The international system will face new and evolving challenges over the coming decades, concerning not only issues such as terrorism and violent conflict, but more pertinently, the intersecting convergence of global ecological, energy and economic crises. It so happens that these phenomena will intensify in direct relation to Muslim-majority regions in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and North Africa. 
Existing trends, and their probable trajectories, look grim without urgent preventive and mitigating action. Climate change is already happening, and has generated droughts this year in some of the most prominent food-producing regions. This trend is set to accelerate over the coming decades. 
The areas hit hardest by global warming will be the tropics and subtropics, encompassing about half the world’s population, including Africa, the southern United States, and much of India, China and South America. In these areas, higher temperatures will at first cause crops like corn, wheat and rice to grow faster, but over the longer-term reduce plant fertility and grain production. Scientists project that world crop yields will fall 20 to 40 percent. Climate change will also lead to water shortages potentially affecting up to 3.2 billion people. 
Britain will be drastically affected. As noted by Lord Cameron of Dillington, a farmer and former head of the Countryside Agency, Britain faces a real danger of civil unrest if food supplies are endangered for as short as three days. 
The danger will be exacerbated by the impact of hydrocarbon energy depletion and the global financial crisis. In 2006, according to the Energy Watch Group &#8211; an international network of parliamentarians and scientists based in Berlin &#8211; world oil production had already peaked, and will decline by half by 2030. The Group also argues that coal and natural gas are unlikely to be able to fill the supply gap in time. This will have a drastic impact on the ability of our societies to function, potentially leading to serious constraints on agricultural and industrial production, national electric grids, and transport infrastructure – unless viable alternative energy sources are brought on line at break-neck speed. 
Peak oil was also a cause (but not the only one) of the financial crisis. Escalating mortgage defaults triggering the crash occurred in the context of rising inflationary pressures on food prices, transport costs, costs of production, and costs of living, which arose from rising oil prices linked to the underlying energy problem. Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, warns that permanent oil supply constraints could “strangle” any potential economic recovery over the long-term. And a lack of cash could undermine the kind of infrastructure capacity-building needed for Britain to become resilient against these crises. 
In this context, both US and UK defence planners are increasingly concerned about the impact of these crises for Western security, particularly in the way they relate to Muslim-majority regions. Recent official strategic defence documents point to the centrality of violent inter-communal conflicts over food, water and energy resources around the world. In particular, they highlight projections of exponential population growth generating a “youth bulge” in Muslim-majority regions in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa – where the world’s most significant reserves of hydrocarbon energy and raw materials can be found. In the context of global systemic crises, this will create massive internal pressure on these societies, leading to massive shifts in migration patterns, intensifying the potential for insurgency and violent conflict, and increasing the propensity for geopolitical rivalry between the West, Russia and China (among others) over these regions. 
Intelligence experts are also worried about domestic population politics, projecting significant Muslim population growth in the US, Britain and Western Europe. Tim Savage, division chief at the State Department’s Office of European Analysis, argues that Europe’s Muslim population is expected to double over the coming decades, while its non-Muslim population is projected to fall by at least 3.5 per cent. At worse, he suspects that by mid-century Muslims might outnumber non-Muslims not only in France, but throughout Western Europe. Given the danger of intensifying violent conflict for control of scarce resources in Muslim-majority regions, planners believe the population growth will increase the threat of “home-grown” Islamist terrorism. 
These trends, and the plans they are provoking, are indeed grim. But they illustrate two key points – 1) the ongoing dismal failure of conventional policy approaches to transform the root structural causes of global systemic crises; and 2) the necessity and opportunity for British Muslims, along with their American and European counterparts, to address this failure with innovative new thinking, vision, strategy, and policy over the coming decades in addressing global crises and geopolitical challenges that will affect us all. 
It is therefore essential for British Muslims to draw on the economic, ecological and socio-political insights of their spiritual and intellectual traditions to formulate a coherent indigenous discourse of progressive Islamic thought and values with which to critically engage UK policymaking institutions to elicit more just, harmonious and sustainable practices; as well as to empower Muslim communities with a sense of inclusion and constructive action that delegitimizes extremism while inspiring new strategies to generate positive social change for peoples of all faiths and non-faiths.

