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British Journal of Criminology Advance Access originally published online on June 22, 2009
British Journal of Criminology 2009 49(5):646-666; doi:10.1093/bjc/azp031
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The British Journal of Criminology 49:646-666 (2009)
© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

From the ‘Old’ to the ‘New’ Suspect Community

Examining the Impacts of Recent UK Counter-Terrorist Legislation

Christina Pantazis* and Simon Pemberton

* Centre for the Study of Poverty and Social Justice, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, 8 Priory Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 ITZ, UK; C.Pantazis{at}bristol.ac.uk.


  Abstract

The ‘war on terror’ has emerged as the principal conflict of our time, where ‘Islamic fanaticism’ is identified as the greatest threat to Western liberal democracies. Within the United Kingdom, and beyond, this political discourse has designated Muslims as the new ‘enemy within’—justifying the introduction of counter-terrorist legislation and facilitating the construction of Muslims as a ‘suspect community’. In this paper, we develop Hillyard's (1993) notion of the ‘suspect community’ and evidence how Muslims have replaced the Irish as the main focus of the government's security agenda whilst also recognizing that some groups have been specifically targeted for state surveillance. We conclude that the categorization of Muslims as suspect may be serving to undermine national security rather than enhance it.

Key Words: Key words‘war on terror’ • counter-terrorism • policing • Muslims • suspect community


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