Institutionalised Islamophobia Before Prevent

Muslim Students, Campus Watch and the ‘Fundamentalist’ Formation in British Universities

Abstract

With little exception, across the breadth of literature addressing the implementation of the CTSA (Counter terrorism and Security Act 2015) in British universities, a distinct narrative predominates. Herein, the imposition of Counter-Terror state measures are articulated as interrupting the liberal egalitarianism of universities, sites characterized as free of racialized regulation. I argue that this body of critique unwittingly submerges the historically racialized character of universities and in particular, the sectors own production of the ‘transgressive fundamentalist Muslim student subject.’

Grounded in empirical research (2004–5) and historical/document analysis of the nineties, I address this lacuna by charting a series of junctures which illuminate how one aspect of Islamophobic discourse in the sector, centering on the figure of the ‘fundamentalist’ has previously been institutionalized and harnessed to Islamophobic effect. I elucidate how this aspect of Muslim student histories can be identified as a formative period that cohere with prevailing narratives of securitization and surveillance.

Framed through a decolonial perspective, it is argued that dominant characterizations of state imposition in the sector does not represent a radical disjuncture from (pre-)existing discourses associated with ‘Muslim students.’ Rather, in troubling the neo-liberal university as a-priori racialised, it is argued that Prevent has (e)merged into an existing regime of racialised ‘post’-disciplinary power.