This post was part of The Platform&#8217;s pilot run envisioning &#8216;Britain 10 Years On&#8217; with the turn of the decade (2010)

Britain and the Crisis of Civilisation

The problem of violent extremism, which tends to dominate the headlines, is very real. But unfortunately, the headlines can often obscure the complex social factors from which the threat of terrorism emerges as a final result. Currently, the government’s approach to preventing violent extremism or countering terrorism is in danger of dealing overwhelmingly with symptoms, rather than root structural causes. There is a tendency toward ‘widening the net’ in the effort to find evidence of terrorist activity – but ‘widening the net’ of surveillance, risk-assessment and legal powers tends only to increase the number of innocent civilians that end up being caught in the net, leaving the terrorists to slip through. This is a huge burden on public funds, which is unlikely to produce real results. The more we ‘widen the net’, the more extremists groups will find devious ways of slipping through. 
So what are the root structural factors that we need to address? Violent radicalisation is not simply the result of one cause, or even a range of causes, but is the culmination of a hierarchy of interdependent causes. These operate collectively as a mutually-reinforcing social system, which therefore requires a holistic approach. 
The first factors worth noting are social exclusion and institutional discrimination. These terms by themselves do not explain violent extremism in the UK, but they are primarily responsible for a weakening of a sense of British national identity and citizenship. The majority of British Muslims are socially excluded. Sixty-nine per cent of British Muslims of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic origin live in poverty. Unemployment rates are also higher than for any other faith group; young Muslims aged 16 to 24 years have the highest unemployment rates, and are over twice as likely as Christians of the same age to be unemployed. Social exclusion is linked to institutional discrimination. According to Minority Rights Group International, British Muslim “access to education, employment and housing” is deteriorating. 
The combination of social exclusion and institutional discrimination affecting a majority of Muslim communities in Britain contributes to a general collective sense of marginalisation, disenfranchisement, and disenchantment; a sense of being excluded from civil society, which thus exacerbates the experience of a separate or segregated identity to mainstream Britain.  This sense of civic exclusion is reinforced primarily by a perception of blocked social mobility and discrimination, and therefore, can even affect more upwardly mobile groups. 
The good news is that despite the prevalence of social exclusion, only a minority of British Muslims are likely to respond by negating their sense of British identity and citizenship, becoming vulnerable to a powerful sense of civic exclusion. A 2009 Gallup poll finds that while only half the general British population identifies strongly as British, 77% of Muslims in the UK identify very strongly as British, with 82% affirming themselves as loyal to Britain. 
But trends aren’t so heartening with regards to non-Muslim perspectives of British Muslims. In 2001, a majority of two to one thought that Islam posed no threat to democracy. Now, two to one British non-Muslims believe that Islam is a serious threat to democracy, and that most Muslims support terrorism.  This trend of social polarisation is a second factor that undermines community cohesion, and potentially undermines a sense of belonging amongst some British Muslims. 
These increasingly negative perceptions are catalysed by a third factor: reactionary and irresponsible media reporting. A media study commissioned by the Mayor of London found that in a single week in 2006, 91% of newspaper articles published nationwide about Muslims were negative, denying “common ground between the West and Islam.” Another study by Cardiff University’s School of Journalism analysed UK press coverage of British Muslims from 2000 to 2008, and found that “Four of the five most common discourses used about Muslims in the British press associate Islam/Muslims with threats, problems or in opposition to dominant British values.” 
Ironically, then, the media has served to reinforce the sense of blocked social mobility, discrimination and alienation experienced by many British Muslims, while simultaneously stoking widespread paranoia about Islam amongst non-Muslims, and promoting the views of Islamist extremists as representative of British Muslims. Together these factors interplay to create an environment that undermines the notion that Muslims belong intrinsically to British society, culture and values as citizens, and increases vulnerability to identity crisis. 
Exclusion and discrimination are known to be key causative factors in mental health problems, and there is little doubt that these processes have detrimentally affected British Muslim mental health, raising the question of the link between mental illness and young Muslims’ vulnerability to identity crisis. Although there are insufficient studies of this, a recent survey by Rethink found that 61% of British Pakistanis believed that negative perceptions of them by the media and society had damaged their mental health. 
At this point, the ‘pull’ factor of Islamist extremist organisations becomes significant. These extremist groups, often financed by overseas networks in the Middle East and Central Asia, exploit conditions and perceptions of disenfranchisement fuelled particularly by grievances over British and Western foreign policy. Those who are particularly vulnerable due to a convergence of personal, psychological and social reasons linked to their peer-networks, family environment and so on, may find a potential resolution of their identity crises in these extremist groups. Such groups galvanise the sense of frustration and civic exclusion to inculcate an ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ mentality. At worst, this mentality misappropriates Islamic texts, language and symbolism to justify violence against ‘Their’ (Western) civilians as a response to ‘Their’ killings of ‘Our’ (Muslim) civilians abroad. 
The cumulative interaction of all these factors creates a mutually-reinforcing positive-feedback system which causes a minority of British Muslims to experience violent radicalisation. Dealing with ideology and foreign policy is important – but these operate primarily as a final ‘pull’ factor; so far the deeper, structural ‘push’ factors have been neglected, and are getting worse. It is therefore imperative for Muslim communities to engage with government at all levels to get these deeper structural issues onto the agenda – for the sake of the security and prosperity of British society as a whole.

