Being a ‘suspect community’ in a post 9/11 world – The impact of the war on terror on Muslim communities in Australia
| Author | Adrian Cherney,Kristina Murphy |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865815585392 |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2016, Vol. 49(4) 480–496
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865815585392
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Article
Being a ‘suspect community’
in a post 9/11 world – The
impact of the war on terror
on Muslim communities
in Australia
Adrian Cherney
School of Social Science, University of Queensland, Australia
Kristina Murphy
School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University, Australia
Abstract
The suspect community thesis has been used to explain how and why Muslims have become a
stigmatised minority, subject to increased state surveillance and public discourse that con-
structs Muslims as a potential terrorist threat. Breen-Smyth (2014) argues that a suspect
community is generated through national or state security policies and reproduced and
reinforced by societal responses and social practices. This influences how Muslims perceive
themselves as a suspect community and influences their support for counter-terrorism
efforts. This paper will explore the ‘experiential consequences’ of Muslims being stigmatised
and labelled as a suspect community and the perceptions this has generated among Muslims
living in Australia. We examine how Muslims have reacted to being defined as a terrorist
threat and the coping mechanisms they adopt to defend their religious beliefs given Islam is
seen by authorities, the media and the public as justifying violence. This paper will explore
these issues by reporting results from focus group data collected from Muslims living in
Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne (N¼104 participants in total). Results illustrate how
being defined as a suspect community influences the appraisals Muslims have of themselves,
their faith, their community and Australian authorities. Implications for counter-terrorism
policies are also identified.
Keywords
Counter-terrorism, Muslim communities, policing, suspect community, stigmatisation,
terrorism
Corresponding author:
Adrian Cherney, School of Social Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane 4072, Australia.
Email: a.cherney@uq.edu.au
Introduction
The term ‘suspect community’ was originally coined by Hillyard (1993) to describe how
Northern Irish populations were rendered suspect through the design and operation of
counter-terrorism (CT) legislation enacted during the time of the Northern Irish conflict.
It has also been used to describe the contemporary situation and experience of Muslim
communities resulting from the ‘war on terror’ (WOT) (Pantazis and Pemberton, 2009).
While Hillyard (1993) was mainly concerned about how a suspect community was
created through the application of CT legislation, the term has more recently been
used to also capture the outcome of the cultural, political and ideological discourses
that combine to define and consolidate Muslims as the ‘enemy within’ (Breen-Smyth,
2014; Sentas, 2014). Breen-Smyth (2014) argues a suspect community is not sim-
ply one that is targeted (e.g. through CT policing and laws) but is also one that is
‘imagined’ (i.e. socially constructed by members of non-suspect groups) through the
broader discourse surrounding the WOT. A ‘suspect community’ can be understood
as constructed through ‘mechanisms deployed by the state to ensure national or state
‘‘security’’ and reinforced by societal responses and social practices’ (Breen-Smyth, 2014,
p. 231). Breen-Smyth (2014) argues that this not only reinforces Muslims as suspect in
the minds of the public, it also influences how Muslims perceive themselves as a suspect
community.
What Breen-Smyth (2014) and others (e.g. Blackwood, Hopkins, & Reicher, 2013a;
Kundnani, 2014; Mythen, Walklate, & Khan, 2013; Patton, 2014; Sentas, 2014) highlight
is that the policy, institutional, ideological, and discursive manifestations of the
WOT effects the types of perceptions Muslims have of themselves, their faith, their
community, others in society, official policies, laws and authorities. This shapes both
their reactions to being defined as a suspect community and their corresponding apprai-
sals and support of efforts to combat terrorism and radicalisation (Blackwood et al.,
2013a; Blackwood, Hopkins, & Reicher, 2013b; Breen-Smyth, 2014; Mythen et al., 2013;
Lambert, 2011; Pickering, McCulloch, & Wright-Neville, 2008; Spalek, 2013). It is these
‘experiential consequences’ (Mythen et al., 2013, p. 395) of Muslims being stigmatised as
a suspect community that this paper sets out to explore. We specifically examine the
consequences of this labelling and the mentalities (i.e., coping mechanisms and defensive
postures) that it has generated among Muslims living in Australia. The paper builds
upon existing research in the literature and contributes insights into how being defined as
a suspect community has affected the everyday lives of Muslims.
We explore these issues by examining results from focus groups conducted with
Muslims living in Australia (N¼14 focus groups, totaling 104 participants across the
cities of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne). Before exploring the focus group results,
literature is reviewed on the impact of the WOT on Muslim communities and how
they have dealt with, and responded to, the social, political and policy environment
surrounding it. This is then followed by a description of the focus group method-
ology. The qualitative results are divided into a number of key topics concerned
with understanding two major themes: (1) consequences and (2) reactions regarding
terrorism and CT. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the
study and outlines implications of the findings for the suspect community thesis and
CT policies.
Cherney and Murphy 481
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