Heaven knows I'm an Islamist now


"Twenty years ago, adolescents who listened to The Smiths found a pop cultural justification for putting off adulthood. For today’s Muslim youth, Islam plays a similar role. Indeed, first-generation Muslims have often expressed surprise that their sons and daughters have become so religiously minded. But this has little to do with the influence of Islam - radical or otherwise; rather it has become a kind of conduit for the I-hate-the-world frustrations of adolescents. The nihilistic posturing of Muslim youth has a lot in common with expressions of the same in British popular culture, whether it’s Jimmy the Mod’s suicide scooter leap in Quadrophenia or Billy Fisher’s fantasies of machine-gunning people down in Billy Liar.

Yet the question remains, how is it that whereas Morrissey sang ‘burn down the disco’, the Muslim men arrested a few months ago allegedly discussed actually doing it? The difference today is that Blair and the government promote a similar fear and loathing to grown-up society as adolescents do. The constant bemoaning and belittling of pubs, football crowds, supermarkets and shopping malls has all the nihilistic hallmarks of the leave-me-alone teenager. A political centre based on the common good could (and did) pull young people out of their nihilistic phase and into society. A political culture based on hating and berating the masses is unlikely to do the same."