it was important and thinking back on it, that I did get involved in challenging things and that I did have an opinion and [...] I was assertive, without being too aggressive and I think yeah, Muslims have opinions too…

  not regarded as irrelevant, rather religious identities emerge alongside ethnic identities as bases for mobilization and in response to racialized representations and exclusions. Similarly, some respondents do reference political parties in the course of their mobilizations. The forms that their mobilizations take, however, are more networked and less collectivist, and more ad hoc and less ideological and programmatic, than either party or new social movement mobilizations. We suggest, then, that the significance of 'new grammars of action' should not be read as displacing conventional or identity politics, rather these can co-exist with them although potentially in reworked forms. THERESE O'TOOLE is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Bristol University. ADDRESS: Department of Sociology, University of Bristol, 12 Woodland Road, : Bangladeshis and the Competition for Resources in the Global City' in Oxford Development

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We are grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding this research.

3 Specifically, they campaigned for Salma Yaqoob, who stood as the Respect candidate for Sparkbrook and Small Heath in the 2005 General Election, coming second after Labour with 27.5 per cent of the vote, and later became