The Objective
After the London Bridge attacks on 3 June 2017, then Prime Minister May said we had shown ‘too much tolerance’ of extremism in the UK and that we must be prepared to have ‘difficult and embarrassing conversations’ throughout our society to combat the influence of the nihilistic hatred that jihadist terrorism represents. Such conversations must involve all sectors of the UK’s and EU’s society, not just within and between minority segments.
The CoJiT initiative is focussed on concrete outcomes involving the active encouragement of practical policy engagement at all levels designed to effect both policy and operational change.
CoJiT has been conceived quite independently from a problem-solving perspective: it is not our intention to duplicate any of the extensive and good analysis already in existence, but rather to offer an independent synthesis of it as a baseline of accepted evidence to initiate the sort of honest national dialogue called for.
The Need
The UK and the EU have been scarred by numerous terrorist attacks during the past decade. The UK was hit by four jihadist attacks alone in 2017; those at Westminster Bridge, Manchester Arena, London Bridge-Borough Market, and Parsons Green.
France has been a serial victim of jihadists attacks too: notably the 2015 killings at the Charlie Hebdo offices and the Bataclan Hall and at the Stade de France, all in Paris; the Nice bus attack in 2016; and in 2020 the shootings in Nice again and stabbings in Marseille and the decapitation of the civics teacher Samuel Paty outside Paris. In 2020 too Austria was subject to its worst terrorist incident in decades, leaving the nation of 9 million in a state of shock and mourning.
The 2020 attacks that have swept over Europe have not only revealed that Islamic terror is once more on the rise but it also highlights the low and poorly informed standard of public debate. There continues to be a lack of access to current, high quality, independent research, as well as to good, evidence-based resources being used and discussed within communities and the public bodies that serve them.
There is an opportunity right now to provide an independent contribution to the understanding and definition of the continuing jihadist threat in the UK and Europe and the extremist ideology underpinning it. It is important to create academically sound resources to help shape the public debate, public policy and to further assist in identifying and implementing solutions to confront, diffuse and ultimately, eliminate jihadist terrorism.
The Background
CoJiT is seeking to address and help to combat jihadist terrorism in the UK and elsewhere – not other forms of terrorism or other kinds of extremism and radicalisation. It is therefore concerned with something that is exclusively based within Muslim communities in the UK and Europe. This is not to suggest that right wing and other sources of extremism are unimportant, or not part of the general context of the problem, but what jihadist terrorists do, and what they want, makes it a sufficiently distinctive and current problem for Europe and the UK to be worthy of some clear focus in its own right.
There is a great deal of work and comment on this general area already and CoJiT acknowledges that this is a crowded field which includes, for example: government reports and government commissioned studies, and the extensive work of a number of think-tanks.
The CoJiT initiative is designed ab initio, however, to be completely independent, and independently funded so that it would owe nothing to political sensitivities, institutional competition or pre-conceived ideas. This positioning, allied to our clearly defined aims and scope and determination to make a rapid, targeted impact with a ‘multiplier’ effect is what is designed to set CoJiT apart from other players in the field.
