Global Security and Intelligence Studies
sult , Githens-Mazer ( 2012 ) explains the shock of 9 / 11 and subsequent securitization of Islam has disallowed Muslims from engaging in radical non-violence in the west . Even the term “ radicalization ” has been associated with Islam post 9 / 11 in media and government communications ( Horgan , 2005 ). These foreign conceptions of terror have culminated in a discourse dominated by fear of an alien “ Other ” in anti-terror legislation , the repercussions of which are shouldered by immigrants and asylum seekers “ whose encroachment appears to make a besieged , deprived victim of the previously privileged native citizen ” ( Quiney , 2007 ). The USA Patriot Act allows for deportation of ‘ suspect ’ immigrants , requiring little more than the perception of a threat to national security ( Quiney , 2007 ).
These conflations of non-citizens with the “ Other ” are best explained by Edward Said ( 1979 ) in that the colonization of the Middle East by European countries resulted in a binary juxtaposition of the Occident ( the west ) and the Orient ( the east ) in which the mirror image of any characteristic held by one group is reflected in polar opposite by the other ( Saeed , 2007 ; Said , 1979 ; Said , 1981 ). Thus , western authors ’ attributions of law , progress and superiority to countries of the Occident were necessarily mirrored by the lawlessness , backwardness and inferiority of the countries of the Orient ( Saeed , 2007 ; Said , 1979 ; Said , 1981 ). These arbitrary characterizations have largely survived in contemporary consciousness . It is informative to note that these notions of “ othering ” are prevalent in the ideology of both Domestic RWE and the Islamic State .
These binary perceptions of extremism extend beyond suspect populations and apply also to known terrorists . While white Christian terrorists are often portrayed in legal proceedings as human beings with childhoods , families and graduation photos , the same humanity is stripped from non-white Muslim perpetrators instantly , who are left only with mugshots and descriptions of their extremist ideology ( Corbin , 2017 ). While white terrorists are immediately perceived as mentally ill victims of some prior trauma , non-white Muslim terrorists are not afforded the same benefit of the doubt — they are assumed to be religiously motivated members of a terrorist conspiracy ( Corbin , 2017 ). Media coverage of white terrorists often include in depth analysis of their lives and personalities as if trying to ascertain where they went wrong ; they are not terrorist “ others ,” only “ good boys ” who have tragically strayed down the wrong path ( Corbin , 2017 ). Legal proceedings are not immune to humanistic rhetoric about white terrorists either ; the magistrate overseeing the prosecution of Dylann Roof , a white terrorist , confided : “[ w ] e have victims , nine of them . But we also have victims on the other side … There are victims on this young man ’ s side of the family ” ( Wash . Post , 2015 ). Furthermore , as terrorist attacks perpetrated by white attackers are perceived as “ one-offs ,” white Christian men are not subject to the profiling heaped upon non-white Muslims ( Corbin , 2017 ). This double standard of the application of the “ terrorist ” label
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