Understanding Radicalisation in Britain

The next 10 years does not bode well for British politics. At the European elections this year, only 22% of eligible British voters actually voted. The cash-for-honours and the MPs expenses scandals have generated widespread disillusionment. The EC predicts that in just 2 years, Britain’s national debt will increase to 88.2 per cent of GDP, and that by 2020 this could rise to 140 per cent of GDP. Meanwhile, the politics of the far-right are becoming increasingly mainstream, even prompting Labour and Tory spokespeople to co-opt their concerns on immigration, multiculturalism, and so on. 
In such potentially dire circumstances, the temptation to deflect problems onto the ‘Other’ – namely, black and ethnic minority groups, particularly Muslims – will be greater. In this regard, British Muslims will have a particularly significant responsibility to engage fully in the British political system to promote social justice, public welfare, and government accountability. We will need to put in renewed efforts to show that Islamic and British values are mutually co-extensive, and that British Muslims are truly at home in British civil society. 
Unfortunately, it is tempting to react in two ways: either accepting the goal of a global Islamic state while rejecting the use of violence to create it; or rejecting entirely any connection between Islam and politics. Ironically, both reactions lead us up the garden path. 
Firstly, we should be very careful to remember that the sovereign nation-state is a modern invention, only coming into existence within the last two hundred odd years. Before that, states did not exist, borders were in flux, and empires based on aristocratic and dynastic rivalries used force to extract tribute from subject populations and monopolise trade. This was even more the case fourteen hundred years ago. As the Sudanese scholar Abdullahi an-Naim argues, the idea of the ‘Islamic state’ is an innovation that draws on European post-colonial discourse. 
But just as it is a grave mistake to superimpose the modern nation-state onto Islam, it is an equally grave mistake to interpret this as implying that Islam is not political. As noted by <a href="http://www.thecordobafoundation.com/attach/ARCHESFINALWEBv3e4.pdf">Robert D Crane</a> of the International Institute for Islamic Thought: 
“In the Covenant of Madina the various autonomous tribes were incorporated in a single confederation with mutual rights and responsibilities. The Prophet called this confederation an umma or single community composed of different ethnic and religious ummas as sub-groups. 
There was also a common law based on the practice of the Prophet Muhammad and the traditional laws of each religious group. The Islamic shari’a as a body of law and jurisprudence, like all the other Islamic disciplines, developed over the course of the centuries. 
At the time of the Madina Covenant there was no state machinery to enforce the law, no police and no regular military, and not even an established judicial system. All social life was voluntary. 
This changed when the Prophet died and especially when peoples in distant places embraced Islam, which led to the growth of power centers that eventually evolved into independent empires based on principles that were un-Islamic from the perspective of the original community of the Madina Covenant.” 
Islam therefore advocates a progressive politics rooted in community governance, and based fundamentally on grassroots empowerment and the voluntary collective practice of community members. The Qur’an never makes reference to the idea of a ‘state’ as understood in modern conventional terms, even when discussing legal recourse, but instead addresses this voluntary community. Thus, we see a broad metaphysical conception of khalafa, where God tells the angels about the creation of the first man: “I am putting a khalifa on Earth.” (2:30) 
Khalifa is often translated as ‘vicegerent’, denoting a representative of a higher authority. But a better term in English is ‘<a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/quran/2008/08/nature_and_environment.html">trustee</a>’, conveying the idea of human beings carrying the amana or trust to be ‘caretakers’ of the Earth. Everyone of us is a ‘khalifa’ of God, the objective of which is the establishment of social justice: “We sent aforetime Our Messengers with Clear Signs and sent down with them the Book and the Balance (of Right and Wrong), that men may stand forth in justice.” (57:25) 
In addition, the Qur’an and Prophetic traditions are replete with clearly delineated principles of <a href="http://www.thecordobafoundation.com/attach/ARCHESFINALWEBv3e4.pdf">just community governance</a>, such as: mutual consultation between elected leaders and communities; freedom of speech and association, including the right to dissent against a ruling authority; freedom of religious belief; equality of access to means of economic production; equitable distribution and investment of public resources for sustainable development; responsibility to the most deprived classes through various social welfare policies; policymaking based on knowledge and research; compassion and flexibility in implementation of penal injunctions. 
In summary, then, we are collectively responsible for working together as custodians of the Earth in God’s Name. This trust extends into the social sphere as a collective duty of the community. Islamic politics entails that communities should govern themselves, and that we are all responsible to cooperate with our fellow citizens (our “brothers in faith, or in humanity”, in the words of the fourth Caliph, Hazrat Ali) in creating and maintaining just, compassionate and accountable social institutions from the ground-up.

Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed